Greenhalgh: "Things Looking Good"

By Josh Cole

Ben Greenhalgh says the most pleasing thing about the ‘Gates performance against Dartford was that the way they dealt with a “very good” team, after the ‘Gate secured an impressive 2-0 win on Tuesday evening at Hartsdown Park.

“I think the best thing was that it was always going to be a tough game, we knew they were going to come at us, be organised, and the most pleasing thing was that at half time, the way we set up with the one goal lead was to deal with a very good team, and we’ve listened, dealt with that and put the plan into action and come away with a 2-0 win.”

Greenhalgh said that one of the most important things is “creating relationships” and says that the back-four has been pretty “consistent” when playing together.

“It’s difficult in pre-season, you want to give everyone minutes, but at the same time, the most important thing is creating relationships, and you’ve seen at the moment, the back four has been pretty consistent when they are all playing together so we have to keep managing that.”

“It's working at the moment and every game there has been progression which is all we can ask for”.

Despite the brilliant defensive performance, the ‘Gate looked threatening going forward, looking like they could score every opportunity and Greenhalgh said the Blues “frightened” Dartford by getting in behind them

“Yeah it feels brilliant, I looked back at the Herne Bay game and I thought we played some brilliant football but just couldn’t cut it in the final third so again it’s another progression not only from a defensive point of view but also an attacking one creating chance after chance and causing Dartford a fright, we managed to get behind them, we managed to create some good balls and created a lot of good opportunities, so for us it’s a brilliant step in the right direction.”

The ‘Gate are now four games into pre-season for the 23/24 season and Ben said that fitness is “looking good” with five games left to go in pre-season.

“The fitness is looking good, it’s been difficult because we’ve had six training sessions as a group where we worked really hard and now we’ve gone straight into matches and I think you only really get the match fitness from playing matches.”

“Everybody’s fitness times were brilliant in pre-season so we know the base levels are there, it’s now about building up that match sharpness ready for the season”.

After the signings of Daniel Duncanson and Skye Salmon on Friday afternoon, Greenhalgh acknowledges that the majority of the Blues summer transfer plans are complete.

“I think we are pretty much there, what you’ve seen against Dartford is what we are going to try and go with for the season. Obviously if something comes around, we might be able to make something happen, but at the moment we’ve kept quite a consistent squad.”

“There might be a few going out but not many coming in so I think regarding recruitment at the moment we are happy.”

Ben Greenhalgh is sponsored by Spencer Hill at home and Anna Conniff away for the 2023/24 season.

More news