A pleased John Sheridan spoke to Spireites Player after seeing his side narrowly beaten by Championship Middlesbrough at the B2net Stadium.

John told Player "We wanted to get something out of the game but credit to the players for the reaction and response we got in the second half and I thought we had a right go at them. But we had given ourselves a lot to do after the first half where we stood off them too much. I said at half-time that we needed to get in around them more and we did that and were perhaps unfortunate not to get an equaliser. They are an excellent side and take great care of the ball and hopefully we will learn from it. They scored two good goals in the first half but I am really pleased by the reaction and Del did well when he came on. So performance wise I am very pleased with the second half performance.

John's team selection was hampered by the failed  appeal for Craig Davies red card and also injury to Ian Morris and illness to Jordan Bowery and John added

"Jordan Bowery pulled out of the squad with illness so that plus the injury and suspension to Ian Morris and Craig Davies meant we didn't have too much to play with. But if we take the second half performance into our League games hopefully we will get some decent results. The fans were brilliant tonight and they recognised the effort the lads were putting in."

Looking ahead to Port Vale John concluded " They are one of the fancied teams and we are a bit short of players at the moment so hopefully I might be able to bring in another player and get one or two back fit for the weekend. But if we can take our form from Saturday and tonight we will be going there  to win it."

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