After Sunday's stroll in the park we needed something to bring us down to earth so it was a good decision to take this fixture at short notice. Old Town are a very decent, well organised side, with some strong players performing at a good level in a league which is already underway.
Missing just Bowles (shits) and Jack (injury) Service guested to bring us up to strength but we still had only a bare 11 as KO approached with Kim, Grey and Josh sidelined for the start as last minute arrivals. We'll start with a nod to Service, he's guested for us in friendlies before and as always he put in a strong, association quality, committed performance - his headed goal was fair reward for his efforts, his pressing at the top end in particular was excellent.
A couple of players are still playing catch up with fitness and were occassionally caught in possession or were generally a little off the pace but the strength of our teamwork, support, covering and communication more than compensated and allowed them the time to catch the rhythm of a hard game. We started crisply and good work in the 4th from Service released Olli to cross to Glen who's sweet strike was well saved by a top 'keeper (their MOM?). In the 9th Ollies slipped pass to Sam was marginally underhit and they immediately broke up the other end- only fantastic recovery play from Glen cut out the danger in our box.
Kim's introduction on the left in the 25th paid instant dividends. In the 28th he was unusually quick to release Dazza who off loaded to Sam who broke clear to do the 'keeper 1 on 1 for 1-0. Two minutes later another piece of excellent distribution from Revill found Kim who again quickly (what's going on we ask!) released Sam who repeated his party trick for 2-0. We dominated the next 10 culminating in a lovely right sided interchange and a thunderous shot just over from Josh. A couple of minutes later a heavy touch from Ben saw a gilt edged opening disappear. In the 40th a driven corner from Sam was won in the air by Dazza, his header was saved as was Chippys but Kim finally nailed it to stretch our lead to 3-0. In the last 5 minutes a gap opened up in the middle as we (stupidly) chased number 4 at one end and over played at the other. Instructions were given out to tighten up as we were looking stretched and ragged but it was too late as they capitalised on our pratting about to pull one back at the half time stroke - this was really frustrating.
The second half was the most impressive of our four pre-seasons. We came out very focussed, played at a good tempo and never game them a sniff. In the 57th, high quality distribution from Chippy found PeeVee who pushed down the left and forced a good cross which Service headed home for 4-1 - we love it. From there we controlled the game. We created good openings going close with Kim's scuffed shot (open goal!), PeeVees well struck drive which was well saved and a slick Josh/Sam combo ending with Sam's shot just over. We were very business like seeing the game out and we might have extended our lead without ever over-extending ourselves or our game.
Underneath all this we gained invaluable match fitness in particular with Grey, PeeVee, Kim, and later Ben, all working hard in the demanding wide areas. We were fluid in our movement and the postional inter-changes are beginning to look pretty seemless - we will need this flexibilty as we go into the season with a very tight squad. The quality of our on field communication was again impressive. As always there were a few negatives but these were largely technical to be dealt with in the match debrief at training.
The strength of your teamwork under-pinned by your individual effort and quality and your collective and individual conduct did you great credit. You deserved the result in every way. There were some exciting performances today, even shaking off injury Ollie looked a threat, Kyle had his moments, Sam was at his string pulling best but Chippy gets MOM - the less you notice him the better he gets. Finally a note regarding the referee. He was very good and contributed to a good quality game.
