Chester Season 2012-2013 Part Three
Hello mates, our Premier League adventure continues! After 10 games we were safely in 7th place, with 17 points. We were in a victory drought though, we didn’t win any of the last three games. And the situation didn’t seem to have any chances to get better because our next three games were against Arsenal, Chelsea and Everton. Pretty tough opponents I reckon :(
Matchday 11: Chester — Arsenal 1-1
Ohh, we were sooo close! Damn! Our team played a fabulous game, we had a better posession of the ball than Arsenal, we created some chances and we led 1-0 until the last minute! Unfortunately a defensive blunder gave Adebayor an easy chance just when the referee was preparing to send everybody home. And Adebayor didn’t miss :( Don’t get me wrong, I think that a 1-1 draw against Arsenal is a good result for us, but after having the victory in the bag for the entire game it’s tough to see it go right at the end. Four games without a win, the next game away at Chelsea…
Matchday 12: Chelsea — Chester 2-0
Not much to say, they did a professional job with us. They let us play, we had more posession, but they kicked us when they needed to and that was it. Five games without winning, we were beginning to slide down the table.
Matchday 13: Chester — Everton 1-1
A very difficult opponent, but I was hoping to get a narrow win somehow. We managed to get another 1-1 draw, which was the just result after all.
Matchday 14: Ipswich — Chester 1-0
This was one of the worse games we played this season. Although we had a few chances ourselves we never looked determined enough to get something out of this game. The team was suffering, the players were low on morale, we didn’t win in 7 games, the situation was beginning to look desperate. We simply have to win the next game, whatever it takes!
Matchday 15: Chester — Middlesbrough 2-1
And we won it, but it was tough, very tough. They were leading 1-0 with only 20 minutes to go, but we finally got some luck on our side when Onuoha put the ball into his own net. I was sure that we could win it after that own goal, and our Estonian striker Henri Anier scored the crucial goal in the last minute of the game. Finally, our first win after seven games! The Premier League is tough, really tough. But we survived so far, we are 8th with 22 points to our name.
Maybe the best thing, even better than the league position is the financial situation. We were in debt for the past two years, now our balance is finally on the «green» side, we have more than 3 million euro in the bank! This is mostly thanks to the higher gate receipts we got this season, around 500 K per game, even more for the games against big teams like Arsenal.
The player that I’m going to bring to attention this time is our 21 year old Turkish/Greek/German regen goalkeeper, Serdar. I signed him for free after his contract with HSV expired and I believed that he will grow in the shadow of our veteran keeper Jan Lastuvka. He proved me wrong, his performances made me send Lastuvka to the reserves bench. With three Man of the Match awards sp far Serdar is slowly becoming one of the pillars of our squad.
Only 3 games before reaching half way and we are 8th in the Premier League. Stay tuned to find out how it will end!