Casuals and Pelham were outclassed by Stortford Cobras in their Second round cup match of the Bert Yabsley 5-0. On a day where Cobras had a fully fit and fully available squad at their disposal, Pelham had 12 for the first half and only a bare 11 for the second, with a new team which has yet to play with eachother this season. Pelham knew they weren't going to see much of the ball for the majority of the game and knew that their work rate and organisation was going to be important. The home side started on the back foot in the game but did look organised and stood firm holding off some early Cobra attacks. However with a few of the guys coming back into the fold after a few weeks off, Cobras were that little bit sharper and capitalised on that, scoring their first goal on the 12 minute mark. Once the first went in for the away side they started to smell blood, growing in confidence they then put Pelham to a 19 minute onslaught. Cobras second goal came not long after as again some good movement saw them tuck the ball into the Pelham net on 20 minutes. A change of formation came after that with Pelham deciding to go for a 4-5-1. However it took them a while to get to grips with the change and a Cobras third and fourth goal were added within the next 10 minutes. Once it got to that stage the Pelham players decided to stop feeling sorry for themselves and actually start playing some football and make a contribution to the game. As Cobras chances were limited towards the end of the half, Pelham started to create some of their own and came close on a few occassions through Joe White, and a Danny McGurk lob which unluckily bounced of the cross bar and back towards the keeper. The rest of the half was played out with the home side finally seeing some of the ball. The second half was ten times better than the first with Pelham looking much more organised and working a lot harder. There were points again where the home side were very much backs to the wall, but this time they stood strong and some good tackles from the back four and some even better saves from the Monk in goal kept Cobras out. The only goal of the second half came from a Cobras corner which flukely curled the whole way round and went in off the back post, even though it looked like it was going to go high and wide, no chance. Some more last ditch defending and saves kept Cobras at bay and made sure that would be the only goal for them of the second half. Very much like the end of the first half, Pelham had some good passages of play and created some chances of their own. Unfortunately they could not take any of them and the game finished 5-0, with the 19 minute onslaught in the first half killing off the game. As was said at the start of the game, with having pretty much a bare 11 (and some of that 11 not being in the best condition this morning) and the fact that they had a fully available squad, our chances were looking unlikely. After the 19 minute onslaught and after we stopped feeling sorry for ourselves we actually started playing and started organising ourselves, only conceding one (massively flukey) goal for the last hour of the game. Annoyingly i also think we a full bench and a full squad available we could actually give them a good game, but unfortunately thats the way it goes sometimes. Its another hard working 90 minutes under our belts and a bit of fitness going in to our last league game which is hugely important. Winning that final league game will make us the only unbeaten side without a loss in the league campaign across all three leagues. There were some good performances in the end from Pelham with Mick giving special mentions to some last ditch tackling from the back four, and some big work rates across the midfield. However with some big important saves and a good few of them, Dan Monk had his best game of the season and is awarded Micks Man of the Match.
