Pembury 4 - 2 St.Lawrence
We were in Kent Cup action this week and with a squad of 16 arriving at Woodside it gave the management the option to rotate the squad and look at the players who maybe hadn’t had the same game time as others. We adopted a 4-5-1 formation looking to control the midfield and use the wide guys to support Ollie who was deployed as a lone striker.
We started the game stressing that we needed to be more vocal around the pitch, more supportive and to get the ball out wide at every possible opportunity releasing Harry and Charlie to go and support Ollie. It was a bright start and after around 15 minutes the first piece of goalmouth action was upon us when a good team move involving Tommy, Luke and Caner fed Ollie down the left who rolled the ball across the edge of the penalty box to Luke who took a bobbling ball first time and smashed it straight over the keeper to put us in front. We carried on playing some decent stuff and a move down the right led to Charlie being fed in the box and he finished crisply off of both feet and shins to put us 2-0 up. We had a decent opening half an hour but for the last 15 we switched off, maybe run out of steam a little as we had a lot of the ball and they managed to get two relatively quick goals back to get themselves in at the break at 2-2.
We were a little disappointed that they had got back into the game but we knew what was missing in the final 15 minutes and everyone was determined to put that right. A couple of enforced changes saw Tommy come off for Bowyer and Jake come on for Charlie. Jake will be a physical strength to the team that we have sometimes lacked and set his stall out by charging someone over within 30 seconds. Luckily for us we had gone back to playing the type of football that had got us in front in the first half and this led to us going on to get the victory we deserved. The 3rd goal came when Harry drifted in with the ball from the left and fed Jake who smashed home the ball from 12 yards for his debut goal. Further pressure led to the goal of the game where Fletcher, employed as a CM in the second half, marauded up the middle, shuffled the ball onto his right and smashed a low drive in to the bottom corner leaving the keeper with no chance. A further change saw Wyles enter the fray but he was unfortunately unable to emulate Fletchers heroics and spooned one wide when put through one on one. Further chances came and went and St.Lawrence had a few decent efforts at goal but luckily for us they couldn’t keep them on target.
It was a great team performance where everyone stuck to their task well. The defence reacted to Phil’s request to attack everything that came near them and to talk to eachother, the midfield looked very comfortable with 3 men in the middle and Caner certainly looked more at home in the central role and Ollie worked tirelessly upfront with some great hold up play bringing others into the game. A great performance that we will take to Woodlands next week and put right what went wrong in the cup on a fortnight previously.
Team:
S.Balcombe
N.Edwards
C.Fletcher
C.Duncan
S.Palermo
T.Gent
C.Veli
L.Turner
C.Mallows
H.Webb
O.Funnell
Subs:
J.Miller
M.Wyles
T.Bowyer
L.Gent
M.Wood
