Despite the game ending goalless, both teams put in plenty of effort as Welling United claimed a well deserved point at Chelmsford City.

Peter Taylor introduced new signing Tommy Davis to the starting line-up, and Aaron Barnes was recalled. Taylor explained “(Joe) Muscatt got injured against St Albans last week where he took a whack on his foot. We’ve had it x-rayed and nothings broken but he’s got bad bruising on one of his bones. It was too uncomfortable for him to run around so he was definitely out. Teddy (Perkins) was left out. I decided to get Tommy from Southend and play him. It’s as simple as that.”  

Continuing about Davis, Taylor added “He trained with us on Thursday. That was one of the things I asked Southend, can he train before Saturday because otherwise I probably wouldn’t have started him today. He’s six foot four. He wins his headers. He talks and he wants to defend so I felt as though I was willing to give him that opportunity and I thought he took it to be fair. I thought him and Arthur looked a good partnership. It’s incredibly young but they did well.”

Although Chelmsford had some chances early on, from midway through the first half Welling seemed to be pretty comfortable. “I thought we had a spell just before half time where we started passing the ball around better and I just asked them could they carry that on and I felt that we did second half.” confirmed Taylor. “I felt that we looked more like the team that could win it. It was a tight game, a very tight game. I don’t think that a draw away from home is a bad result. I thought that we looked quite strong at the end and we had a couple of chances at the end. 

“My only complaint is that at the start of the match I don’t think we passed the ball around as confidently as we should have done. Then we got a little bit nervous and we lost the ball, then we gave Chelmsford a chance. Once we got over that period I thought we did okay.”

Over the last three games there has been a lot of improvement. Taylor said “I think its a team effort. All the boys are working extremely hard for each other and if the positions are close to each other they’re forming good partnerships. The wide right man has helped the right back and so on. I think that’s why we’ve looked a bit more solid.

“The longer the game went on the more solid we looked but you just never now in this game. All of a sudden you can concede, but overall I’m delighted with a nil-nil draw away from home. I’m delighted with a clean sheet because I think that’s good for the players and I felt that we deserved it. I didn’t think that there was any luck involved.”

Fitness is another factor and Taylor added “I’m very pleased with our fitness because that’s a positive. We looked as though we were on to play for another half an hour. That was good. The feller (Sean Miles) that does the goalkeeper is the fitness coach. He does a great job.

He was also a lot happier with cutting out errors at the back.“The positive thing is that I felt we defended a bit better.” Taylor said “There were a few crosses today and a few screw backs today. I felt we that we read them and dealt with them so that’s what we didn’t do against St Albans.

“To be fair we had a good real chat with them (the players) on Thursday about where we want certain people to be and give them jobs. To be fair to the back four they were more alert to that. We stopped crosses better, and when people did get a cross in, we dealt with them a bit better so that was good.”

Next Saturday, Welling are at home to promotion chasers, Oxford City. Taylor added “We’ll have another positive week. We’re still too low in the table for anyone’s liking so we’ve got to try and get another result.” 

Picture supplied by Dave Budden.