Paul Carden seeing 'resilience and defensive prowess' on his AFC Telford United side

After opening up with a 1-0 win and controlled display against Chorley, the Bucks make the long trip to the north east to face Spennymoor tomorrow.

And Carden is a big advocate of a solid rearguard. He said: “There’s the argument of ‘you don’t score then you don’t win’ but you can say ‘if you don’t keep clean sheets then you don’t win’.

“If you don’t keep a clean sheet you’ve got to score a minimum of two to win the game.

“The obvious clichés and sayings that go with clean sheet are a lot of what I believe in.

“Good teams at the top of the league are always the teams that concede the fewest amount of goals. I bang on about it all the time about being mean and not giving a lot away.

“I feel we’ve got players who can be that way, without tempting fate, Matty Brown, Jordan Piggott, Harry Flowers as centre-halves.

“We’ve young players in full-back areas who will improve, a brilliant screen of the defence in Liam Nolan and good energy in Robbie (Evans), Prince (Ekpolo), Sam (McLintock) and Kobe (Jae Chong).

“It’s a good foundation there and that, in turn, should allow the attacking, more creative players to do their roles and play to their strengths.”

There were a couple of factors in particular that pleased the Telford boss from his side’s opening National League North victory.

He explained: “I was pleased with the fitness, really pleased, there were some real high levels recorded which is good. That is something we need to maintain.

“And the way we limited Chorley, they had a spell where they responded as I’d expect from them, we weathered it – albeit without as much control as I’d have liked. These are things we can work on.

“We didn’t give them a lot, Pilly wasn’t called into action time and again, those are the traits I want from this team.”

Brendon Daniels (hamstring) and Jason Oswell (calf) will miss out again for Telford, though both are making good progress and the former is likely to train again next week.