Chester Season 2012-2013 Part Seven
Hello again people, we’re coming closer to the end of our first Premier League season! After 30 games we were safely in 9th place, but we just suffered a shameful defeat, we were beaten 7-1 by Arsenal at the Emirates stadium. My players were completely dazzled by Adebayor and his teammates, we were outplayed and we left with the tail between the legs. Now we had to face Chelsea in the next game at our own Deva Stadium, reopened after a major capacity increase: we now have around 12,000 seats! Let’s see how the games went.
Matchday 31: Chester — Chelsea 1-1
Every seat in the Deva Stadium was taken, every fan was hoping for a good game against one of the best teams in the league. And my players didn’t disappoint me, they gave their best on the pitch. Unfortunately we couldn’t win the game, but we came very close… We hade numerous chances, a better ball posession, but we couldn’t score more goals because of that incredible goalkeeper named Petr Cech.
Matchday 32: Everton — Chester 2-4
We played a good first half, an absolutely stunning first part of the second half and a dreadful final part of the game. Fortunately for us we managed to score four times during the best period of the game, so we snatched a great win for the morale of our players.
Matchday 33: Chester — Ipswich 2-1
We played 3 times until now against Ipswich and we lost all three games. The lads were determined to change the statistics a little bit and Michael Harper took care of things scoring twice in the first half. A missed penalty in the second half made Ipswich hope for a draw, but we managed to hold firm and go home with another victory in the bag.
Matchday 34: Middlesbrough — Chester 2-1
Not too many comments to make over this game, as our opponents showed their superiority in front of their own fans. We couldn’t make our posession count, they blocked us in the final third so we couldn’t pose too many threats.
Matchday 35: Chester — Newcastle 3-1
Newcastle were right in front of us in the League table, we were 8th, they were 7th. With only 4 games to go I checked the possibility of a Europa League qualification for my Chester and I saw that if we finished in 7th place we could hope for a spot in next year’s European competition. But we had to win the game with Newcastle, this was a do or die situation. I explained the whole thing to the boys and asked them to play for the fans, to give their best out there on the pitch and they did. They had a brilliant performance which brought us a historic victory. Now we had a good chance to finish 7 th, we were only 2 points behind Newcastle with 3 games to go.
The best player for us in these 5 games was undoubtedly our Italian regen defender Ciro Lazzari: he scored 3 times in the last 5 games and had an average rating of 7.86! He definitely made his 1.93 meters height count in the opponents’ box!
Let’s recap: 3 games to go and we are 2 points behind Newcastle that are lying in 7th place, the last place that could bring us a wonderful Europa League qualification. We have another 3 games to play as I said, 2 at home, against Portsmouth and Manchester United and one game away against already relegated West Brom. I think that if we could grab at least 6 points ot of these 3 games we would definitely have a chance to have that 7th place. We’ll see how it will go, stay tuned to find out!