Darlington's Friday night match-winner Simon Johnson has given his seal of approval to the team's latest formation, which helped to brush aside a poor Macclesfield Town.

As well as scoring the only goal of the game from the penalty spot to move Quakers up to ninth, Johnson also enjoyed one of his best games of the season as Darlington lined up in a 3-5-2 - their fourth different formation in 14 matches.

The switch to David Hodgson's long-held favoured formation for the first time this season certainly did the trick as Darlington dominated Friday's game and deserved to win by more than just one goal.

As Quakers recorded their first win in seven games Johnson was one of several culprits to miss more than one chance. But, ahead of Saturday's trip to lowly Bury, Darlington can take heart from creating many chances and controlling the game.

"We changed the formation and I think we played very well because of it," said Johnson, whose first half spot-kick was his third goal in Darlington colours. "Everyone adapted to the new formation very well and it suited our style of play.

"The manager has said that he has always favoured 3-5-2 and I enjoyed the game more than any other this season because I got on the ball more than in all the other games so far this season.

"I think we deserve a bit of credit for the way we played. The gaffer keeps telling us that if we get the ball down, take one or two touches and pass it quickly teams will not be able to live with us and I think that was shown on Friday. We should've scored more and put the game out of reach.

"I'm disappointed I didn't score more, not just on Friday but over the season so far.

"I'm just plugging away and hopefully the goals will come for me.

"I've been a bit disappointed with recent performances when things haven't gone so well, so we need to build on Friday's result to get to where we want to be in the table.

"All the lads have confidence in one another and we know we should be higher than we are at the moment."

Johnson won the 28th minute penalty after being bundled over by David Morley and after Ryan Valentine and Guylain Ndumbu-Nsungu's offers to take the kick were rebuffed, he calmly scored his second penalty of the season with a cheeky chip to the keeper's right, though Johnson confessed his effort didn't go quite to plan.

He said: "It was supposed to go straight down the middle! Against Chester I just passed the penalty into the net because I hadn't scored for the club at that time so I wanted to make sure.

"But on Friday I had had a few decent touches beforehand and was pretty confident.

"I've done it a couple of times before, once in the reserves when I was on loan at Sunderland last season.

"I could have been the villain if I'd missed but the fortunately the keeper dived early and he went the wrong way."

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