FA Premier Academy League – South
     Spurs Lodge, Luxborough Lane, Chigwell
           16th September 2006, 11am
 
             SPURS    v    CHELSEA       
         (White/Blue)     (All Blue)
             4-4-2          4-4-2
 
              0(0)           4(2)
 
        Richie Stroud 1 Jack Russell
           Alex Smith 2 Nano Ofori-Twamasi
         Cian Hughton 3 Harry Worley
        Matthew Wells 4 Sam Hutchinson
            Greg Lake 5 Ryan Bertrand
       Dorian Dervite 6 Liam Bridcutt(C)
          Jamie Davis 7 Miroslav Stoch
         Stuart Lewis 8 Michael Woods
        Tomas Pekhart 9 Ben Sahar
    Jake Livermore(C)10 Sergio Tejera
     Jacques Maghoma 11 Morten Nielsen
 
        David Hutton 12  
          (4) 46Mins      
        David Button 13 Ryan Woods
      Danny Hutchins 14 Fabio Ferreira 
          (7) 66Mins    (10) 71Mins
     Takura Mtandari 15 Sam Hurrell 
          (2) 81Mins    (5) 59Mins
                     16 Scott Sinclair 
                       (11) 66Mins

Scorers:-  Stoch 28, 90, Sahar 38,
           Tejera 55 Pen.
 
Booked:-
 Livermore 21        Worley 15
 Dervite 55          Ofori-Twamasi 66
 Pekhart 84
 

It was a cool overcast morning for my first match at the Lodge this season.

The visitors came with a whole influx of talent – no doubt at the hands of Frank Arnesen while we had our own three new arrivals on show.

Spurs lined up with new boy Richie Stroud in goal with a back four of Smith and Hughton outside of Lake and new signing Dervite in the centre. Wells and Lewis played in centre midfield with Davis and Maghoma on the wings. Jake Livermore was pushed up front with the Czech Tomas Pekhart.

The first half started with Spurs kicking towards the south goal, with both sides feeling the other out. It was fairly even play with both sides showing bits of skill but not being able to hold on to the ball for long, either due to a loose pass or more regularly by good interceptions. Chances at either end were rare, so when Pekhart missed the target with a clear header you began to wonder. The midfield battle was gradually turning into just that as players on both sides tried to get their tackles in quickly which meant that despite the ref trying to keep the game flowing there were many stoppages. Players were getting uptight with the whistles, especially the home side who seemed to be coming off worse. Livermore and Devitte were getting little change from the ref early on and Lake was annoyed by Tejera going to ground so often and when Ofori-Twamasi did a “Drogba” I could clearly hear the ref say that he wasn’t touched. You could understand the frustration as he did nothing about it.

The deadlock was broken when Stoch picked up a loose ball 25 yards out, beat Hughton and raced into the box beating Stroud from a narrow angle. Dervite took a little time to settle, but once he did he began to play some good balls out to the wings where Maghoma on more than one occasion made ground down the left. One run produced a lovely low centre that Pekhart just missed. Spurs paid the price for that miss as Sahar was put through and Stroud failed to hold his shot.

David Hutton came on for the second half in place of Wells and played up front with Livermore dropping into midfield. Spurs showed more determination in the second half which coupled with the visitors sitting back more meant that we created more chances as the game worn on. The game was put out of the home side's reach when ten minutes in the ref decided that Dervite had fouled Tejera as he went past him into the box and gave a penalty which the blues player took himself and duly put into the left corner of the net.

Hutchins replaced the injured Davis and linked well with Hutton creating a couple of openings soon after coming on. Lewis put Pekhart through and his low drive was tipped around the post by Russell. Soon after Maghoma again set up Pekhart, but he failed to convert the chance. Spurs were pushing more players forward as they tried to pressurise the visitors goal with both Lake and Dervite making forages into the other half. All the pressure failed to produce a goal and with the home side over-committing the visitors broke quickly and Stoch fired in from the edge of the area on the stroke of full time. The ref did not add any time for stoppages so there was no chance of a consolation.

Like their first team Chelsea have acquired a team of quality players from across Europe and Leeds amongst others. They work hard, although they also do a lot of diving like the first team. Of our two top European players Dervite started shakily but settled down and did very well. The ref saw a dirty side of him of which I was not aware, and I think he penalised Spurs more than seemed fair. Pekhart had four very good chances in the game and if he can start putting those away then he will do fine, but he was well handled by the visitors.

The next Academy game is away to Watford on the 23rd which will be followed by Reading at the Lodge on the 30th. Hopefully I will be at the next Reserve game at Stevenage on Wednesday when we play West Ham.

Ray

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