November 2010 - A Hero Emerges

The month starts with us managing to be free of injuries again. I am impressed so far with how few injuries we have suffered. Of course, now I've mentioned that, we're bound to start an injury crisis. I hope this thought does not come back to haunt me later.

Bolton (H) Premier League

The first match sees us welcome Bolton to Loftus Road, for what is predicted to be an easy victory for us, with us clear favourites to take all the points. Bolton have lost their last 3 matches, and been hopeless away from home. They also apparently struggle against a 4-4-2 formation and teams of our reputation. I have to say this does sound a bit like we're being set up for a nasty fall. When the teams were announced I checked out the opposition, and noticed their back line was pretty slow, and the left and right midfielders would not produce many tackles. They were playing a 4-1-4-1, with a slow striker, but the wide players were pretty quick. After a bit of thought, I decided that to go on the attack, and push them back, and hopefully give them little respite and little opportunity to worry us at the back. Laure and Varrault my full backs, should be quick enough to deal with their wide players, and even if the striker did break the off side trap, we'd be able to get back fast enough. This is of course taking a bit of a risk, and if things go badly I may have to become more defensive.

Right from the kick off we showed we were up for this match, with Bolton pinned back into their own half, and losing the ball as soon as they tried to move forward. Our passing was slick and fast, and on 7 minutes Laure move high up the pitch on the right and produced an excellent cross which Balanta managed to get a touch onto with his head. The ball just managed to creep under the diving body of Jussi Jaaskalainen to open the scoring. We continued to push hard, producing several good saves out of the Bolton keeper. In the 17th minute, Buzsaky let fly with one of his 30 yard curling thunderbolts. He would have been disappointed to see his shot rebound off the post, but then delighted to see Balanta react quickly to take possession of the ball and slam it home before Jaaskalainen could react. Bolton had so far shown no sign of being able to get far up the field, so I decided to keep the pressure on. We continued to stay attacking and created several more opportunities, which the Bolton keeper managed to keep out with fantastic saves. Bolton survived to half time without conceding another goal, the keeper must have felt like he was the target in a shooting gallery.

I was very pleased with our performance, and delighted that my idea of going on the attack had stopped Bolton even creating a single shot. I therefore kept the same strategy for the second half. We were even more dominant in the second half keeping possession well. We didn't produce quite the same number of chances as the first half, but that was down to Bolton going more defensive and their defenders managed to block more passes than they had in the first half. Their keeper also made a couple more fantastic saves, which denied us the opportunity of increasing the score. The match ended without the a change in the scoreline, and we managed to stop Bolton from taking a single shot at goal. As an experiment this was a great success, although Bolton are one of the few teams in the Premiership that this all out attack strategy is likely to work against. I have to say I'm surprised at how effective this turned out to be, with Bolton rarely even making it into our half.

This display has shown that against a side with a fairly slow defence and a slow striker, that we can produce a dazzling display of domination football. I will definitely remember that this is a good tactic against sides that are lacking the pace to hurt us. The 2 goals from Balanta now take his tally for the season to 15, having scored 7 goals in the last 5 matches. He appears to be turning into my deadly assasin.

In a bizarre twist, in the lead up to the next match, Lee Cook complained about the lack of first team football, and then promptly got injured, putting him out for at least 2 weeks.

Fulham (A) Premier League

Our visit to Craven Cottage sees Fulham as marginal favourites, but they come into this match not having been able to secure a win in their last 7 matches, and off the back of a heavy defeat to Tottenham. This is a match in which I feel we should come away with at least a point. A draw would be satisfactory, but we will still need to put in another good performance to secure that.

This was anything but a pretty match, and to be honest we never seemed to be able to get ourselves going properly. We gave the ball away far too cheaply, although we did create the first really good chance of the match, only for Balanta to be denied by the advancing keeper. Fulham were creating more chances, and holding possession a bit better than us, but we were having little trouble keeping them at bay. The match reached half time with neither side having scored.

The second half followed in much the same manner, though we did manage to push a bit further up the pitch and created many corners. Somehow their keeper Schwarzer managed to make an almost unbelievably good save to deny Fatih Yucel, with the ball just being divert around the post. I began to feel we just weren't meant to score in this match. Sadly there was to be a goal, but not by us, in the 2nd minute of added on time, Bobby Zamora managed to thump the ball home from 30 yards, through a narrow gap between two of our defenders, which Lung jr had no chance of reaching. I was gutted by this goal, as I felt that Fulham had not done enough during the match to deserve a victory. We'd played fairly well, although this is probably our worst performance of the season so far. I go away from this match feeling angry at the injustice of this result, as a draw would have been the fair result. Sebastian Puygrenier put in a man of the match performance, but sadly this was not enough to gain a point.

Sunderland (H) Premier League

The Black Cats visit Loftus Road as favourites for this match. This looks like it could well be our toughest home match so far, and endangers our perfect home record. Along with Chelsea, we are the only teams to have a perfect home record at this point in the season. The speed of Sunderland's strikers and wingers forced me to take a Counter attacking strategy.

From the very start of the match, it was clear that this was going to be a very even match, with both sides producing a fairly even number of chances, and both keepers putting in a few brilliant saves to stop the other side from scoring. For the second match in a row half time was reached scoreless. We had put in a better performance than for the Fulham match, which was at least encouraging, although Sunderland also looked more dangerous than Fulham had.

The second half started in very much the same manner, as a very even match with both sides showing some good football, but struggling to find a way to score. With the match well into the last 10 minutes I begun to get nervous that we were going to suffer the same fate as in the previous match, failing to find a way to score, and then being beaten by one piece of great skill. The deadlock was finally broken, when a penalty was conceded. In the 86th minute, Fatih Yucel stepped up and thumped the ball home to give us the lead. Sunderland then started to chase the game in the last few minutes, and despite Balanta getting through, one on one with the keeper a couple of times, he just couldn't find a way to bury the ball in the back of the net. With us playing well beyond the allotted added on time, Sunderland won a corner, and I began to fear that they were about to get an equaliser during time when I felt the match should have already finished. Fortunately we cleared the ball, and that drew the match to an close. The two highest ratings in the match went to my two centre backs, with Puygrenier just pipping Nasuti to be match of the match. This was a good performance, and in some respects we're fairly lucky get this win, although once we'd scored, we should have increased the margin of victory by another couple of goals. Somehow we have sneaked through with another victory to extended our home winning streak to 7 games.

Liverpool (A) Premier League

Anfield beckoned for our next fixture, which we are unsurprisingly clear underdogs. Our main aim for this match would surely be to keep Fernando Torres quiet. One piece of luck for us was to find that Yossi Benayoun is currently injured, which takes one creative player out, who might have caused us lots of problems, although they have plenty to take his place.

The match started with us taking a Counter attacking strategy. I didn't want to play too deep as Liverpool were playing with Torres up front, and 3 attacking midfielders across the park. The match started with Liverpool putting us under a lot of pressure. I could only hope we'd be able to ride this pressure out and start to work our way into the match. It therefore came as a big surprise when we finally got the ball forward, with Fatih Yucel finding some room just inside the box and hit a powerful shot. All Reina could do with the shot was to parry it, which fell right into the path of the advancing Buzsaky, who hammered to ball into the net. This was definitely against the run of play, and caused great delight. Liverpool continued to press forward giving us few chances to mount many counter attacks. Just before half time, Liverpool delivered a cross in the air at the edge of the box which Torres was able to nod home with a glancing header, and level the score. This was all too predictable, and disappointing to concede just before half time.

I was still happy with our performance though. Liverpool upped the pressure in the second half looking to win the match. This did however give us a few decent opportunities to mount a counter attack, but Reina was able to stand firm. These counter-attacks did give Liverpool a few chances to get a pass through to Torres, in behind our defence. Each time however, Lung jr was able to close him down and produce some outstanding saves to deny him, gaining him the man of the match award. I believe Liverpool went to an Overload strategy, because a couple of times I saw one of their centre backs make a run into our area. One these runs by Agger brought another stunning save by Lung jr from point blank range.

I was pleased with our performance, and although Liverpool managed a lot more shots than us, most were long range shots. Without the stunning performance of Lung jr we would not have held on to secure an unlikely draw, and our first of the season. Unfortunately during the match Rafa picked up a thigh strain, which will put him out of action for 2 to 3 weeks, which is a shame, as he had been putting in a series of good performances for us in recent matches.

Monthly Summary

Despite the anguish caused by losing the match at Fulham in added on time, I think this has been a great month for us, with two victories and a draw away at Liverpool. The one slight worry though, is that our rate of scoring has gone right down. Hopefully this is just a temporary issue, and not the sign of a long term problem. I think this set of results is largely down to the heroics of our keeper, Silvui Lung jr. Since signing for us, his improvement has been very good, and is now producing some stunning performances. He is my player of the month, although Puygrenier also deserves mention for some consistently good performances. Below is Lung jr's attributes; you can also see how well he's trained recently.

This set of results has seen us slip down to 6th place, giving me some confidence that we now have a chance to secure a finish in the top half of the table, with a european place as an outside chance. December will give us a much clearer picture on how good those chances are, as we will be playing a League Cup match and 5 league fixtures, so this will test the fitness and depth of the squard more than previous months. Our only current injury is to Rafa, which is a bit of blow, as he's become a quite important player for us in midfield.