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Hereford FC, fresh from doing what they needed to do against Farsley in Buxton last Saturday, face a much more challenging opponent this Saturday in the form of promotion-chasing Chester. It looks to be a much more ‘proper’ game than a lot of the dross that will be served up in the division above this weekend. Yes Maidenhead vs Tamworth, I’m looking at you.
A pessimist may point to the last big home game that Edgar Street hosted this season, Kidderminster on Boxing Day, and worry. An optimist may think it impossible for the same flat performance to be dredged up for this, especially with so much at stake. I’m with the optimists.
It took Chester manager Calum McIntyre a few months to find a successful starting XI this season, but once he did they flew up the table and up until recently were top. Not a huge surprise perhaps as you’d expect Chester to be up their challenging as one of the bigger clubs in the division.
They forked out the princely sum of £12,500 for Connor Woods from Warrington in January. Since signing he’s scored precisely no goals, so princely sum or not, he’s been about as useful as Prince Andrew for them so far. He was an unused substitute last Saturday when they drew 1-1 at home to Curzon Ashton. They also had fellow strikers Kurt Willoughby and Dan Turner on the bench for that game, so maybe they have slightly deeper pockets than Hereford despite there being similarities between the two clubs.
Willoughby was one of the division’s top scorers two seasons ago, earning him a move to Oldham. He hasn’t had the same success in this second spell at Chester though, a season-long loan from the Latics, with just five goals in 33 games.
They lost star player Charlie Caton to Accrington in January, and that has coincided with their recent slight dip. That Curzon game petered out to something of a nothingness after half-time, with the second half played out between two teams who have possibly (hopefully) passed their seasonal sell-by date, although Curzon did edge past Needham Market on Tuesday. Chester have won four and drawn four of their last ten – far from shabby but it’s form that’s seen them slip from the top of the table to fourth, five points above Hereford.
The player who has been scoring their goals this season is Tom Peers, with 17. The striker started his career at Chester before taking in a host of clubs in the northwest, returning to the Deva two seasons ago from Macclesfield.
Ex-Bulls Mitch Hancox and Ben Pollock were recruited in the summer, although Hancox promptly moved on again in January, to Spennymoor, with Pollock following him to the same club in February.
Declan Weeks is as ever the fulcrum of the team, and if he can be nullified the likes of Peers will be starved of opportunities.
The Blues are typically very, very good defensively at the Deva, and true to form this season they’ve conceded fewer goals than anyone at home, but away they’re really quite leaky, having let in more goals than anyone in the division on their travels apart from South Shields, outside the bottom five. Visiting defenders can no longer coast through games at Edgar Street in the way they’ve been able to do depressingly often in the past, now that Remaye Campbell is giving them something to think about. If Chester do have a weakness away from home, which they very much seem to have, Remaye will exploit it. If they try to rip his shirt to shreds or give him a friendly strangle, hopefully the ref will see it and brandish an early yellow card or two.
Hereford loanee Kieran Coates left Chester last summer having spent a couple of years there, and will presumably be well up for this as a result. The signing of Coates hot on the heels of the arrival of Omari Sterling-James offers more evidence that the Hereford board and manager aren’t content to sit on their hands and hope for the best in terms of play-off qualification. Coates looks to be a player who will add the same sort of quality as OSJ has at the other end of the pitch, and their presence makes the squad look more competitive against the likes of Chester than was previously the case.
If the Bulls do make the play-offs these clubs could be seeing each other again in a few short weeks, so this could be a useful exercise in sizing up the opposition for that. However, that’s all a long, long way into the future in terms of any number of variables still to come before the regular season finishes, so I’ll stop right there with that nonsense.
The visitors will of course be up for this more than if it was someone a bit boring, but given their away record, and the wobbles they’ve experienced lately, it’s utterly winnable if the hosts go into it with the sort of confident mindset that saw them win impressively against Curzon Ashton two weeks ago.
COYW