Match Report

We didn’t turn in our best performance today but you have to give a lot of credit to Dresdner. They only had 10 men for the whole game and they worked incredibly hard to frustrate us. Even during our best period which came at the start of the second half we still didn’t create many clear cut chances. Our team was:

Burkett (GK)
Morton (LB)
Pragnell (CB)
Nott (CB)
Tapsfield (RB)
Tanton (RM)
Lenton (CM)
Charlton (CM)
Head (LM)
Havers (CF)
Evans (CF) (Captain)

Subs:
Martin, Cross, Valdes

The game was quite scrappy early on. Dresdner had the better of the early chances and had already hit the bar before going 1-0 up after about 20 minutes. Their striker ran on to a long ball over the top and finished well into the bottom right corner.

We gradually got better as the half wore on and this culminated in a good shot from Stu from outside the box. Their stand-in goalkeeper failed to hold it and Spence followed up well and had a shot on the rebound. This was deflected but it fell to me and I finished it from close range. This roused us a bit and we should have gone 1 up 2 minutes later We closed them down well in midfield and won possession in a dangerous position. Spence squared the ball to me and I was clean through but after a poor first touch I put it wide.

At half time we agreed we hadn’t played that well but there was still 45 minutes to put it right and we expected them to get tired. Dave replaced Pete and we played really well at the start of the second half, but failed to get that goal. At the other end their tall striker worked really hard for them and used his strength to hold the ball up and keep the play in our half as much as possible. Lee replaced Tant and later Kane replaced Daragh as we changed to 3-4-3 in an attempt to win the game. We had a good late shout for a penalty but to be fair we didn’t quite have enough quality to break them down.

Looking back on it maybe we needed to use the width a bit better – as Danny said, they hunted in packs and if we had passed it quicker we probably could have found some gaps. As it was although we had a lot of the ball we never created another clear cut chance. At the other end they hit the bar again and George made a good save.

So all in all not a disaster and it is still another point on the board. No-one played particularly well or badly today, special mention for Daragh who helped out by playing at centre back and turned in a good performance. Pragnell also played well at centre back, and the pair of them also made vital contributions with their meteorological predictions about what the weather would do in the second half. George had another confident game in goal and Chris battled well in midfield as always. All the subs who came on played well and showed that despite missing a few players we still have real strength in depth. The league is still completely up for grabs and we are still in a strong position.

Man of the match: 50% split between Chris Charlton and Richard Tapsfield.