Chester carve out an underserved victory

By Chris Thompson
March 29 2005

Chester come from behind to register an uncovincing, but very precious home victory. Ryan Lowe scores both on a man-of-the-match home debut.

It wasn’t exactly the most exciting game to see, and Chester will be asking where they got the victory from, but none-the-less, it was three points at a vital stage in the season.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t an encouraging performance against probably, and no disrespect to Bury, the easiest opposition Chester have to play in the run in until the end of the season, but it’s probably booked us our spot in League football for another year at least.
The result takes Chester to within just two wins of the safety mark of 50 points, which, according to Ian Rush, is what City to require before they can take a well deserved breather.
"I feel we need five more points to stay in this league and we've a lot of hard work to do.
I believe if we get 50 points it doesn't matter what the other teams do - we'll be safe and that's the target now.”

Yesterday’s result takes Chester up to 19th place-9 points above second-to-bottom Kidderminster, who were beaten yesterday 3-1 despite taking a half-time lead against Mansfield.

But if Chester are to reach 50 points, they will have to make a massive improvement on Easter Monday’s disappointing performance. They can probably have just one person to thank for that victory, who proved on his man-of-the-match home debut to be a real useful acquisition. Although Chester were outplayed by a very average performance from Bury, Ryan Lowe was twice on hand to tuck away two well taken finishes, and walked off on 85 minutes to a standing ovation from the very appreciative home support.
Otherwise though, it would have been difficult to have picked a deserved candidate for Man-of-the-match. The two full-backs failed to impress in the first time I have seem them, although Andy Nicholas’ long throw led to the second and decisive goal. Carl Regan on the other flank was directly replaced at half-time for Darren Edmondson, after 45 minutes in which he failed to commit to any tackles, and was dangerously caught out of position.
Chris McKenzie failed to win over the home support in the absence of Wayne Brown. His error on 12 minutes just about summed up his performance on the day, which was completely lacking in confidence. He failed to send forward a backpass more than 25 yards, gladly landing it for Bury at the feet of youngster Colin Kazim Richards whose 45 yard shot bounced into an unguarded net.
It set up a terrible first half for City, in which they failed to register a single shot. The delivery to the two strikers, Robbie Foy and Michael Branch was poor. Long balls forward from midfield were easily headered away by the impressive Bury defence, and any balls which beat the defence were simply gathered up by Bury’s keeper.
To be fair though, Bury too had failed to over impress. Graham Barrow had been in line for Manager-of-the-month after failing to drop any points in March, which included a 3-1 defeat of Yeovil last week. However, they failed to reproduce that form, though perhaps even still, Chester had to count themselves lucky only to be down by 1 goal after the first 45, after efforts from Chris Porter and Kazim-Richards once again.

The second half was better for Chester. It had to be. City established their first shot of the game courtesy of Robbie Foy, on loan from Liverpool, that coming after a horrible clash of heads between Michael Branch and Bury’s Barry-Murphy. The incident placed another 4 minutes onto the eventual added-time…and it wasn’t so nice to learn after the game that Barry-Murphy had been unfortunate to lose a considerable chunk of his ear in the clash.

But it was following this that Chester began to play a part in what had previously been a very one-sided affair. City equalised with their first shot on target after 59 minutes. A mix-up in the Bury midfield was seized upon by Lowe, who took the ball on before drilling it low into the corner of the net from 20 yards.
It was completely undeserved, and came as it looked Chester would never score against an in-form Bury. However, Chester got a lot of good luck in this game, which has been far overdue this season
It took just another 11 minutes for Lowe to double his tally, and it followed a dreadful blunder by the visiting defence.
Nicholas launched a long throw-in into the Bury area, Challinor and Kennedy allowed the ball to go over the defensive unit and the unmarked (and surprised) Lowe had a simple job to score from six yards at the far post. He finished it very calmly to mark an impressive debut, and was replaced 5 minutes before the end for Ashley Sestanovich.
The last few minutes proved to be very nervy for Chester. The most notable chance for Bury came as a long throw was caught, and dropped in the air by Chris McKenzie, but thankfully Phil Bolland, who had earlier had a header denied by Garner in the Bury goal, was on hand to clear from the line.
The final score from the Saunder’s Honda Stadium: Chester 2-1 Bury (somehow!)