Gannon happy with "emphatic" Vics win

[FF News]

Northwich Victoria boss Jim Gannon felt his side earned an "emphatic" win over Farsley.

The Vics are closing in on a play-off place in the Evo-Stik Northern Premier League First Division North and Saturday's win over Farsley will have done them no harm at all. Although Gannon admitted that the two sides were evenly matched for a big part of the game.

"I agree the result was emphatic. But the performance of the two teams were evenly matched for large parts of the game. Farsley started the game brightly and their team structure was very solid and they enjoyed a fair share of possession in the opening exchanges. However, we also looked threatening and Farsley had their warning when Gary Burnett broke clear to dink a lovely cross onto Josh Amis' head who should have opened the scoring.

But soon after Gary Burnett broke clear again and he controlled the ball away from the defenders under great pressure and unfortunately for Farsley, Gaz could only be stopped by a foul just as he was about to score. Such incidents are major game changers. The goalkeeper had to walk and Josh scored against the stand-in from the spot.

We quickly made it two-nil with a neat controlled finish from Iain Howard. But I was far from happy with the structure of the team and how we coped with Farsley's tight midfield shape in both their 4-4-2 and 4-3-2 shape. And Farsley's good approach play was rewarded with a penalty of their own"

Gannon was honest in his assessment of his side's performance in the early stages of the game, even taking the blame for the slow start.

"Although we looked a little lethargic in the opening exchanges I guess I must take a little of the blame for the team struggling to get to grips with the game. I was really pleased with the team's performance against Darlington and wanted to start with the team that imposed themselves so well on Darlington during the second half of that game.

ut Richie Bennett came into this game with a heavy knock and with the return of Michael Clarke I made one change to the side to get Michael back into the team. However, Michael and the two full-backs struggled to know when and how to get involved in the midfield battle meaning that we didn't really get to grips with Farsley's midfield even when they were down to ten men.
However, we structured better for the second half and the simpler roles for the players meant that we were able to start imposing ourselves on Farsley further up the pitch.

Farsley stuck to their task really well but our third goal was a big blow to their morale and momentum to keep going and unfortunately our numerical superiority paid dividends in the final third of the match"

Source: Northwich Victoria FC

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