You may think a first goal of the season would be cause for celebration, especially when the scorer is a defender but Spartans right back Shaun Utterson was more concerned with his side taking a well deserved point from their hard fought 2-2 draw with Buxton today. Utterson has been threatening to trouble the scorers all season and has gone close on numerous occasions, none more so than a long range effort in the opening two minutes of the second half today that crashed off the visitors’ crossbar. He would be more successful thirteen minutes from time as he latched on to a Robbie Dale through ball and toe poked the ball past Ian Deakin in the Bucks goal.
Utterson said “It’s good to finally get a goal this season but more importantly we got a point and probably could have had more. I thought Robbie(Dale) had won it at the end there with that strike off the crossbar so we can count ourselves unlucky not to come away with all three points. It was end to end in the last fifteen minutes and with us being at home we were chasing the game and looked dangerous. We have to start doing that all game rather than just in patches”.
Sloppy defending contributed to Spartans once again making it difficult for themselves as Buxton striker Mark Reed scored a brace either side of the half time interval. Both goals were close range headers as the former Chester forward was left unmarked in the area and Utterson feels there is much room for improvement from all of the Spartans back line. He said “The first one is very very disappointing, it’s just a long throw in into the box and we haven’t picked him up, we haven’t communicated and he’s left with an easy finish. The second goal is a great header from him but the marking wasn’t good enough and we have to improve on the way we are defending.”
As Spartans look to close out the last three months of their Evo-Stik Northern Premier League campaign by looking to finish in the top half of the table Utterson feels that one key factor can help them achieve exactly that, togetherness in the changing room. He said “There’s no doubt that the spirit has improved lately and we are all in this together. We stick by each other and work for each other and that’s something we have a lot of now. We all want to get the results that this club deserves and sticking together right until the end will be a big part of that”.