by Peter Scherer
Mickleover opened their pre-season campaign with a 4-1 home win against a Chesterfield FC Youth Team.
For manager Gareth Holmes and his assistant Mick Galloway, it was their first chance to meet the fans in a match situation and introduce some of the new signings.
Yusuf Mersin started in goal and had newly signed George Taft, Curtis Weston, Leojo Davidson and Dylan Edwards making their debuts along with Stuart Beavon, Marcus Barnes, Will Atkinson and three trialists.
Beavon gave Mickleover the lead with Taft making it 2-0, before Chesterfield pulled it back to 2-1 before half time.
The game was really about how the trialists got on, giving them time on the pitch and a chance for the established players to get to know the new ones
said Holmes.
There were two more goals in the second half, with Fin Ryder coming on as a sub, while the third was well taken by one of the trialists, to make it a 4-1 win.
It was a positive day for us, everyone came away OK. We had a lot of the ball but we have a long way to go, we are trying and testing and we used more trialists in the second half and some Academy players and we have four more hopefully playing against Belper Town next Saturday too
Holmes added.
More of the established players will be back in the team over the net few weeks, “it’s important for us that the players understand what we expect and create an identity. It was pleasing too for the Academy lads, especially with Fin scoring one of the goals.”
So Belper Town visit the Don Amott Arena on Saturday and it’s a 3pm kick off.