Spireites' strength in depth

Friday’s 3-1 win over a Bury side that, in truth, doesn’t look like it’s going to threaten the play-off zone, did though go a fair way to answering some of those questions.

With Aaron Downes in Australia playing for the under 23 Olympic hopefuls, who beat North Korea 1-0 and Adam Rooney playing in the Republic of Ireland’s 2-0 home defeat against Portugal in the UEFA under 21 qualifier, the manager was already two men down.

Jamie Ward, Gareth Davies, Nicky Travis, Adam Smith, Jamie Winter and the not quite fit Georges Santos were all absent.

As a result of the absences, Richardson decided to call up 17-year-old Ben Algar for his league debut.

Richardson knew he’d seen a performance of promise: “I thought he showed everything that we’ve seen of him in training and in the youth games. He tried one bit of audacious skill with a chance that he had in the first half that would have been a first league goal on his debut and he should have scored really but he decided to do a pirouette but he’s got something, definitely something and I thought he showed up well on that left hand side, which was great.”

On the other flank 20-year-old Jamie Lowry shone.

Richardson was reasonably satisfied with it all: “I was pleased to get the win because I felt that in the second half, we let them get back into it and, in future, we’ve got to be guarded against that.

“I’ve said before this season that when we drop our standards, we give teams a chance and certainly for 20 minutes in the second half, that’s what we did. Bury consequently, and deservedly, got the goal and they had another couple of chances. But when we put our foot on the gas and went forwards with any kind of purpose, we always looked as though we could create problems.”