ANTHONY JOHNSON feels his Chester side deserve more credit for their impressive recent performances.

The unbeaten Blues have been in superb form, winning their last three National League North games to climb to third in the league table.

After a 1-0 success at Kidderminster two days earlier, Chester’s 4-1 demolition of promotion-hopefuls Hereford showcased the abundant attacking quality within their squad.

And delighted joint-manager Johnson feels that his players deserve all the plaudits for their recent displays.

He said: “It’s been a great weekend. The performance levels that have been put in from the lads have been outstanding.

“Before Saturday I wouldn’t have expected how good we’ve been in my wildest dreams. They’re just showing how good a group they are.”

Chester’s first-half display produced some slick attacking football, with Dutch striker Akwasi Asante firing the hosts ahead before Anthony Dudley’s composed finish doubled the advantage.

In truth, Chester could have been three or four goals up at half-time, but sustained pressure after the break saw the Blues net twice more to underline their dominance.

“It was unreal and it was a very difficult team talk at half-time,” added Johnson.

“What you don’t want to do is start blowing smoke up the lads’ backsides after such a good performance, but there was no nit-picking.

“It just shows the mindset of the lads to come out in the second half and do what they did.

“I thought in the first half the play and the movement from the front four was outstanding - we could’ve played against anyone and they wouldn’t have stopped us.

“The forward play throughout the game was unbelievable - as good as I’ve seen. We expected them (Hereford) to be a lot tougher on set-pieces and we thought that would be a problem because they’re a giant of a side as they showed at the end with their goal.

“You’ll probably read a lot about how poor Hereford were, just like Gloucester were poor last week.

“But I don’t think people will give us enough credit for how good we were. I thought we made Hereford look poor, because we were absolutely brilliant.”

With so many impressive performances on display against Hereford, Johnson was reluctant to pick out individual contributions.

Instead he believes the collective mindset and discipline of his side is most worthy of praise, and insists that having a wealth of talent on the bench will be a key asset this season.

He said: “We’re so compact, so hard to break down and it’s good to see.

“In terms of ability we’ve got first class players and it’s going to be difficult to keep hold of them, but long may it continue.

“When you’ve got your top-scorer coming on off the bench and Danny Elliott who’s as quick as anything you’ve seen, nothing changes for us - in fact we can only get better.

“To be able to make those changes and not affect the team was good and I thought Scott Burton stepping in for Gary Roberts was absolutely brilliant.

“He knew the pressure was on him,but I thought his performance in the middle of the park was unbelievable.”