After an OK performance against Arsenal and our first win against Fulham last time out I was keen to build some momentum to carry us away from relegation in the early months of the season.
Premiership v Tottenham (H)
Real Result: 2-1 Win (Hulse, Jagielka)
We would have to do this against a strong Spurs team with Defoe and Berbatov up front, who will take some stopping! Tonge is back from suspension but after such a good performance last time out I keep my starting eleven unchanged.
We started slowly with Tainio giving Spurs the lead after ten minutes with us barely having a kick. Our sluggishness continued as we could only manage 31% possession and zero shots in total, my only hope was that we could get into half time only 1-0 down and turn things around. Sadly we couldn’t even manage that as Dawson scored from a corner with the last kick of the half.
This was worrying and we were totally lacking in spark so I decided to bring Tonge on for Fathi at half time. Things improved slightly after this, we actually managed a shot on target but that was our only real highlight. A disappointing 2-0 loss.
Hopefully this lacklustre performance wouldn’t signal the start of a slump but at least we had a league cup game up next to try and build some momentum.
League Cup v Plymouth (H)
I played my first team squad to try and score a few goals and maybe a confidence building win but it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to lose and prevent a congested fixture list in the future.
Nicky Chadwick gave Plymouth an early lead with their only shot in 90 minutes as we dominated the game. Webber and Derbyshire wasted chance after chance, heavily out shooting Plymouth but only managing to equalise in the 90th minute thanks to Fathi, this game was going to extra time!
Despite Plymouth going down to ten men (and injuring Sarmento in the process) they won 3-2 in extra time. Very disappointing especially against ten men but at least we can concentrate on the league I guess!
Premiership v Manchester United (A)
Real Result: 0-2 Loss
Premiership v Chelsea (H)
Real Result: 0-2 Loss
With Sarmento injured veteran Gillespie comes in on the right wing but we are up against a Chelsea side close to their absolute peak under Mouriniho. This are two hard games that both played out identically so i’m going to be lazy and group them together.
In the Man U game we generally competed well until the 20th minute. At this point our defence totally failed to cope with the world class attackers we were up against and we found ourselves 2-0 down by half time. In the second half they took their foot off the gas and had total control of the game as we posed little threat as Man U ran out easy 2-0 winners.
Rinse and repeat for the Chelsea game apart from actually scoring two late goals against us to win the game 4-0. These two games rounded off a horrific run for us as we had played three league games without picking up a point or even scoring and conceding 8 goals in the process, the win against Fulham felt like it was a long long time ago! We had to put this run of games behind us as we had a very winnable set of games coming up.
Premiership v West Ham (H)
Real Result: 3-0 Win (Tonge, Jagielka, Stead)
I feel we need to pick up a positive result here if we want to move forward as a team so I gamble on playing a more attacking style rather than counter attacking. Additionally Kenny was so far our lowest rated performer so it was finally time for Neuer to make his debut, I could only hope these gambles paid off.
The first ten minutes were action packed, unfortunately for us. Boa Morte scored from a cross after only 4 minutes and Fathi, clearly fired up by the new attacking style was sent off minutes later for an elbow on Tevez. Things couldn’t have started any worse and we needed to get into the game some how with only ten men. I decided to drop Shelton deeper into an attacking midfield role to try and plug the hole left by Fathi.
This did the job as we saw out the remainder of the half without further incident. At half time I took Derbyshire off who had picked up a booking and replaced him with Hulse and he proved to be a pivotal player for the first time this season. On 53 minutes he received the ball from Tonge before drilling the ball into the top corner from 20 yards! Its a goal I never expected him to score but i’ll take it! We had also scored our first goal for over a month in the league!!!
The action wasn’t done there however as Boa Morte added his second goal from a 1 on 1 to give West Ham another lead in the game, it would be a huge ask of our team but we had to find a way back into the game. Fortunately Hulse had the bit between his teeth and he scored again from a corner just over a minute later. Scenes!
What was already looking like a hard earned point became even harder on 73 minutes as Berger (who was the last man back for some reason) hacked down Benayoun when he was through on goal and received a straight red card. Despite being down to 9 men we managed to hang on for the last ten minutes to pick up a huge draw with West Ham being surprisingly lacklustre.
Finally, points on the board and goals to go with it! I could only imagine what we could have done with 11 men. Neuer was a solid performer in goal as we ended up being out shot in this game so he looks to have secured his place in goal!
We would go into the international break sitting 16th in the league, hopefully Modric would be somewhere close to fitness by the time the next league game rolled round!
With some good players in the line up but not too much depth in the squad, England beat both Croatia and Andorra 2-0 to kick off their Euro 2008 campaign in good form. Hopefully the Wally with the Brolly situation doesn’t come to fruition in this qualifying campaign.
Premiership v Bolton (A)
Real Result: 0-1 Defeat
With Berger and Fathi suspended I had to make a few lineup changes for this away trip. I moved Jagielka into midfield while putting Sommeil into CB and Leigertwood into RB whilst also keeping the same tactics from the West Ham match. Hopefully I could harness the attacking prowess we showed last match by starting with Hulse up front from the start and i’m sure we wouldn’t get two sending’s off this time as well….hopefully.
Bolton have some very high profile players with Cocu and Anelka starting for them!
Hulse continued his from from the previous game on 13 minutes as Kunert threw the ball into the Bolton area which caused chaos and Hulse was on hand to hammer the ball into the net from inside the six yard box. We couldn’t make this advantage stick as Faye equalised with a header from a corner, set piece goals were becoming something of a problem for our defence.
This was a much better performance from us with huge help from Neuer who gave our defence much more of a backbone. We hung on for the draw despite being out shot 15 to 4. This wasn’t ideal but Neuer was really showing his class and could win us a fair few points along the way.
This draw also gave us our first unbeaten run of the save game! It had taken us three whole months but it was something to build from at last, maybe we were turning a corner especially with Modric only a week away from match fitness!
Premiership v Blackburn (H)
Real Result: 0-0
Fielding an unchanged side we played well to stifle Blackburn for the first half and even took the lead on half an hour! Webber took the ball through on goal and slotted home past Friedel! An impressive start!
This continued into the second half as chances were at a premium for both sides with Blackburn in particular struggling to get going. The prolific Hulse then doubled our lead after 62 minutes with a header from a corner. This kicked Blackburn into life who poured on the pressure but Neuer was equal to it. He picked up a man of the match performance and his first clean sheet to go with it as we won 2-0.
Premiership v Portsmouth (A)
Real Result: 1-3 Loss (Hulse)
Our final game of October was a tricky away trip to Fratton Park. The only change was to bring Modric onto the bench at long, long last, when fit he would comfortably be our best creative talent!
Portsmouth started brightly and Croatian striker Prso took full advantage of his teams bright start. Kranjcar found space on the right, found Prso with a cross who drilled a shot into the bottom corner. At half time we hadn’t even manged a shot on terget and it wouldn’t be long before Modric made his debut.
Sure enough on 53 minutes Kazim-Richards made way for the Croat play maker who changed the flow of the game. Only four minutes after coming on he received a throw from Kunert, beat his man before setting up Saramento who headed in from Modric’s cross! This was his first goal since joining on loan and could snatch us a valuable point!
Despite a fairly sluggish start we manage to survive the last half hour of the game to go four games undefeated!!! October had become a month in total contrast to September as the easier fixtures yielded many more points.
These results saw us sitting pretty in 12th place at the end of October but the bottom half of the league was incredibly tight with only 6 points separating the bottom half of the table. Hopefully we could open up more of a gap if we could keep grinding out points!
Chelsea were dominant early on in the league whilst the relegation battle was shaping up to be tight with 5 points separating the bottom 9 teams. With a bit of luck we could open up a bit of a gap before we played the big teams again.
Thanks again for reading, i’ll post another part next week!
StratMan Gaming 