Carrick Rangers manager Stephen Baxter was full of praise for his “absolute star players” as they continued their fine start to the current Premiership campaign with an emphatic 4-0 win at Bangor on Saturday.

A superb run of form in the latter half of last term helped Carrick create club history by recording a new record points tally and joint-best finish of seventh, progressing to the European play-offs before losing out to Dungannon Swifts.

Baxter’s men have been able to carry those levels into the new season, now winning three of their opening four matches – the sole blip was a 2-0 loss to high-flying Coleraine.

Saturday’s thrashing of the Seasiders thanks to goals from Matthew Snoddy, Danny Gibson, Paul Heatley and Joe Crowe means Carrick sit one point behind the table-topping Bannsiders in second, and Baxter is delighted with how his players are stepping up.

placeholder image — Carrick Rangers manager Stephen Baxter. (Photo by Stephen Hamilton/Inpho)

"This is the quality I feel of this team at the moment,” Baxter told the club’s media channel. “When you have Joe Crowe, unable to find him a place in the team here today, and he steps in for the last 15 minutes and scores a worldie.

"He has that quality written all over him and he knows what I’m looking from him.

"It’s a 54 or 55-game season when you take the cups into consideration, it’s a long haul, we need everyone fit, available and ready to play.

"We have to work all of that out as we go, that’s my job along with the coaching staff and the physios and doctors.

"It’s impressive to see those lads coming off the bench and showing us what they’re all about because they are absolute star players.”

Only Coleraine and Crusaders (both nine) have scored more league goals at this stage of the season than Carrick (eight).

Six of those goals have came in their two away victories against Limavady United and Bangor, who remain sitting in bottom spot and have yet to register a first league goal of the campaign.

Snoddy’s strike sealed the perfect weekend start for Carrick and Baxter felt the goals were going to flow at Clandeboye Park.

"It was pretty impressive from us,” he added. “Scoring early when the game is four or five minutes old, it settled us down.

"I think we hit the crossbar straight after it, then we hit the post, I felt we had that look about us where if we got another goal we could score two or three more and that’s the way it proved.

"Scoring four away from home is always a difficult thing to do and then hitting the woodwork five times and Danny missing what he will consider an absolute sitter at the back post gives a mark of how well we have played here.

"It was a pretty dominant performance from us in the second 20 minutes of the second half because Bangor were good in the first 25 minutes of the second half when they were having a go.

"On the whole, you have to be very pleased with it. Any result away from home I feel is a good result.”