With Old Street fielding pretty much their best side this always promised to be a hard way to bring the curtain down on an intensive high quality pre-season programme.
It's a difficult balancing act to rotate 16 players through 80 or so minutes whilst maintaining some sort of rhythm but that had nothing to do with our conceding the opening goal. We simply failed to press the ball in our own 18 yard box. It was alarming that we allowed them to recycle 2nd and 3rd balls in our own area and then stood off whilst one of their two strikers received, controlled, composed and cooly slotted past an unprotected Gary. Against Birchanger we put bodies on the line for the full 90 but here we just looked rushed and struggled to build any sort of early controlled intensity to our play on and off the ball.
Olli and Ryan did follow the pre-match brief and tucked in closer to Kim so we were much more compact in the central areas but both full backs failed to push on when we were in possession in our defensive third so the two holding midfield players were denied forward wide angles and our forward play lacked any meaningful width. Too often our play broke down too early and when it did reach the front two they couldnt recycle into the wide areas so the ball came back far too quickly.
Ollies equaliser came following a good interchange with Sam and his driven shot looped up over their stranded 'keeper. Sam was proving a handful and the balance was fully tipped our way when he was withdrawn into a wide left role where he had time and space to hurt Old Street. Olli was pushed up front with Steve and together they worked to retain possession allowing the whole team to link up. This gave us the confidence to retain possession throughout the team and to move the ball around the field whilst we worked openings and created opportunities.
The entire second half was a lesson in rotation and everytime we had the ball we looked dangerous. Ollies second was a fine solo effort after he was released again by Sam. Our third came when Steve drove into the right area with ball at feet eventually earning a penalty which he converted himself. The best was the fourth and last from Nathan. He was pushed up into Sams space and almost immediately drove inside unleashing a wicked curling right footer from about 25 yards which gave their 'keeper no chance. They did grab a consolation goal as we probably overdid our positional changesand confused ourselves with a charlie chaplin moment in defence.
If we think about what we did today (against a footprint premier side) we should be pretty pleased. We worked on a shape that we will need to use especially on larger pitches, we eased Chris back after his exhausting honeymoon, we moved Neil, Nathan, Ryan, Glen and Kyle from back to front and each looked very comfortable, we gave Steve, Glen, Nathan and Darryl a large chunk of the game to bed into our style of play and each looked every bit like "Association" players - quality - we even discovered a new talent at right back in Kim. All of this without ever looking like losing. Rock solid performances from every player, new and old.Nice.
The real business starts on Sunday
