Nailers Heavily Beaten By Nuneaton Town

However they would have known that this would be a difficult task for them as National League North side Nuneaton Town were the visitors to the Marston's Stadium.

Early into the game it did look as if extending this unbeaten run could continue, Jonathan Williams was stood over a free kick just on the edge of the Nuneaton penalty area, he curled the ball perfectly around the Nuneaton and found the bottom left corner of the goal to give Belper a very early lead.

However, this lead didn’t last very long, Nuneaton had just began to find their way into the game and had begun to control the ball and were not giving up possession very regularly.

This possession led to Nuneaton finding themselves an equaliser, Billy Daniels took the ball down the right hand side before putting in a fantastic cross, Jack O’Brian was on the edge of the 6 yard box, he tried to clear the ball, this unfortunately led to him turning the ball into his own net.

This soon became 2-1 to Nuneaton, a poor pass from Jonathan Williams went straight to the feet of a Nuneaton forward who quickly broke away, he slid the ball across to Shaq McDonald who scored with a simple finish.

Unfortunately for Belper the goals would continue to pour in for Nuneaton, another bad pass leading to this goal, Dominic Allen gave the ball away to David Mani, he easily took the ball around Ross Parker and then slotted home a very good finish into the bottom right.

Whenever Belper Town would get a chance to go forward, Nuneaton would counter attack very quickly and put the Nailers defenders under a lot of pressure.

On the 36th minute Nuneaton made the most of this, after a Belper Town corner, Nuneaton turned defence into attack very quickly, this led to a chance for a Nuneaton striker, his shot was saved well by Danny Haystead, his was deflected to Billy Daniels who tapped it into the open goal to make it 4-1.

Just a couple of minutes later Nuneaton found themselves on counter attacking again, Shaq McDonald got the ball inside the Nailers penalty area and he slotted home low into the left of Danny Haysteads goal.

The half would end 5-1, an extremely disappointing start by Belper Town, the game looked all but over at this stage and it seemed that manager Charlie Palmer would need to make a number of changes to stop the scoreline getting even higher.

Palmer did make a couple of changes, Alex Steadman came off the field as the Nailers went into a 4-4-2 diamond formation in a hope to keep the ball better and have more control in the midfield.
This seemed to work for Palmer's side as they kept possession a lot better than they did in the first half and when Nuneaton did counter attack them, they did seem to get more men behind the ball and did so more quickly.

Belper Town did limit Nuneaton to only one goal in the second half, a long ball came forward from a Nuneaton defender after a long period of Belper Town possession, Danny Haystead did come out to get the ball however was beaten to it by Shaq McDonald, he took the ball around him and then slotted the ball into the empty net.

The game would finish 6-1, despite the result, Belper played much better in the second half, they will realise that their is much room for improvement still and they will try and do this across the rest of their pre-season games.