First game back at pre-season and we were a shambles before we even got out on the pitch. Mix up over kits, players and people not turning up and not letting us know left us with 10. Bren managed to get hold of his imaginary friend Sam Masi and after some persuasion he came down to help us out. We were surprised first of all to find out that he exists, but it turns out he's a pretty handy player.
We managed to get out about 10-15 minutes late with a starting line up that wasn't too bad. We bossed the first half with their manager claiming that Dave Bernadini 'ran the show'. We looked solid at the back with Chris Jozefiak and Sam Masi fitting in very well. Sam and Bren were linking up brilliantly down the right. One particularly nice move started with John Owen winning the ball back, SAM MASSI, Clarky and Berni linking up well ended with Bren putting a beautiful cross in for Rob to head home.
Anthony got wiped out by the keeper on one attack, resulting in a nasty knock to the face and quite a big cut. He was off the field for quite a bit mopping up blood and receiving 'medical treatment'.
John Owen was asked to do us a favour up front and out of position and had the game of his life, confident, assured hold up play and linking up well with the midfield and Rob. He had his best game in a Derby City shirt and topped it off with a beautiful flicked through ball to Bren who beat a few players and slotted it nicely past the keeper for a comfortable and well deserved 2-0 lead.
We remained the better team for the rest of the first half, and went in at half time having been comfortably ahead of the team that finished 14 points ahead of us last season.
Anthony couldn't come out for the second half as he had a massive hole in his face and it needed stitching up and this left us with 10 men while him and Roffey went through the longest kit change in the history of football.
When we went out for the second half we - like so may times last season - started fairly slowly. Littleover managed to get us onto the back foot and they put us under a fair bit of pressure. Rob dropped back into left midfield to cover for Ant and John was left up top by himself. This meant that, despite John's best efforts, the ball kept coming back. The defence sometimes struggled to get out and this in turn left the midfield with way too much work to do. The heat, the lack of subs and being down to ten men meant that we weren't able to play the type of football that was working so well for us in the first half.
While we were struggling to get out of our half Jozefiak made a succession of world class saves, one from Jordan was unbelievable. Chris Jozefiak also put in a great block in the six yard box
Roffey finally managed to come on, but unfortunately this was just as Littleover were getting some proper pressure going, and Prutos made some space in the area to get a shot off. This squeezed between the Jozefiak brothers and got them back to one goal behind.
We were back to a full compliment of 11 men, but the momentum was with Littleover as - due to a combination of age, late nights and general poor levels of fitness - we were tiring. This lead to a few individual mistakes across the back four.
With about 10 minutes left one of Littleover's players picked the ball up around the halfway line and found that our players just parted in front of him. He carried the ball towards the edge of our area, made his way past a couple of challenges and finished very nicely into the corner. Joz didn't really have a chance.
All in all it was a decent game, a shambles to start with, but once we got on the pitch we looked pretty good.
