Late Saturday night kick off… Not La Liga but a Soho Vs Ely in the City League at Happy Valley Astro. We had drawn with Ely first game of the season 1 – 1. Hence, we were expecting a tough game. Luckily we had a few late additions to bolster the squad. We started off in the usual 4-5-1 formation below:

Sanju, Stef, Leandro, Dan, Colin, David Ta, Scott, Tom, Adam, Cowley, Paddy

Subs: Chi, Terry, Sean, Jeff, Matt, Oli

From the off we are the much better team. Our defense is very assured and scares the life out of the opposition. Colin wins everything in the air. Leandro and Dan make some challenges that are fair but are going to hurt like hell on a cold night. Stef uses his pace and sweet left foot and is an outlet on the left. Their winger spends more time chasing him than the other way round. Scott and Tom sit in front the back four and dictate all the play. It’s great to have Scott (don’t let the headband fool you) Wilkins back for us. The opposition is totally as sea and understand there is no way they can get through to have a crack at Sanju so resort to diving and screaming in fright, pain or a combination. To our credit we keep our heads and don’t lose the plot. It’s important we don’t get sucked in when refs are bias and the opposition cheats. We can learn a lot from Scott. When he got booked for next to nothing he had a big smile, picked the guy up and shook the hand of the ref. A Dwight Yorke moment. Now going forward we played extremely well but didn’t take our chances which made life difficult for the rest of the game. Cowley shot wide from close range. Paddy’s shot hit the bar
Stef has a corner which Adam somehow headers over the bar. Apparently his old centre back instincts took over. Scott then has a  cross which Adam shoots over. Cowley and Paddy combine Paddy has a shot which is saved. Stef has another dangerous corner and Adam’s header saved on line. Adam could well have got a first half hatrick. Tom then also has a  shot saved. We get corner after corner. Finally an OG from them takes us to a 1 – 0 lead just before half time although we should have had the game killed off by this time.

Second half
Dan grabs his bag and runs off in the direction of Denmark and is replaced by Oli. Terry goes on for Dave. So we chance things quite a bit and Terry goes to left back, Stef to left midfield, Leandro to centre back and Scott to right back. Adam goes on the right. Perhaps the gaffer made to many changes immediately but despite looking a little more disjointed we dominated again. Stef has a corner Colin heads wide. Adam has a long mazy run before he shoots wide. Leandro then is responsible for another quality moment when his shoulder barge sees one of their guys disappear into the mist as he goes flying! Jeff and Chi then come on with the former going up top. Paddy and Cowley take a rest. Tom goes in the hole and does very well which gives the gaffer options and has one shot saved and other which goes wide. Chi also gets into the action with a little outside of the foot chip shot. Jeff gets booked. For the last twenty we see Sean on for Scott at right back and Matt on for Adam at right mid.  Both do very well and combine for a few silky moves. Stef also has twenty minutes up front and shows his class. Unfortunately as a team we don’t hit the high marks of the first half but it was a very one sided 1 – 0 win.

Colin is man of the match. Stef and Adam got a few mentions.

Terry is mug of the day for shouting at Chi and wearing two pairs of shorts after the ref made him change.

I’m off to the UK for a week so see you when I get back.

STRENGTH & HONOUR
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