Toolstation NCEL Division One
Christian Fox has done a fantastic job so far since taking over at Selby Town in May
Christian Fox has hailed his Selby Town players for rising above negative social media comments and answering back by winning matches.
Fox has so far delivered on his promise to raise the bar at Selby by leading them to statistically their best start to a league campaign after seven games since 2014.
Fox and his new team faced a sustained attack on them on social media from a very tiny minority following poor pre-season results, but the Selby boss says his team have responded in the right way.
“Pre-season is a chance to look at players and obviously we had a brand new squad coming in,” Fox told Non League Yorkshire.
“It doesn’t matter about pre-season results, I don’t think there is any points given out in pre-season.
“Everybody started on zero points on August 5th so I don’t care what people say to be honest.
“I’ve taken no notice and so haven’t the lads. It all adds to the character, it shows that they’re stronger.
“We just concentrate on ourselves, it doesn’t matter what other people say or think.
“We’ve done really well so far. I thought we were unlucky to get just a point out of the first two matches. We were by far the better side against Glasshoughton.
“Then a couple of dodgy decisions by ourselves have cost us in the Brigg game.
“We’re getting there now. You could see in the celebrations against Rossington that the team spirit is coming together.”
Those celebrations were after Charlie Clamp scored a dramatic winning penalty in the 96th minute of the fortunate 2-1 victory over Rossington Main at Selby on Tuesday night.
“It just shows the importance of playing to the last minute in every game,” he said.
“It was tight going into the last couple of minutes and we were just hanging on.
“Rossington are a decent team and they’ll be up there at the end of the season. They probably played the better football and had loads of chances.
“But I’m very happy to get the win.”
The real hero was makeshift striker Brad Freer who pounced on a Ryan Gothard ‘ave it clearance. He raced past Connor Williamson who brought him down, leading to the penalty award.
Freer won lots of praise from Fox.
“Brad Freer was probably our man of the match,” he added.
“He worked tirelessly for the team. Up there you make lots of runs and Alan Shearer once said you get one ball for every ten runs you make and that’s what he did.
“He got us the win basically. He had a lot to do when the ball got blasted upfield, but that’s the type of character he is. He won’t give up.”
Selby host promotion favourites Yorkshire Amateur tomorrow.
I’m not quite sure what he is trying to achieve with this. At our level, I am not sure that the players meet and train enough to create the Alex Ferguson siege mentality as a squad.
Otherwise it looks a trifle thin skinned.
I can only speak for myself, but remember this – We the supporters want you to succeed, we wanted Nigel, Dave, Jimmy and Ian to succeed as well.
We are not the problem. Folk are always going to express their opinions as you pays your money, you take your choice. We just want to see a good and hopefully winning Selby team.