Source: Northern_Echo
Team spirit is key, says Miller
Darlington'S new-found defensive resilience owes much to their recently formed team spirit says captain Ian Miller. Speaking after Saturday's scoreless draw at Kettering, Miller revealed how manager Mark Cooper has helped form a bond between players that extends on to the pitch, which has assisted in the team's good start. Last weekend, Darlington stood firm in the face of mounting pressure to beat Newport 1-0, and in midweek fought back from 2-0 down to gain a point at Altrincham. Both matches demonstrated Quakers' spirit, and Miller said: There are no bad apples like we had last year. We are a team now. The Lakes trip helped in pre-season, morale is obviously up but when you put in a shift out there like that today and you come off knowing that you've got a point and everyone has grafted hard, it makes you feel together. Nobody is picking on each other, whatever happened on the pitch stays on the pitch, and we're together when we come off the pitch. Fair play to the gaffer and the coach. We're a new squad, there's only three or four of us from last year, a lot of new faces have come in and Aaron Brown has come in today and did not look out of place. Darlington have kept two clean sheets so far, which is in stark contrast to last season's dismal campaign when it took them until their 16th match to complete a game without conceding. Miller added: We've worked on shape in training more than I have done with any other manager. It's proving to be working. Defensively, we obviously needed it. We've worked on different obstacles that we might come across, different formations, and how we might combat teams and it's paying off. It's a team effort, we kept a good shape and I think we'll be hard to break down this season. If you look at the Newport game last week, we would've buckled under the pressure in that game last season. It's a vast improvement this season compared with last. Since the first game in pre-season we have looked defensively tight and today it was the same, but going forward we lacked a lot of quality. After last season I don't really have any targets for clean sheets, I just want to keep as many as possible. But if we can keep putting a shift in like today's in our away games and win our home games then we should be there or thereabouts at the end of the season.