Macey hails '˜phenomenal' Hatters

The Arsenal stopper played his part fully in the success, achieved thanks to Ollie Palmer’s late winner, making two excellent saves either side of half time.

However, other than those eye-catching stops, Macey had a fairly quiet afternoon, as he said: “The majority of the first half was getting the ball back in play, due to how dominant we were as a team.

“We were on the front foot, the tempo we played at was as good as I can remember since I joined the club.

“I thought we were brilliant, and in those types of games, my job is to be ready when that small incident happens. A shot, a cross, anything like that, get it back in play, and it’s important that’s what I bring to the team on a day like this.

“So it’s nice for me to do my bit in a team performance where I thought we were phenomenal.”

Town chief Nathan Jones opted to revert to a three man defence after what was a terrible opening half in the 2-1 defeat at Colchester last weekend and on the switch in formation, Macey added: “It wasn’t too much of a difference.

“We worked on it through the week, did our tactical work and the manager organises it and think we got it spot on. Our positioning is the thing and our trust with each other, especially in the wide ares.

“We need the wide lads to do a job and especially in midfield, they have to do such a job to get out to those wide men.

“When that happens, it just flows so much easier, so credit to the wide men and midfielders really.”

Despite their solidity, Macey was needed twice to make stunning stops, one from Bright Osayi-Samuel’s curling effort in the first period, and then magnificently finger-tipping Kyle Vassell’s overhead volley on to the bar after the break.

He was named as the sponsor’s man of the match afterwards, as he added: “It sounds quite nice, you don’t really appreciate it until we score that late winner as it was quite a stressful afternoon, but we got there in the end.

“You can’t ever predict what’s going to happen in a game and since I’ve been here, the majority of games have been similar to that.

“I haven’t really had to make a save, especially when we’ve played the big teams and we’ve drawn, the other goalkeeper’s been the busier one.

“But I did my bit and as a team, we build on the clean sheet.

“It only takes that one chance for Olly (Palmer) to tuck away which we know he’ll do. So that’s where your base is, that’s where you build from, the back, and solidity and we’ve always got a chance to go and win it.”