Josh Kelly wants his teammates to keep their foot on the gas after Chesterfield win

Photo: Darren Woolley

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After a super-charged performance against Chesterfield on Tuesday evening, striker Josh Kelly warned his Maidenhead United teammates not to take their foot off the gas now.

Kelly netted twice in the 3-2 win at York Road, a result that lifts them seven points clear of the relegation zone.

Kelly calmly curled the Magpies ahead in the sixth minute, bending the ball around Scott Loach and into the far corner. Dan Sparkes’ free kick was cancelled out by strikes from Jeff King and Kabonga Tshimanga for the Spireites, but, just when it seemed likely Chesterfield would complete the comeback and retake top spot in the division, Kelly popped up with the winner.

The former Northern Ireland u21s international admits they had to dig deep to get the win but, having led from the front throughout with his hassling play, he felt they more than deserved the three points.

He also hopes and expects the Magpies to build on this result as they look ahead to the visit of league leaders FC Halifax Town on Saturday. And he’s very much of the mindset that if they can beat the Spireites, and prevent then going top, why can’t they also deal a blow to Halifax’s automatic promotion hopes?

“It was a great result,” he said.

“We dug deep and put in a very good shift.

“They nearly got back into it when they got it back to 2-2, but we kept going and got our third.

“In the first half we were all over them. We do seem to play well when the bigger teams come down here. But we need to play like that in every game, not just against the bigger teams.

“It did feel like they were coming into it a little, but we managed to get the third goal and saw it out at the end.”

He added: “We massively needed this. Especially with the games we’ve got coming up. We need to get as many points as we can from this run of games and try to push as high up the table as we can.

“The win against Bromley just gave us that little push, but we can’t take our foot off the gas now. We’ve got some big games coming up and we need to keep putting a shift in.

“We need more of this. We can’t just do it now and again, not in this league.

“I’d like to think we could do something similar against Halifax, but we’ll just have to wait for Saturday and put another big shift in.”