Result – Wanderers 1 – Lodge Farm 2

This week the Wanderers welcomed Lodge Farm to the academy and were looking to extend our unbeaten league run.

Match Report –
Well where do I start! What a frustrating day, we went into today with a lot of confidence and high expectations. We started the game very brightly, controlling the game for long periods and having the majority of the early possession. We were having luck down both of our flanks and soon called the Lodge Farm keeper into action, where he pulled off a couple of fine saves to deny us from opening the scoring. Soon after it was the woodwork that denied us – twice! A great corner from Lewis, was meet by Phoenix who managed to drive the ball against the post and then see the rebound crash against the bar to frustrate us even more. The deadlock was eventually broken midway through the half, with a whipped in free kick from Owen eluding everyone and finding the bottom corner of the net 1-0 Wanderers! The rest of the half followed the same pattern with Lodge Farm frustrating us with some great defending and meaning we could not add to the score. We encouraged the team at half time to try and keep playing our own game, we felt the boys were becoming too frustrated and meant we were rushing and panicking on the ball instead of going about our usual play. The second half started the same as the first, with us dominating possession and creating a number of great chances. Again firstly being denied brilliantly by the Farm keeper and then by the woodwork. Just as it looked like we would extend our lead we were caught by a sucker punch, a missed pass in midfield caught us on the back foot and a through ball put their striker through one on one, Tom managed to pull off a great initial save only to see the rebound fall back to the striker who finished to bring them level 1-1. You could see this really dented our confidence as everyone started to look around at each and it meant we lost our shape and control on the game. Although we were still having lots of possession we now looked nervous and vulnerable at the back, and it wasn’t long before we handed Farm their second goal. Another couple of errors at the back put their striker through again and this time he finished first time to make it 2-1. We were completely in shock now, having had most of the possession and probably over 10 chances we found ourselves behind with 20mins to go. We continued to push hard and threw everything we could at them, Liam going close with a great drive which produced a fantastic save from the keeper and then in the final few minute we struck the post again, following a long throw in Kaya managed to stab the ball towards goal only to see it bounce back off the post and deny us at least a deserved draw.

Overall a disappointing result today and definitely not one of our best performances, but at the end of the day it was just one of those days. We could have and should have won the game easily and we need to take some lessons from today’s game. The first is we “We win together and lose together”, on days like today we need to stick together as a team and ensure we stick to our game. Not easy picking a “Man of the Match”, but for solid display at centre back and then in the holding midfield role this weeks “MoM” went to Jakey. Well done Jake!

Unlucky today lads, just one of those days and we have to try and learn from games like today and ensure we come back stronger next week against Great Barr.

Joe, Jason, Ronan and Reece.