Jack Lester hails Chesterfield game management

Chesterfield manager Jack Lester praised his team’s “time-keeping” after they beat Swindon 2-1 at the Proact Stadium to stay in the race for Football League survival.

An early goal from Chris O’Grady and a fine finish from Andy Kellett put Chesterfield in command but Swindon replied through Rollin Menayese despite having Ollie Banks red-carded against his former club.

Chesterfield had lost their previous four games but they got off to a great start when O’Grady chested the ball home for only his second league goal of the season following a superb ball in from Kellett.

Another ex-Chesterfield player Marc Richards blazed over just before half-time and the home side took advantage in the 51st minute when Zavon Hines and Jak McCourt combined to play in Kellett who turned a defender before shaping a shot into the bottom corner.

Banks was dismissed for a high challenge on Louis Reed but Menayese set up a tense finish with a thumping header from a Matt Taylor free-kick in the 75th minute.

Chesterfield had conceded late goals in their previous two home games and they had to see out six added minutes which they did with few alarms.

“As it goes into injury time you just want to manage the game and see it out and I thought we did that quite well today,” Lester said.

“I thought we ran the clock down quite well and that was a big part of why we won. I thought that was important because they were piling the pressure on and had nothing to lose.

“When you’re one goal down you can pump a ball in from anywhere and they’ve got good height so it was a bit of a test and the character and belief we’ll get on the back of that was really important.

“Now it’s about us going on a run and getting some belief, we got four experienced players back out there today and I think that was important.”

Swindon manager David Flitcroft said: “We talked about a fast start, a hard start but after a minute we’re a goal down and I don’t think we recovered well.

“Usually that should stimulate you to recover but we didn’t force enough of our play onto them and give them enough problems and we were really disappointed in the first-half performance.

“Really not running hard enough for each other was the biggest thing from the first half, we didn’t give each other angles. Second half there was a real surge and positivity and it looked like a fighting performance.”