Ebbsfleet manager Danny Searle’s faith in his players was rewarded on Saturday.

The Fleet went man-for-man against a Rochdale team who played with three up front.

It represented a bold move from Searle but he was confident in his players, and it proved justified as they dominated for long periods of the game.

“We had a choice,” admitted Searle. “We could have sat back and soaked up what would have been a lot of pressure because of the way they do play - and, by the way, they’re very good at it.

“Their manager puts a lot of faith in his players, and I put a lot of faith in my players too. We said let’s go for them, what have we got to lose? Let’s go and have a go at them because if you sit back, like they showed against Wealdstone in the first half in midweek, it can be a very long 45 minutes if you just let them have the ball.”

Rochdale like to pass the ball out from the back but they were guilty of overplaying too many times.

It was something the home side knew was coming, and Ebbsfleet were well prepared to capitalise as Searle revealed the in-depth preparation they went into.

“We set up for the press,” confirmed the Fleet boss. “We went through every single goal kick they’ve taken this season. We looked at every little pattern and in the most part we nullified it.

“You can’t get carried away too much, and this is only an opinion from my perspective and how I like to manage.

“I don’t like to focus too much on the opposition, so much so that we don’t concentrate on ourselves as we’ve got good players and we’re good at what we do. But you have to nullify opposition strengths and you have to identity opposition weaknesses.

“We didn’t know the goalkeeper was going to do what he did and Dominic Poleon would get the goal, but we knew that there would be a chance something like that could happen.

“As much as we want to sit there and say we knew, we had planned for the fact there could be a mistake with their back three or goalkeeper with regards to them trying to play the way they do.”

The flip-side was it left Ebbsfleet one on one in defence many times, but Myles Kenlock and particularly Declan Skura were again outstanding.

“It's a tough one when it comes to defending,” added Searle. “I’m of the opinion that if you can’t defend one-on-one then you shouldn’t be on the pitch.

“There will be people that argue against that, depending on the quality of the forwards. But they’ve got to be able to defend one-on-one because there will be lots of times in games from counter attacks or transitions when that might be the case.

“So, let’s see what you can do, see how you back yourself, and to be fair to the lads I thought, within reason as they got through a few times, we kept them relatively quiet.”

On the overall victory, courtesy of Dominic Poleon’s opener and substitute Dominic Samuel’s stoppage-time winner, Searle added: “It was a really tough game. They’re a really good side and they showed the quality they’ve got on the ball.

“I don’t think anyone can say we didn’t deserve the three points. You get to a stage where you think let’s take a point and keep the unbeaten run going but we’ve got players who can come on and finish a game for us and that’s what Dominic Samuel did.

“We only made one mistake in the first half from a defensive perspective and we got punished, which is full credit to Rochdale. We showed great character and we stepped up another level in the second half.”

Ebbsfleet appeared to have two excellent shouts for a penalty in the last five minutes but both were turned down by the referee.

“The Bryant (Bilongo) one, from where we were standing it looked like he made contact, but the referee clearly stated that he didn’t even touch him,” explained Searle.

Report: Ebbsfleet 2-1 Rochdale

And on the handball from Josh Wright’s cross, he added: “I need to see it back but it looked like he saved it. Their bench said it hit him in the chin but the power he put on it, if it hit him in the chin, he’d have been on the floor.

“The referee has a tough job with that angle but we got the winner and we’ll put it to bed.”