Macclesfield Preview

After progressing to the second round of the Macron Cup on Tuesday night, next up for Avro is the final away league trip of the season in their first full NWCL Premier Division campaign.

Eight wins and eight defeats have been recorded in the first nineteen games, but perhaps the most significant recent statistic is that the only three clean sheets have been achieved in the last five games for which Alex Frost has been in charge. That impressive run will be tested to the full this weekend against the league champions.

The opposition

12th October, 2020 was a dark day in the history of football in the town of Macclesfield. The local team was expelled from the National League just under a month after being wound up in the High Court, and little more than seven years after the greatest day in their history, an FA Cup fourth round tie against eventual winners Wigan Athletic. However, as is often the case in such situations, the cloud had a silver lining. The following day, local businessman Robert Smethurst announced that he had purchased the club’s assets, allowing him the opportunity to establish a new entity, Macclesfield FC. This has actually been the name of the club when it was first founded in 1876, and it was not until 1946 that they became known as Macclesfield Town.

The downside to the formation of the new club was that they were obliged to wait for nearly a year until the beginning of the 2020-21 season to resume playing competitive football, and they also had to restart four levels further down the non league pyramid in the division which we call home. In the interim period, a 4G surface was laid at their Moss Rose home, and the involvement of Robbie Savage in the resurrection of the club led to a one hour documentary being aired on the BBC.

The local community has rallied round the ‘new’ club, and attendances have been significantly higher than for much of Macclesfield Town’s existence in the Football League. The goal of promotion was duly achieved last weekend in front of more than four and a half thousand fans, and the champions are currently on a run of eight successive wins in which they have scored 26 goals.

Macclesfield’s last six results

Head to Head

Avro hold the distinction of being the only side yet to lose to Macclesfield this season. The first ever meeting between the two teams came back in October, when Louis Potts scored early on and Joe Rathbone added a second after the break to secure a 2-0 success.

One to watch

Neil Danns needs little introduction to anyone with even a passing knowledge of Championship football over the last fifteen years. The midfielder made over 250 appearances for Birmingham, Crystal Palace, Leicester and Bolton and is also a Guyanese international. He joined Macclesfield last September and has unsurprisingly been a key figure in their successful promotion campaign.

Team news

Alex Frost has eighteen players from which to choose his squad for this one, although a number are carrying injuries. The first of Kane Wallwork’s four game suspension deprives him of a key defender, whilst wide men Jamie Frost and Matthew Chadwick have also been ruled out through injury.