MARKETMEN MOVE UP TO THIRD

Needham Market recorded their second win within a week following a hard fought 1-0 home win over Alvechurch.

A first half clinical strike from Ryan Miles was the difference with little less of note.

Tom Rothery made 1 change to Tuesday's win at Bishop's Stortford, Tommy Smith returned in defence with Luke Ingram dropping to the bench, as Reserves' midfielder Kellen Fiddy earned his first senior call up on the bench.

Jonny Ngandu (5') fired a low strike from just outside the box wide of the bottom near, right-hand, corner.

At the other end, as Needham grew into the game, Tommy Smith (15') saw a dangerous left wing cross glanced out for a throw-in by a defender,

The Marketmen went agonisingly close with the first major chance on 22 minutes. Great football from the hosts saw Hammond fed free down the right wing whose low cross found Cowling, who skipped past his man but fired just wide of the bottom far corner at close range.

After a good ten or so minute spell from Needham, Szhem Whyte-Hall (32') broke onto the right-hand byline but was brilliantly dispossessed by Keiran Morphew.

The Marketmen broke the deadlock with some superb play on 36 minutes. After a rather evenly matched half-hour, with the hosts gradually getting a foothold in the game more time went on, James Bradbrook's great long ball picked out Hammond free on the right wing. The defender controlled it well before flicking it onto Chambers to race onto, who in turn passed it onto Ryan Miles to swivel round and find the bottom far corner!

Needham went close on 40 minutes, as they went into the break a goal in-front.

After the break, Ollie Saunders (51') weaved into space on the edge of the area before shooting narrowly wide of the right-hand post, before Ben Hunter broke into space from distance only to see his low driven strike blocked on 53 minutes.

A well worked move from the Marketmen saw Bradbrook (58') find Tommy Smith, who slipped Cowling through onto the left wing to slide a smart low pass inside for Miles whose shot was blocked behind.

Max Appauh replaced Chambers, prior to Miles teeing up Lambe (70') just inside the area whose shot was blocked behind for a corner.

Appauh meanwhile forced a good save from Redman Evans in the 72nd minute, after jinking onto the right-hand byline the winger's strike was beaten behind by the keeper.

Luke Ingram was introduced in place of Reggie Lambe, as Akai Bonnick fired over from distance on 78 minutes.

Eddie Barker replaced Cowling, with Bradbrook (86') reading play well to collect a long range free-kick after a foul from Jake Dye - which saw the first caution of the afternoon.

Ryan Miles was replaced by Brad Smith, as Needham recorded their second win in a week to move up to third.

Needham host fourth placed Quorn on Saturday (3pm).

Assistant Manager Nathan Munson said, "It's important. Off the back of a good result on Tuesday. Pitch was heavy. We got a few knocks just at the minute, though it's time to come here against an Alverchurch team that of course have had a bit of a change of management. So, they've got a good result in the week, they're going to be feeling really positive about it. To get the three points is really pleasing and the manner of it, it's really pleasing. Strange results and a lot of goals around today, which can sometimes happen when you get windy conditions and it's a bit rainy and the pitches start to cut up. We didn't have that so much today. It was a game of fewer chances, as has been the case here for most of the matches. I do think that we were still, we looked the more likely.

I don't think anybody could dispute that. I think if you look at the course of the match, we've limited them really to hardly a moment. I don't think Bradders has had a shot to save.

They're always in the game. They worked really, really hard. Lots of credit to them.

They made it really difficult, but we did limit them at the same time to not many chances and you just felt if we could have got that second, we might have gone on, but fair play, they defended stoutly throughout the match. So, when it's one-nil, it's always going to go right down to the 95th minute as it did today.

So, we're pleased to get over the line. I think Ryan was excellent today.

He ran himself into the ground like a lot of the lads did, him especially. It was quite a good move actually up the right-hand side and it was an early ball in. It looked like it might be a bit behind him, but he adjusted really well and hit it powerfully into the corner.

I'm really pleased for him because he worked so hard. He deserved his goal. As I say a number of times, we just want to keep putting in good performances. You can't do any more than that really. I think we've got an honest group of lads that want to come in and work hard, which they've done today, if they keep doing that, then we think that we'll win more than we lose. You can't account for the odd refereeing decision or something goes against you, but if you give a level of performance, you're going to be up there. I've not seen the league table.

I haven't looked at the results necessarily in our league, but if we're up to third, that's where we think our quality and our consistency might put us, but it's about showing that now. We've got a week of training and it'll be another really tough match next week when we welcome Quorn. They've been up there all season and a good result for them again today, so it'll be a good match.

We look forward to it. We hope to assess any injuries and we might have one or two back. We'll see.

There'll be some selection headaches for the manager, Tom, but good headaches. We hope there's a good turnout. Thanks for the fans today coming out in treacherous conditions to watch the match.

We're really thankful for that. We hope to see them again next week and hopefully we can put on a solid performance for them again.

It feels like we had a spell where we're playing a lot of away games, so it is nice to get here.

We think we are all right here. We tend to be able to get a level of performance out of the players here. We got that today. I thought the pitch played well. Really heavy conditions and the rain. It could cut up, but it didn't actually, so credit to the groundsmen and the ground staff for how that played. Hopefully we don't have too much rain and we're okay for next week. There's always things to work on. What we're really pleased about today is the clean because I thought we defended really well to limit them, as I said.

I suppose the thing that we'd look to work on is just a little bit of sharpness in the front areas because I think if we'd have been just that touch more clinical today, we would have got two or three, but that's being hypercritical. I think it was a really good performance today when you take into account all the conditions to limit an Alverchurch side that are on the up to a few chances and to win. We're really happy with that."

Match-winner Ryan Miles added, "buzzing a bit to be fair. I thought with the conditions, especially in the warm-up when it started raining hard, I thought the pitch was going to be tough and Tom expressed how difficult Alvechurch was going to be. So yeah, good to get a win, good to get over the line and on to the next Saturday. Really happy. It's quite ironic really because I spoke to Tom during the week and said I was desperate to get some numbers up and he said it will come. Today, thankfully, Seth just played it into the left and managed to get a goal. So yeah, really happy with it. I just need to move on and move forward with it now. It was a good goal, I was quite pleased with it. Didn't even really look like the goalkeeper was, it was just more of an instinct sort of finish, but yeah, so it was good to get it, good for the confidence and again, good to get a win for the boys because now we're third now in the league. It's good, really positive. They're a slog (to play in). They're not pretty games as I think people have seen today.

I don't think we were particularly at our best today but if you're 1-0 up before half-time and you don't feel like you're playing too well but you're still winning, you're doing something right. So it's a good positive and I think it's something that we can all look at of where can we improve and if we are on our best, it could be 2, 3, 4, 5-0. You just don't know where it's going to be.

Tuesday was a slog as well with the pitch, the weather. I think that's just going to be the turn of the season now. It's going to be digging in deep, gritting it through and yeah, getting six points in two games. We needed to turn around on Spalding because I think as a collective, none of us were happy with it. So it was good to turn that over with six points in the next two. I'd say we've emphasised in the changing room to make this place a fortress.

It's a tough place to come. Teams have got to come quite far like we do in most weeks but teams who come over, it's a long distance. No one wants to come and play us.

I think people are aware of how good we are. So I think as you can see in previous games, there's different tactics throughout the game that teams are changing. So I think overall it's going to be a good game, win, and see where it takes us. It's always pressure but it's always pressure that you want. I mean, no one wants to be in the league mid-table or fighting for relegation.

The target's always there and we've got our own targets of, look, we want to be at minimum play-offs. We want to be up there challenging with the best teams and I think today and Tuesday proved that we are there. We can do the pretty stuff and we can also do the ugly stuff."