As a fan of cliche's I will have to drag out the classic that this game definitely had the good, the bad, and the ugly. Disappointing that the quad is no longer a possibility, but let's be grounded. After winning the historic double, surely our sights must be set on a treble first. ;) ....so, from the get go, there was a lot of hope, but not endless amounts of promise. We all knew that Carlo was going to play a young team, but I thought maybe the bench would be a bit stronger. All the talk before the game was about us having a 15 year old waiting to come on. Interesting choices for sure.
I'll get the bad / ugly out of the way. Bad we're out, but its a few more games that we don't have to play allowing us to continue are bid for perfection in the league. And we know that the ugly comes in the form of a rosy cheeked keeper. Now, I don't want to completely dump on little Wossy but he is SO not ready to be out there. I realize that Hilario may have got a run out if he hadn't got himself injured. But yikes, the eyebrow of doom might want to look at some options in January or sort this kid out. He was a hot mess back there. He made one good save but really did not cover his line well or organize his defense at all.
The uglier would be the injuries. Its disappointing to see Benayoun go out, but so far, he hasn't played all that much. More worrying is the injury to Kalou who has been shining brightly since returning from Africa at the start of the year. He's been on target and offered a serious threat on goal. Seeing him stretchered off last night was almost as painful as letting in the final goal after working so hard to draw level.
Onto the good. Obviously its all in the spirit of the team. Playing with only 10 very young men out there and being two goals down was a daunting task. To see everyone come together in spirit and unity to draw level was fantastic. Many teams would have just rolled over and conceded the loss, but we fight right until the final whistle and that is what will take us far this season in a bid for more trophies. And although not all the kids were threatening the spots of our senior players there were some outstanding performances. Patrick Van Aanholt not only opened up the scoring, but had an incredible clearance to save Turnbull in the second half. Bruma was also fairly solid defensively, but the talk surely must be of Josh McEachran. He was absolutely genius out there, and made it difficult to tell we were playing a man short. I would expect to see a lot more of him this season!
Onto the weekend where we take on another team that got put out of the Carling Cup last night, Manchester City. Well done to the Baggies for amusing me as much as Northampton did. It probably does not bode well for Shay Given's position there. Maybe he wants to be on our bench, I mean, we'd get him FA cup games at least. ;) ...City stripped us of 6 points last season. We cannot let that happen again. Their performances this season would be considered patchy at best having only Joe Hart to thank for not dropping a lot more points than they have done. So, we definitely can't go into this one expecting a 6 goal rout. Its going to be down and dirty football. Surely that's worth getting up at the crack of dawn to come and see! Kick off is at 7.45am, so wear your slippers and PJs if you must and then get yourself caffeinated. And for those of you with the Team Terry shirts....you know what to do. ;)
See you for Breakfast!!
KTBFFH
jenny.xx
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