Victory over Poole Town left Welling United player manager Jamie Coyle delighted.

Their two recent away draws would have counted for little had they failed in this match, but after a sluggish start, Welling took control and deserved their three points.

Coyle confirmed that it had not been easy at first saying “We struggled with their shape a little bit in the first half. We had to drop Eli (Phipps) a little bit deeper which took away a bit of his attacking threat but after ten or fifteen minutes we got to grips with their shape.

“We were a bit lack lustre in the first and we needed a little bit of a spark just to give the crowd something to get behind us.”

When Welling played Hampton and Richmond Borough in their last home game, they were slow to start and conceded a goal that they could not pull back in the opening minutes. Again, against Poole, they lacked tempo from the start and Coyle confirmed it, saying “It’s another game that we’ve started a little bit slowly at home and that’s something we’ve got to look at.

“If we’d been at it today from the off, I think it could have been a lot more comfortable than the scoreline suggests.”

Tom Bradbrook and Bradley Goldberg, Welling’s two front line strikers, both had to limp off in the first half at Bath a week earlier. Although there had not been an opportunity to bring in reinforcements against Braintree, two new strikers, Florent Bojaj and Elijah Phipps, started against Poole and both made good first starts.

An impressed Coyle said “For them to come in and have one training session and work that hard today was fantastic. They’re only going to improve. I wasn’t expecting them to pull up trees after an hour and a half training session together but I thought their work rate as well as their quality on the ball was fantastic.

“Flo just missed a goal but he linked play really well. He’s a bit of a focal point, similar to Bradders, with great technical ability.

“Eli’s come in and shown real quality in training. He’s a natural goalscorer from what we’ve seen. The more minutes he gets, the more confident he’ll become.”

Jeffrey Monakana had assists in both goals and also earned praise. “Jeffrey’s been outstanding today.” said Coyle. “I thought his delivery all day was top notch. He’s been a constant threat for the last three or four games and he’s doing what we’ve worked on in training getting as many balls in the box as possible.”

As a centre half himself, Coyle was pleased not to have conceded a goal and said. “A massive positive today was a clean sheet. I said to the boys that we haven’t had enough clean sheets. We’ve defended well but conceded sloppy goals but today I thought that defensively, collectively as well as individually, we were outstanding.

“Jack (Parkinson) has always been an outstanding centre half but he’s been pulled around and put in midfield, and he’s been effective there. As soon as he came back we knew it would take him a couple of games to get his positioning right and I thought on Tuesday night and today, he hasn’t put a foot wrong.”