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Chester City 1 Bury 1

Dave Lawrenson
11/ 9/2008

BURY recovered from a shocking first half performance on Saturday to keep their unbeaten start to the season intact.

Manager Alan Knill labelled what he saw in the opening 45 minutes as ‘probably the worst’ display of his seven-month reign and he criticised his unchanged team for ‘thinking they were Real Madrid’ and for not sticking to his carefully devised gameplan.

But the hard to beat Shakers are nothing if not resilient.

Goal machine Andy Bishop cancelled out Damien Mozika’s 38th minute strike from the penalty spot at the start of the second half and third-placed Bury are now just one of two teams with an unbeaten record in League Two.

Knill said: "I’m disappointed because we thought this was a place we could win at. But the fact that we pulled ourselves back from a really poor first half performance was a positive.

"The lesson for the players to learn is when you have a gameplan you have to stick to it."

Knill sent his players out with the instruction to use the skill and pace of wingers Elliott Bennett and Michael Jones at every opportunity.

But the wingers ended up being starved of possession in the first half with the Shakers being guilty of not keeping their shape and over-elaborating with the ball in the middle of the park.

The over confidence on the ball, which no doubt stemmed from all of the plaudits that Bury have received in recent weeks, played right into Chester’s hands.

And the home side’s first half superiority was eventually rewarded when the hard working Mozika took advantage of slack Bury marking to plant Ryan Lowe’s cut back into the bottom corner.

Bury keeper Wayne Brown made a good save from ex-Shakers target Kevin Ellison and Lowe had a penalty appeal turned down after tangling with David Buchanan.

But the Shakers, with the never-say-die spirit shown in the previous week’s stalemate at Rochdale again coming to the fore, looked a far more accomplished side in the second half and they should have ended up winning the game comfortably.

With Bennett and Jones making good use of their vastly increased possession, Bury made several good goal scoring opportunities against a Chester side that destroyed Barnet 5-2 in their last outing.

Bishop, his lively fellow forward Andy Morrell and Jones all fluffed gilt-edged second half chances for Bury, who lost the corresponding fixture 2-1 last season.

Good work from Morrell led to Chester defender James Vaughan crashing a poor clearance against his own crossbar and Bury’s substitute striker Glynn Hurst was agonisingly close to converting Bennett’s well flighted late cross.

But, as usual, there was no stopping Bishop from the penalty spot. Morrell was upended by Chester captain Paul Linwood just a minute after the restart and Bishop’s low shot beat the despairing dive of home keeper John Danby.

Team: Brown, Scott, Futcher, Sodje, Buchanan, Bennett, Dawson, Barry-Murphy, Jones (Baker, 90mins), Bishop, Morrell (Hurst, 82mins). Subs not used: Belford, Cresswell, Racchi. Goal: Bishop (49mins, pen). Attendance: 2,327.