Punishing Ourselves

I read a quote that Granit Xhaka said that he agreed to go to Sunderland to “punish himself”. Not a great fan of many ex-Arsenal players, but I do like him.

BoC likes to punish itself, I think. 3 players late for kick off and we were 1-0 down before they had even arrived. 2 ringers in the back four. No subs, so when Ben unfortunately went off injured we had nobody to replace him, at first. Great new oppo, but James apart, their average age was considerably less than ours!

Anyway, the game started a bit sloppily. We borrowed James temporarily, but left a huge gap between right back and centre back and the oppo scored a very early opener. Can’t remember the second. 2-0 at the break. And we had lost Ben with a tweaked hamstring.

A failed clearance by me and their winger smacked it in off the post and when James powered in a header from a corner we were 0-4. We had managed to pick up a ringer from the spectators who played in his jeans - Henry.

Great one on one save from Tyson and the oppo also smacked a shot against our post.

Got one back when Tony crossed from the right and the oppo defender slid it into his own net, under pressure from Chris. A few minutes later, a delightful defence splitting pass from Tony and Henry slipped it past the onrushing keeper. He nearly got another when he chased down the keeper and the ball trickled against the post before the keeper conceded the corner. It would have made the last few minutes interesting, but we didn’t deserve anything from the game. At least we made the score a bit more respectable.

Ringer A - Mansour (Fosters)

Ringer B - Saanil (Fosters)

Ringer C - Henry (random)

Sheedy full game for oppo.