After last weeks excellent performance against Bowden. I was not sure that Macclesfield could put together such another convincing win this week. Well I was wrong!! Macclesfield made the long trip to the Wirral to play Neston 5s at stupid a clock on Saturday night. Neston had made a good start to the season and started the game 4 points ahead and 4 places higher than Macclesfield.

 

With the return of Skipper Jones fresh from his trip to Germany it was easy for Yates to convince him to adopt a continental look to the Macclesfield line up. Playing 3 up front, a diamond formation in the middle and 3 at the back.  Under the almost flood lit pitch powered by the best energy saving light bulbs the local B&Q store could manage, Macclesfield started brightly (well almost!!).

 

The game looked quite even for the first ¼ and there was quite a fast pace to the game with both sides attacking and defending well. It took at short corner to break the deadlock and see Macclesfield go ahead. An inch perfect injection by Alan Holmes saw Chris Orme receive the ball at the top of the D and fire the ball into the net via the desperate defenders late lunge. A second followed 5 minutes later with the same combination of a Holmes push out and a powerful shot from Orme which went into the bottom left corner. He later admitted that he may have mishit the shot and was aiming for the other corner!!

 

This 2-0 scoreline took the wind out of Neston’s sails and increased Macclesfield’s confidence. The new Macclesfield tactics were working well with Alan Holmes and Barry Khan sitting deeper protecting the defence leaving Orme and Mark Lockett to supply the attack. This lead to some good interchanges and several good runs were made by Simon Yates and Jake Bennison to supply Jones with some good opportunities.

 

Towards the end of the half Neston had some good attempts at goal but Josh Berry stood firm making 3 good saves in one passage of pressure. After the break Macclesfield created a third. Don Jones ran down the Neston left and despite the best intentions of the Neston defender to try and put his stick between Jones’s legs in the D. He managed to beat him, draw the goal keeper and last defender to him and then pass the ball to an unmarked Orme. Orme calmly slotted the ball into the centre of the empty net to score his third goal and his first hatrick for Macclesfield.

 

Macclesfield then decided that a tactical switch was called for and this saw Orme slot in beside Alex Carmichael at the heart of the Macclesfield defence. Neston then decided to really go for it and started to really test the Macclesfield defence. This saw some excellent defending from Alex Carmichael, Adam Taylor and Owen Silcox for the remainder of the half to snuff out any chance that Neston had of a goal. The tireless closing down of the Neston attack by Mark Lockett earned him a well deserved Man of the Match award. On the odd occasion a shot was made by the Neston defence, Josh Berry was there to clear any trouble away from the Macclesfield goal.

 

With Neston constantly attacking, this allowed Macclesfield some room on the counter attack and saw Khan, Carmichael and Holmes play some fantastic passes up to the forward line. One of these passes fell to Jones on the right hand side. His skilful run past two defenders got him into the D. He then unleashed a powerful low shot into the bottom left corner of the Neston goal. This put Macclesfield 4-0 up and concluded what may be the best away performance by this Macclesfield team this season.

 

With another long trip to Wrexham next week, will the momentum that Macclesfield are building continue?