Courtesy of:- Ray Lo, and the Spurs List

 
             FA Academy U-18 League - South
        Spurs Lodge, Luxborough Lane, Chigwell, Essex
            Saturday 4th September 2004, ko 11am


                SPURS     V     NORWICH CITY
         (White/Blue)          (Yellow/Green)
          4-4-2/4-5-1           4-4-2

           Tommy Forecast 1 Shane Herbert
            John Kyriacou 2 Andrew Cave-Brown
        Charlie Daniels(C)3 Rossi Jarvis
             Stuart Lewis 4 Andrew Fisk
              Chris Riley 5 Lee Howlett
              Tommy Welch 6 Michael Spillane
            Danny Stevens 7 Nicky Howell
             Andy Barcham 8 Lee Blackburn(C)
            Claude Seanla 9 Danny Crow
             Jack Maghoma 10Seb Muddel
            Simon Dawkins 11Robert Eagle
Subs:-

              Scott Thyer 12Matthew Halliday 
			       (4 - 70 Mins.)
              Charlie Lee 14Chris Martin 
                               (3 - 65 Mins.)
            Nathan Peprah 15John Bell 
                            (7 - 80 Mins.)
        Brian Mascarenhas 16Sam Willis
           Richard Heller 17
 

Booked - Blackburn 57(foul), Stevens 68(late), Spillane 78(late)

It was a very warm morning for my first game of the season at the Lodge, sunny with little wind. The pitch was a little firm but had been freshly cut. There were not too many people there to watch considering it was a free Saturday. It must be still feeling like summer holidays.

Spurs lined up with Riley and Welch at the back with Kyriacou at right back and Daniels at left. Lewis and Maghoma started in central midfield with Stevens on the right and Dawkins on the left supporting Barcham and Seanla in attack. As the club still refuses to supply team sheets I cannot be 100% sure of this or the substitutes but as any good agent I did some homework. The visitors line-up came courtesy of my opposite number from Norwich.

Spurs kicked off attacking the North end but were soon put under pressure from the Canaries who won a lot of the ball in midfield. The visitors went ahead in the 18th minute when Howell ran along the edge of the area from the right before slipping the ball through for Eagle to fire a rising shot past Forecast from the corner of the six yard box. Norwich kept pushing forward and won a free kick (central) about 25 yards out which Crow took quickly hitting the ball into the bottom left corner before the home side had lined up their wall. It was so quick, that I missed it as well as the team!

I think that that goal produced the motivation for the home team as they began to get back into the match and won more of the ball in the middle. Using both flanks they put pressure on the back line and began to create openings for the front two with Barcham missing two headed chances. The breakthrough came from a free kick in the 38 minute. Lewis lifted it to the far post where Welch controlled it with two touches before dinking it into the middle of the goal for Seanla to touch in. The momentum was now with Spurs who attacked on all fronts with players running at the defence playing one-twos or putting balls through for others. Norwich's defence held out with some last ditch tackles and throwing themselves into blocks to finish the half in front.

The second half started as the first had finished, with Spurs on the offence. Pat Holland had changed the formation by switching Dawkins with Seanla and dropping Barcham back into a five-man midfield playing outside Stevens. The tactic seemed to work as the visitors centre-backs concentrated on Dawkins and allowed Barcham space when he came round the back to head home after Daniels fine run down the left. The Spurs midfield supported by the full backs put Spurs in control of the game for most of the half with Norwich using the long ball up to their front pair as the main threat. This did cause problems at the back as with the full backs pushing up Welch and Riley were put under a lot of pressure. This meant that more players dropped back a little allowing Norwich to apply some late pressure.

When Barcham dropped back Stevens moved more inside which brought him up against Blackburn and the Norwich Captain got frustrated by little Danny's trickery that he had a go at him on the bye-line getting a yellow card for his trouble. He then clattered into him again just 2 minutes later and was lucky not to receive a second. The ref then decided that when Danny caught Blackburn late he was getting back at him and gave him a yellow as well. In the 70th minute there was a major substitution, not from either side but of the referee who had an injury to his leg or foot and had to be replaced. As there was no fourth official he called the two coaches to ask for someone qualified to run the line. Norwich declined despite having a qualified ref on their bench and so we had a linesman in a spurs tracksuit for the last 20 minutes - unfortunately he played fair. :-)

The game was a good, well-played match which either side could have won without being called lucky so a draw was probably a fair result. Both sides adapted to changes by the other which is good to see. I did wonder if it was necessary to make the changes at half-time as we had finished the half on top. I would have given it 10-15 minutes before the change but it worked so I can't complain. I don't know about Norwich but I noted that there were a few players like O'Hara and Mills missing so I expect that we can do better, which looks promising for the future.

The next match for the U-18s is away to Millwall on the 11th with the other East Anglia side Ipswich the visitors on the 18th. Before then, the Reserves will be entertaining Crystal Palace at Stevenage after a trip to the south coasts biggest club. (Ed:- Ahem - Ray means the reserves are away to Southampton on Tuesday!)

Ray

Follow @spursodyssey