COUNTY GET THE JOB DONE, JUST!
IAN Burchnall felt his Notts County side made “far too much hard work” of their victory over Aldershot Town, even though it maintained their unbeaten start to the National League season.
The five-goal thriller saw both sides lead at times with Kyle Wootton’s opener for the Magpies overturned by a brace either side of half-time from Shots’ Corie Andrews.
However, Cal Roberts was the hero in providing an assist for captain Kyle Cameron and then scoring the winner himself before Notts held on amid relentless late pressure from Danny Searle’s winless Aldershot.
“We made far too hard work of it to be honest,” boss Burchnall declared. “We should’ve controlled the game much better than we did and I felt that the first half was quite poor from us, I thought we were lucky to take the lead.
“Their second goal woke us up a little bit and it gave us far more purpose and we were much more dynamic, which we should’ve been doing from the start.
“Aldershot came here and they needed to win the game because they’ve had three losses in a row, so we knew that they were going to be more proactive than they had been in previous games.
“We saw that a lot of our rivals up there dropped points today, so for us to come down and get three points is massive really.”
Notts had to be patient in breaking the deadlock as Roberts and Wootton both came close to scoring in the opening 25 minutes.
The ‘Pies snatched the lead on 40 minutes though, as a searching long ball was excellently controlled by Ruben Rodrigues, who fed Wootton to smartly convert in to the bottom corner.
This seemed to wake up Aldershot, however, as captain Liam Kinsella danced past two Notts defenders before expertly dinking the ball through to Andrews, who rifled past an unlucky Sam Slocombe.
Andrews was at it again at the start of the second half, capitalising on some sloppy defending from Cameron before sliding the ball beneath Slocombe for 2-1.
This seemed to spark County in to life as his side responded immediately when Cameron, atoning for his previous error, bullied Roberts’ corner home.
And the points were then sealed by Roberts himself after some neat trickery between himself and Rodrigues led to a delicate finish which saw Mitch Walker helpless.
The result sees Notts rise to fourth in the table and just two points off the leaders Dagenham & Redbridge, whilst it’s much more glum for Aldershot, sitting second bottom and one of only two of the remaining teams yet to pick up a point this season.