Cheltenham 2-1 Chesterfield: Inspired Stanway Stands In Spireites’ Way
Wyll Stanway put in the performance of a lifetime between the Cheltenham sticks to keep Chesterfield at bay and help carry his team up to a surprise 2nd place in the League Two table at this early stage. I think we can all agree he’s well on his way to becoming the best footballer in his family, he’s only 4 Bundesliga titles, 3 FA Cups, a Premier League, 93 England caps and 2 Euros titles away from his sister Georgia’s tally. He’ll get there…
This year marks Cheltenham’s third in the division since relegation from League One, and the pre-season expectation was yet another year of regression. They finished 15th on their first year back, 18th last time out, and there was no reason to believe that this season would be any different for the Robins. There’s plenty of football yet to play, but all signs point towards Cheltenham being a more than capable challenger at the sharp end of the table. The boffins will tell you that they’re wildly out-performing their xG and other data metrics and that the sky will fall in on them soon enough, but Steve Cotterhill has a reputation for instilling his sides with enough belief to carry them through the big games on the power of friendship alone. Data be damned, this Cheltenham side can play.
One man who has been defying the odds for the home side this season is the division’s top scorer, midfielder Charlie McCann. He has hit the net 7 times from just 17 shots so far this season, scoring a goal on average every 2.4 shots he takes. For context, Erling Haaland (who is quite good at finishing) scored a goal with every 4.7 shots he took in the Premier League last season. Is McCann a better finisher than Haaland? It’s hard to say. It’ll be easier to compare when they’re in the same division next season. He can’t keep scoring at this rate, McCann he?
He opened the scoring this weekend, and he won’t get many easier opportunities than this one. Ryan Broom drove forwards with the ball, and McCann made the overlapping run outside him to his left. Both Chesterfield centre halves saw him and pointed at him to indicate to their defensive partner that they should get over, but neither did. Broom swept the ball across to McCann in plenty of space in the box, and he calmly slotted it beyond Ryan Boot to make it 1-0. The Chesterfield defenders immediately took to blaming one another, and the passage of play does look quite silly in the cold light of the official EFL highlights package. At the end of the day they both have plenty of experience, particularly the nearly 40 year-old Kyle McFadzean, and should probably have a plan for scenarios like this mapped out before kick off. You can’t stop a goal in hindsight, so Cheltenham raced into the lead.
The first half continued in pulsating fashion, with both sides creating plenty of chances to score the second goal of the game. Louie Marsh fizzed an effort just wide of the post for Chesterfield, before Jake Evans had a shot well saved by the boot of Boot down the other end. The next big flashpoint came when Dilan Markanday went down in the box under the challenges of both Pierce Sweeney and Stanway in goal. Chesterfield fans want a penalty, Cheltenham fans want him booked for diving, and Wyll Stanway looks like he wants to rip Markanday’s head clean off in the aftermath. It’s impossible to tell which way it should go from the angle of the highlights, but the strength of Stanway’s response and the sheepish look on Markanday’s face has me leaning towards the referee’s decision of no penalty being correct. Lee Bonis had the next big chance for the visitors, but could only clatter the crossbar. Remeao Hutton clipped a lovely ball over the top to the striker, who smashed the ball hard into the ground to try and fool the ‘keeper, coming a few inches shy of a fantastic finish. Alas, it was yet another in a string of high profile misses for the Spireites’ centre forward, perhaps if he asks nicely Charlie McCann will spare him some time and put on a finishing workshop. That’s after he’s done teaching Haaland, of course.
If you waste chances against a team in the form that this Cheltenham side is in, it’s only a matter of time before you get punished. There were plenty of high-profile transfers across world football this summer, but none sent tremors through the football world quite like Andi Weimann’s switch to Cheltenham Town. At 35, the Austria international’s career is naturally winding down, but nobody thought he was quite ready to tumble all the way down to the fourth tier. He was a regular contributor in the Championship for Blackburn two seasons ago, and played plenty for Derby and Rapid Wien the season just gone, but he opted to join Cheltenham Luckily for all involved, the move seems to have been a resounding success. It looks like he’s really enjoying his football again, and his goal in this game takes him up to 4 goals and 2 assists already in just 8 Robins appearances. Not bad for an old man.
Jake Evans made up for his earlier missed opportunity as he latched onto a loose ball in the middle of the park and dinked a sumptuous first-time pass over the defence and into the path of onrushing full-back Jonathan Tomkinson. Tomkinson headed the ball into the box towards Weimann, who had plenty of time to take a touch and rifle his shot into the top left-hand corner to double the home side’s lead. The atmosphere at the EV Charger Points Stadium was electric. He might have lost a yard or two of pace, but his finishing and positioning are as sharp as ever. Chesterfield’s defensive shape was all over the place, and Weimann ghosted into the space left behind by McFadzen pushing high without anyone in blue noticing. Nobody could get across to him, and by the time McFadzean had turned to see him it was already too late. There’s a lesson from an old timer for you lads, don’t let a former Premier League centre forward have as much time and room as he likes to shoot at your goal. It doesn’t often end well, at least not for the defending team.
Chesterfield continued pushing for the rest of the first half, but just couldn’t find a way through Wyll Stanway. In added time, the Cheltenham ‘keeper produced the best of his astonishing twelve saves in the game, scrambling across the face of goal and clawing a point-blank Lee Bonis header off the line in miraculous fashion. Now then, there’s something the Chesterfield fans will want me to mention. There are some angles of Stanway’s wonder save that might suggest the ball had crossed the line. By miles. The fact he managed to claw it down onto the goal-line may have been a clue, and Bonis was 100% sure at the time that it had gone in. Not that the would-be goalscorer is the most objective source of information on this subject. League Two is yet to adopt the wonders of goal-line technology so, as much as the aggrieved Chesterfield faithful may moan, the save stands. And it was certainly one for the highlight reel.
Louie Marsh did manage to finally halve the deficit fairly soon after the restart. He collected the loose ball in the area following a blocked Joel Randall shot and did well to dig it out from under his feet and fire his effort into the top corner, where even Stanway couldn’t reach it. It was the Sheffield United loanee’s 5th in 7 games for the Spireites, and with the quality he’s showing it’s a wonder he isn’t making a difference for his parent club instead this season. Lord knows they need it.
The nearest they came to an equaliser was through Cheltenham centre half Robbie Cundy, who almost turned a Dilan Markanday cross into his own net. It would’ve levelled things up had it not been for, you guessed it, Wyll Stanway making a sharp reaction save to turn the ball around the post. It really was a day to remember for the stopper, but he probably won’t ever play that well again. It must’ve been nice being able to brag about his performance over a carvery dinner with his family, as Georgia only managed to play an hour in a loss to Chelsea this weekend. She played for Manchester City for seven years too, and we all now know how they financed that particular contract. 2-0 to Wyll this weekend in the Stanway family WhatsApp group.
If you just looked at the stats from this game, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Chesterfield were on the end of one of football’s greatest injustices in coming out of this game with nothing to show for their “dominance”. While they were good, being 1-0 down from the 17th minute, and 2-0 from the 37th, will usually make it look like you’re absolutely hammering a team as you’re forced to surge forward and shoot on sight to try and work a way back into the game. They did have plenty of opportunities, and Wyll Stanway was fantastic, but Cheltenham were more than good enough value for the three points here.
As entertaining as the game was, we didn’t learn much about either side here, and sometimes that’s okay. This game was just fun. As football should be. If you came into the weekend considering Chesterfield as serious promotion contenders, they showed nothing to prove otherwise. They attacked well, and on another day or against another goalie they might have scored 4 or 5, and both goals conceded were from silly, and ultimately preventable, lapses in defensive judgement. The Spireites are still well in with a chance of finally making the step up to League One, they just need to finish some of the chances they create for once. And stop conceding silly goals. Score more, concede less. Paul Cook, if you’re reading this, (big if) message me for my bank details. This advice doesn’t come for free. Cheltenham would’ve surprised nobody had they lost this game comfortably, and yet they also didn’t shock the world by winning either. Steve Cotterhill has engineered a rare feeling around the club, they might not have the outright quality of some of their competitors, but their spirit is enough to drag them to victory. Spirit, and a goalkeeper capable of pulling saves out of thin air, and the lack of goal-line technology, and a midfielder that suddenly finishes better than Haaland, and an Austrian veteran too good for the division. But mostly, spirit.