Record win for Quakers

9:58am Monday 1st September 2008

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AFTER seeing Darlington record their biggest ever away win, manager Dave Penney claimed such a result had been on the cards since the start of the season.

Quakers had hit six on the road before, at Aldershot in 1983, while they managed seven at Durham City in their first season in the Football League in 1921/22.

But until Saturday they had not won by six clear goals so Billy Clarke’s four-goal blast helped create history at Moss Rose.

Penney said: “I felt it was a matter of time and it just needed the players to keep believing in what they were doing.

“The way we have played these first few games, I felt it wouldn’t be long before we put some goals past somebody.

“We knew that if we started the game brightly and got among them early on, which we have in all six games now, then Macclesfield could be thinking ‘here we go again’.

“It’s difficult to raise yourself playing in front of a small crowd when things aren’t going well.

“So once the second goal went in, and the manner in which it went in, sickened them off.”

Macclesfield manager Keith Alexander is now under severe pressure as Saturday’s hammering was the Silkmen’s fourth game without either a win or a goal.

Last week they took West Ham to extra time in the Carling Cup, but on Saturday a Quakers victory appeared likely from very early on.

Alexander said: “I was worried about us in every department, it beggars belief really. And I’ve got to do something about it.

“The supporters have a right to boo and say what they want to say because this team needs to do better than it’s doing.

“The chairman isn’t happy, I’m not happy, and I hope the players are not happy. I know the supporters aren’t, they pay their money and want to see their team win.

“If I’m honest the supporters have been very good.

They’ve had nothing to watch in the home games and if you lose football matches like that then you expect to be jeered.

“I’m big enough to take that on the chin though. We aren’t playing well, I expect people to have a go at me which some are, and it’s up to me to turn things around and I think I’m more than capable of doing that.”

■ The match was Franz Burgmeier’s last in Darlington colours for a fortnight as on Saturday he faces Germany in a World Cup qualifier for Leichentenstein, and he plays versus Azerbaijan four days later.