St Albans City’s manager Ian Allinson was pleased with the performance as his side recorded a comfortable 4-0 home victory over Poole Town.

A hat-trick from Louie Theophanous and a first goal for the club from Josh Hill completed the scoring as Saints moved into third place in the Vanarama National League South table.

They didn’t have it all their own way but with plenty of chances, they could also have racked up a bigger win by the final whistle.

Allinson said: “You have to give credit to Poole Town as they came out really quickly and caused us a lot of problems in the first 15 minutes.

“We changed our shape today and it caused us a few problems and I felt we scored the first against the run of play and the second as well.

“But then we dug deep, got it organised at half-time and second half I thought we were excellent.

“When we got to grips with how they were playing and stopped them from playing out from the back, forcing them to go longer, we got into the game.

“Our ball retention again wasn’t great and if you give the ball away, you put yourself under pressure. But I thought the back four dealt with it as they did against Chelmsford and they need full credit.

“They had a lot of possession without really hurting us and I felt we were dangerous on the counter.

“The only disappointment is we haven’t scored seven or eight. They’ve made some good defensive tackles, their keeper has made a few saves and we’ve hit the bar with a deflected shot in the first half.

“If we weren’t creating chances, I’d be worried. We do look a bit open at times with the way we attack and we leave ourselves exposed defensively but I’ve always said I’d rather have a team that wants to score goals and try and nick 1-0s.

“We’ve got players with pace and flair and we need to let them express themselves.”

While the entire team were worthy of praise, Allinson singled out two players who caught the headlines; hat-trick hero Theophanous and man of the match Tom Bender.

He said: “We know what Theo’s like, he respond to goals. He’s got on the end of three great through-balls and he’s finished them well.

“He’s on fire at the moment and when he is you know he’s going to score goals. We’ve just got to keep giving him the ball, as we have with the other forwards.

“Tom’s done extremely well. I think with Tom you know you’re going to get that odd game every now and then that’s not at the level we want.

“But he’s been very consistent [this season] and he’s probably the fittest he’s been in a while.

“He was up against a very good player in Luke Burbridge and after that first 10 minutes he really got to grips with him and second half he put in a great performance.”