Thurrock-February 2014 results

Hello friends, here is another month of updates for my Thurrock team. We are well on course challenging for the automatic promotion spot as we are currently lying in 4th place. Our first season in league 2 has been a highlight so far with relegation worries vanished to the air and our debts had been cleared after the meeting with Aston Villa in the FA cup 3rd round. We had a few injuries in the squad with Izale McLeod, our top scorer out for 3-4 weeks. I can’t see him feature in the games play in February. Lets hope the rest of the striker can take up the responsibility and drive the club forward. There will be 5 games waiting for us and here is the results.

A big contrast to the previous month, we had a poor month with 2 wins and 3 losses. We had a few number of injuries suffered to the key players and that probably resulted in the poor form. I believe we got our share of bad luck this month. One by one the players were picking up injuries that ruled them out in minimum of 3-4 weeks. Thus we were unable to keep our good form resulting in us falling down the table.

First game of the month was against 6th place Oxford, we had dropped to 5th place after Bradford drew their game in hand. We took control of the game in the first 30 minutes, threaten their goal areas several times and even had a goal disallowed in the 12th minute which i saw nothing wrong. Soon they found their feet and slowly trying a few long shots but all going wide. Just before half time, Troy Archibad-Henville picked up a knock after a challenge and i took him off at half time. It was stalemate at half time. Things completely changed in the second half with them taking hold of possession and being the better side. We had trouble containing them and conceded a goal in the 51st minute. Without Troy Archibad-Henville, the players looked a bit short of confidence and did not play well for the second half. It was later confirmed that Troy will be out for 3 weeks with a damaged elbow. Another of my important player out injured, what bad luck we have!

Next we will be visiting 12th place Carlisle, their recent results is not that good and most of the players had low morale coming into this match. We settled to the game fast and Aaron Wildig and Kevin McDonald were controlling the midfield for us and creating chances for the strikers up front. Most of the time the shots had no accuracy and was squandered away. It took us a corner to score a lead when Frederic Veseli headed the ball towards the goal and an attempted clearance by their player sent the ball back to their own net. We calmed our nerves with another goal when a through ball from Aaron Wildig sent Thomas Hitchcock clear and he completed the move with a well executed finish. We went into the break with a two goal lead. Second half was pretty much an even affair with both teams going clear a few times, but the shots were either saved or most flying to the sky or wide except the goal. No change on the scores and we bounced back with the disappointment of the previous game against Oxford with a win.

Next game was against 8th place Stockport, they were having a good set of results and closing in at the play-off place. Another poor performance from my players, seems like the absence of Troy Archibad-Henville at the back and Izale McLeod in front had caused us serious problem. The defending was poor and up front the strikers were not scoring goals. The midfielders are doing their part and create chances but their team mates had let them down.  We conceded three goals in this game, first from a corner, second was a long shot goal and finally we gave away a penalty. To add to our woes, our most creative player Kevin McDonald was out injured for  4 weeks. I wonder what i can do to prevent all the injuries happening at the same time.

Next game was against 6th place Burton, one of our rivals for the play-off spot. I received a good news before the game that Izale Mcleod and Troy Archibad-Henville had returned to full training. I was in a dilemma whether to throw them back into the first team action. Ultimately i  decided to take a gamble and played both of them. Troy was a bit rusty playing quite badly, in the first half we failed to close down at both times and they scored from the edge of the box. Before that we had taken a lead through Izale McLeod and we went 1-2 behind at half time. I took off Troy Archibad-Henville and replaced him with David King during the break, the defence played better and we turned the match around with Izale McLeod scoring another two goals to complete his hat-trick. It was an inspiring performance from him and the whole team was lifted by his return.

Last game of the month was against Morecambe a 15th place team. We couldn’t continue the good form shown in the previous game and started badly. We conceded a goal in the 25th minute when their striker managed to get behind my defender to score a goal. Troy Archibad-Henville was clearly on fault there, he was awful since returning from injury, he really need some time to get his form back. They got a man sent off for professional foul in the 32nd minute, with one man advantage close to a hour, yet we couldn’t capitalize and even conceded another goal from a corner in the second half. We had our chances but our players just can’t get the ball pass the goalkeeper. As you can see from the screenshot, we had seven shots blocked by the goalkeeper. We ended up losing the match by two goals.

The poor form in this month had saw us dropped to 6th place and the teams behind are closing on us. The chase for the play-off place is very tight at the moment, we are lucky that the rest of our rivals are also dropping points this month. This is the crunch time, we still have twelve matches left and a few number of points to play for.We definitely need to regroup and return to form for the next few months or else our claim for promotion or even a play-off place will slowly fade away.

There will be five games in our calender for next month. We have two difficult games coming up which is against 3rd place Dag & Red and the leaders Luton. We need to pick ourselves up and really gain some points now if we were to gain direct promotion to league 1. If we are still showing the poor form, i think we will miss out even on the play-off place.

Thats it friends, a very poor month by our standards. Dear friends, feel free to give me your comments and feedback, i will be happy to hear any suggestion from you. Thank you for reading and i will continue my Thurrock story in my next post Thurrock-March 2014 results.