“I think it shows like how far we’ve come,” says Linnets boss after goalless home draw

Manager Adam Lakeland felt his side’s goalless draw at home to Alfreton is proof of how far King’s Lynn Town have come since earlier in the season.The Linnets stretched their unbeaten run to four games following the goalless encounter at The Walks – against a side who beat them 3-0 on their travels back in August.Lynn were out-battled for 90 minutes that afternoon, but there was no sign of that this time around in a bruising battle, which wasn’t for the football purists.Lakeland said: “I think it shows like how far we’ve come because second day of the season, we went to their place, got bullied, conceded three really poor goals, and got nothing out of the game.”Today I thought we competed much better and dealt with a lot of their threats pretty well in the main bar a couple of lapses at throw-ins and the second one in the second half nearly cost us but some excellent defending by Freddie to kick it off the line.”It would have been incredibly harsh if we’d have lost that game but they are such a difficult team to play against.”They kill the game, slow it down, keeper fouls off the ball, referees don’t see it, blocking runs when you’re trying to run into spaces, persistent fouling trying to disrupt the rhythm and you flow of your game. “They’ve gone away to some big teams in this league and got good results and they’re very good at the way that they play. “They come to disrupt and they’re very good at it and if you lapse concentration at moments they could potentially win that game. “In the main did pretty well to shut them out. We kept pushing and probing to try and find a way to win but probably when we reflect you’d say it is a fair result because we didn’t work their goalkeeper enough.”We didn’t execute our set-plays well enough and sometimes in tight games like this against the best teams in the league, it can come down to your execution of your set-plays and they’ve nearly won it off one of theirs from a throw-in and we didn’t do enough from ours, so that’s probably the frustration from our reflections on our performance.”We’ve taken 10 points from these four home games, which is an excellent return, especially when you consider that we’ve played Kidderminster and Alfreton who both will most certainly be in the play-offs. “I think that’s a decent return and it’s another clean sheet, our ninth for the season. We’ve got to try and bounce back with a win if we can on Tuesday night.”Lynn almost broke the deadlock in the fourth minute with Josh Hami sending Josh McCammon clear down the right flank. The midfielder squared the ball for Dylan Crowe, whose cross was deliberately left by Hmami, allowing Jonny Margetts to get in a shot which was a yard wide.Margetts was in the action again when he tried to flick on Sass’s low cross from the left, the ball falling for Hmami whose shot was blocked by a red wall. The Derbyshire outfit had the ball in the net in the 35th minute when a stretching Lewis Salmon poked the ball over the line, but their celebrations were abruptly ended by the sight of the linesman’s flag.Lynn pinned Alfreton back for long periods of the second half but were wasteful with their set-pieces as they failed to seriously test visiting goalkeeper George Willis.Referee Harry Wager got wise to visiting keeper Willis’s time-wasting and showed him a yellow card.Willis then got down to save Margetts’ free-kick – but the visitors spoiling tactics continued until the final whistle. Lakeland’s side were indebted to Freddie Sass’s goal-line clearance with six minutes remaining, but it would have been extremely cruel on the hosts had they not come away with at least a point.King’s Lynn Town: Boyes, Crowe (Omotayo 87), McFadden, Wilson, Sass, Taylor, Johnson, Hmami, McCammon, Barnes (Crane 82), Margetts. Subs: Coulson, Hughes. Omotayo, Walker. Crane.Booked: McFadden, Hmami, CroweAlfreton: Willis, Clackstone, Hunt, Lund, Anson, Cantrill, Day, Waldock (Perritt 59), Salmon (Abbey 66), Fewster (Matwasa 90+4), Newall, Subs: Perritt, Askew, Abbey, Moyo, Cosmos.Booked: Willis, Anson, Cantrill, Newall.Attendance: 1025.