Anthony Johnson says it was 'hard to tell who the League Two side was', after seeing his enterprising Chester team hold Morecambe to a 2-2 pre-season draw.

The Blues twice fell behind to goals from Andrew Fleming and Jason Oswell but levelled up firstly through Steve Howson’s first-half header and later with Gary Roberts’ 87th minute penalty.

There are plenty of positives to take from Chester’s past two performances against Football League opposition, following last weekend’s 1-0 defeat to Bury, with the Blues beginning to display the work-rate, hunger and organisation which have become synonymous with joint-managers Bernard Morley and Johnson.

“Towards the end of the game, you wouldn’t know who the League Two side was,” Johnson said.

“I’m not talking fitness, I’m talking organisation, what we look like with and without the ball.

“I’m pleased with the performance and I was very pleased with the performance on Saturday as well.

“Competing with two League Two sides and looking the part is obviously pleasing but the main job is keeping our feet on the ground because there’s always that case that the team lower down the pyramid competes that little bit more.

“The way we played and the way we applied ourselves was well above where we are in the pyramid.

“We’re probably well ahead of where I thought we would be at this stage of pre-season.

“There’s still a few little things, like Steve (Howson) going to ground for the penalty, but overall pretty pleased.”

Chester’s lack of a cutting edge cost them at times, but overall, they set were set up to soak up pressure before countering quickly and directly, something Johnson was keen to stress post-match.

“We don’t keep the ball for the sake of it,” he explained. “We keep the ball to go forward and try to create stuff. When we got it out wide and got crosses into the box, I thought we were the better team by a long stretch for parts of the game.

“How often do you see it where you miss at one end and they go up the other end and score? Yes, he might have dived but they got the goal because of Steve’s original mistake on halfway. But his performance was 10 out of 10, outstanding. As a back three, what a performance over the two games.”

Johnson moved to allay fears over the muscle injury sustained by skipper Scott Burton after just 12 minutes, who is likely to miss Saturday's final warm-up match against Everton Under 23s.

“He said he felt it tight in the warm-up and it’s in our head a bit because maybe it was avoidable,” Johnson added.

“It’s tightened up slightly. Hopefully it is nothing too serious, not a tear, just a bit of tightness.

“He’ll be icing it now, anti-inflammatory and get a masseuse to hopefully try and break it down, so hopefully it’s not too serious. Sometimes if you think it’s not serious, they end up being serious.

“It’s disappointing as we thought we’d start those two (Burton and Stopforth) because Robbo has had a lot of minutes lately, but when he came on he was outstanding.”