A good performance against a really good side.

It was a late, late kick off, some could be excused for thinking we were going to be the Sky Super Sunday Match, and to be fair some could argue that we did better than the Arsenal.

The cup Gods had decided that we were going to Abbey Rangers. It was always going to be a tough game, they're a new team to the league having moved from the Surrey primary league, finishing runners up in the top division.

Our boys had been paint balling for the day before for Andreas's birthday, and he was having the day off as part of our squad rotation policy. It's the first time I've had our full squad to choose from, we have plenty of players now, and everyone has to grasp their chance every time they turn out for the team.

Knowing, Abbey were a strong attacking force, we went about our tactics not to concede too many early chances early on. We discussed it pre match and were aware that they had an excellent Striker. James Levy was given a job to do, man marking him, and he did a quality job, especially when you consider he'd never been asked to carry out such a role before.

With Nassim and Joe as full backs, we felt confident we had a good mix of power pace and skill to cope, and so it was.

For 20 minutes, we had no real problems, I don't think we caused Abbey too many either, but the plan worked well for the first third of the game.

We had a good claim for handball in their box, which was waived away by the ref. It was the first of many questionable decisions, especially when he gave handball against us for an even more innocuous incident within two minutes.

On 21 minutes, Nassim went in for a strong challenge and was caught. He had to come off, and Henry came on, thrown in at the deep end. Henry is new to this level of football, and is growing every week, he has a long bright future ahead of him, and I'm looking forward to seeing him develop his understanding of the game.
Within a minute, Joe was tripped whilst chasing a hopeful ball down their left, a foul which was overlooked, and play was allowed to go on, although nothing came of it, a trend was starting to form.

We have a policy, that if a player has been hurt to the point he's struggling to shrug it off or crying, he will be removed from the pitch. The reasons are many but first and foremost it's to safeguard the kid who's hurt. So Joe had to come off, Luca went to right back and Frankie came on at right midfield. So from being very comfortable, we were trying to restructure and settle and within a minute we conceded a goal. Not great play, more born out of our sudden lack of organisation due to two injuries. I'd certainly not put it down to anyone at all, just a good team spotted a weakness and scored. I have to say they had been searching, it would have been nice to have got our just deserts and got to half time at 0-0 but it wasn't to be.

The second half saw a return of Nassim and Joe, at full back and we tried to find a way back into the game. It's not easy against a team that didn't have any weak links. Going forward we had one of our quieter days, but they were a well marshalled big side which weren't going to encourage us to score.

To be honest we were fairly comfortable and competing really well all over the pitch when disaster struck. A long hopeful ball came out of the stratosphere, almost cleared into our half out of frustration, bombing down into Stan's hands, which were a little too close to his face and the ball smashed him in the mouth, bounced out of his grip for the striker to prod home after following in for the second ball. One of those things, he had a very good game and made a number of really good saves, just sometimes happens when you least expect it.

It was now the boys had to stand up to be counted, not to let the hard work go to waste and stay in this game. Reece had worked tirelessly in the middle of the park, as had Aiden. We had some good passing moves, Luca had had some good possession out wide without ever quite having the pace to lose his fullback to cash in. Frankie had worked hard and made way for Elliot for the last 10, who made a good impact, with the best 50/50 tackle of the game.

Unfortunately the ref still had a final say with another poor decision, blowing up for a shoulder to shoulder challenge by Joe, a poor poor decision. Made worse again by not blowing up for the same foul in the other direction 2 minutes later, unfortunately they scored from the free kick. I have no problem with the result, Abbey had certainly earned it, they put us under pressure constantly, and I think we coped well.

Overall, I felt it was a game that shows we are growing in many ways, it would have been easy to lose this game by 6-7 or more as many other teams have in this cup. We'll have many better results, but it was a good team performance, they boys pulled together. Were not to far from our first points of the season.

Maybe we should go paint balling more often!

Man of the match - Nassim. A handful throughout, who played thru pain, and showed our spirit. He's been a welcome addition to the squad.