Squires Gate 4 Longridge Town 2: Four first-half goals set up victory

Luke Evans made three changes from the defeat to Padiham, with Isaac Abankwah, Gary Pett and Dan Gray replacing Luke Holden, James Boyd and Theo Ball.

Gate had the perfect start, going ahead inside three minutes when Pett intercepted a back pass and was brought down before converting the penalty.

They doubled that advantage 10 minutes later, Josh Westwood meeting Ryan Riley’s corner and scoring with a deflected header.

Although Longridge went close to pulling a goal back on the quarter-hour, Gate went 3-0 up on 29 minutes.

Good work between James Hughes and Riley led to Saad Mekkaoui-Abouzaid beating his man in the box, rounding the keeper and finding Nathan Cliffe, who put the ball into the open goal.

Cliffe scored his second just six minutes later, finishing clinically after good work from Pett and Mekkaoui-Abouzaid.

Gate did, however, concede before half-time when they gave away possession from a throw and Jack Arrowsmith fired past Nathan Pennington to make it 4-1 at the break.

Longridge started the second half on top, with former Gate striker Dean Ing guiding a half-chance over the bar.

They did score a second goal on 57 minutes as Gate failed to clear a free-kick from the right before the ball was played back into the box and bundled into the bottom corner by Curtis Poole.

Gate weathered the storm and went close to a fifth goal on a couple of occasions.

Mekkaoui-Abouzaid went one-on-one and tried to take the ball around the goalkeeper, only to be denied, before Riley’s well-struck free kick was parried away.

At the other end, Pennington was called into action to make two excellent saves.

Having denied Ing from close range, he then tipped away a header that was going towards the bottom corner.

Then, in the closing stages, Pett twice came close to his second and Gate’s fifth.

He was thwarted at close range and then headed wide from the resulting corner but it didn’t matter as Gate wound down the clock for victory.

Squires Gate: Pennington, Hughes, Welsh, Chambers, Abankwah, Westwood, Riley, Mekkaoui-Abouzaid, Pett, Cliffe, Gray. Subs: Smith, Burgess, Kay, Robinson, Yelegon.