Cheltenham Town’s secured their 19th League Two win of the campaign came against Salford City on Saturday, which shortly became Richie Wellens’ final game in charge of the Ammies.
His exit comes a week after Salford won the Papa John’s Trophy final at Wembley, and just under five months after his appointment.
Wellens left Swindon Town in October to join Salford, where he won 11 and lost only nine of the 30 games he took charge of.
Salford, who offered thanks to Wellens in a short statement on their club website, say news about a new boss would be made “in due course.”
After winning 2-0 at the Jonny-Rocks Stadium and keeping an 17th clean sheet for the season, Cheltenham boss Michael Duff was pleased with his side’s showing.
READ MORE: DUFF PRAISES ‘EXCELLENT’ JOSH GRIFFITHS AFTER SALFORD WIN
“It was a good performance and a good result,” Duff said.
“They are a good team with a good manager. The people they are bringing off the bench are good players. We knew we had to be good today.
“You break that game down on chances and we had miles more chances than the opposition. It was just a couple of things in the second half. When they are properly tuned in, and we gave up the ball a bit more today than we normally do.
“It was a conscious decision that we didn’t want to open the pitch up and give them spaces to try and play through you. That’s why we camped in and the second goal comes from sitting in and hitting them on the break. It looked a little bit more like us today.”
As little as eight weeks ago, Salford sat two places above Cheltenham in the League Two table, but as the business end of the campaign nears, the Robins have now cemented their place at the League Two’s summit, now 14 points ahead of Saturday’s opponents.
While goal-scoring chances were few and far between, after Seàn Long’s header put Cheltenham ahead in the third minute, a second goal would eventually come for the hosts before half-time. As a counter-attack on the 42nd minute provided Liam Sercombe with the opportunity to net his fifth goal of the league campaign, and his second since returning from injury last month, the Robins ran out comfortable winners at the weekend.
A first half double for Duff’s side sealed a 10th home win of the league campaign, but despite their fine run of form since the end of January, Duff will continue to judge Cheltenham’s promotion chances one game at a time.
“The big boys are coming, I think that’s fair to say,” Duff warned.
“The big teams in the league are all starting to put runs together and we can’t affect anyone else and our points total will decide where we are.
“The players don’t need to worry about results, they need to worry about performances. My job is to worry about the results. Most of the time when they deliver that and they are as focused as they were today, and it’s not always the case and it’s hard to have that focus all the time because of the relentlessness of the league, but that’s how we are working.”
Cheltenham will travel to the Globe Arena on Saturday in search of another three points to boost their automatic promotion hopes, against Morecambe (kick-off 15:00).
