Chesterfield 2, Aldershot Town 1

BAFFLED Aldershot Town boss Danny Searle was left scratching his head after watching his side pile up the chances at Chesterfield’s Proact Stadium on Saturday – only to leave empty handed.

The goal-shy Shots, who with next Saturday’s opponents Chorley are the lowest scorers in the National League, created an astonishing 20 chances –and even missed a penalty, their third of the season – but only had a solitary goal from Ethan Chislett to show for it.

“Probably the most frustrating thing about Saturday was the amount of people, including the opposition players, staff and supporters, that came up to me afterwards saying ‘how have you not won that game?’ admitted Searle.

“To a certain degree it’s even more frustrating than if you were awful because at least if you are awful you can make sense of it, but I simply couldn’t make sense of Saturday. The Chesterfield manager after the game was quite humble and said ‘we don’t know how you haven’t scored three or four goals in the second half’ and the answer to that was ‘nor do I’.

“Our fans who travelled up for the game enjoyed the performance in the sense that we were better than Chesterfield on Saturday. I’m not going to say we dominated the whole game because we didn’t, they had a period in the first half where we were up against it a little bit but not as consistently and for as long a period as we had in the second half.”

While the number of chances created was higher than normal, Saturday’s game mirrored mjany before it since Searle took over the reins in the summer – with the Shots playing good football and winning admirers but falling short in the final third.

“If we perform with the consistency that we did on Saturday over a long period of time we will win more games than we lose. I have absolutely no doubt about that,” said Searle.

“Do we need it to come relatively soon? Probably, yes, just to make sure we don’t fall adrift of any of the teams around and in mid-table and around the edge of the play-offs but we have no doubt that the wins will come.

“We’ve thought for a while that we are not far away from giving somebody a hiding, but we have to make sure that when those opportunities do come up, we take full advantage.”

Could that big win come against basement boys Chorley on Saturday?

“That would be a bit disrespectful to Chorley to say that,” said the Shots boss.

“We’ve looked at the way they’ve been playing and they have had some good battling performances this season. The automatic assumption is that if they are bottom of the league we are going to go there and get three points, but we thought that about Chesterfield and as much as we deserved it, we didn’t get it so we have to have an air of caution about going to these places.

“It’s a long day, we’ve got a long way to travel and things can happen. They could have a great day and we could have an off day, we could have a great day and they could have an off day, or we could completely nullify each other.

“But we are going there to win, we are not just thinking about picking up a point. Whether it’s the day we give someone a hiding, time will tell.”