A near-perfect away performance?

I wouldn’t go that far, no.

Things didn’t go according to plan in the first-half, and I thought Stalybridge were better than us.

They certainly made us work defensively.

Greg [Hall] made two or three decent interventions, while we only had two moments of danger inside their penalty area and scored from one of them.

We didn’t trouble them enough.

What was the message at half-time then?

I asked the lads to push on more and to be braver.

That had been a theme before the game too; we reminded them that performances had been good and we have the second-best record in the league for goals conceded.

However we need to improve at the other end of the field in terms of getting more people into goal-scoring positions in the box.

How much of a lift will this result be?

We were better than them in the second-half and certainly created more chances.

My only complaint is that we should have scored more goals but on the whole I’m happy with the result and of course we’ve kept another clean-sheet.

With that in mind I hope it will be a boost because we’ve played well.

Handling Stalybridge’s attacking players

Dan Cockerline and Scott Bakkor are both good players, but we were wary as well of Matty Wolfenden.

He drifts into great positions, which is something we talked about being alert to.

We asked the lines in defence and midfield to stay close together to make it more difficult for him to find those pockets of space in which he thrives.

I felt we did that really well and snuffed out the threat he poses.

Describe Osebi Abadaki’s impact

We spoke to him at half-time and asked him to give their full-back more to think about.

His starting position wasn’t quite right in the first-half and we wanted to see him play more on the shoulder off their defender.

He did, and gave us so much energy, balance and skill from a wide position.

I was delighted as well to see him work so hard considering he hasn’t played much football before signing and has only had a couple of training sessions with us.

How does this win change Witton’s situation?

We can’t look to far ahead.

You can see we remain light on numbers and we were able only to name four substitutes again today.

That’s likely to be the reality until the end of the season.

We have games coming up thick and fast – I think I counted four in 11 days – and it’s vital the lads do everything they can to look after themselves and relax when they can.

It’s my job to manage the situation carefully from here, particularly as one or two lads looked fatigued in the second-half, and to get the best out of everybody.

A word on Will Booth’s development

He was fantastic wasn’t he?

He can break up play, run with the ball and then pass it well – he showed everybody what he is all about.

He’s lost weight after we told him to work harder if he wanted to get into the team but he deserves so much credit for responding to that and making a place in the team his own.

I thought he was immense again.