Dorchester Town Story – February and March 2015

Just before our game against Man City their board sacked manager Javier Aguirre and the media were speculating that I was among the favorites to take his job. I told them that was not the case but I was hoping that we could have a better chance to beat Manchester City given the circumstances.

I still remembered that they demolished us at the City Of Manchester Stadium in November, that game ended 5-1 with Adebayor scoring two or three goals. This time he was not in the starting eleven but we still had Tevez and Robinho to worry about. However, I chose to start with my standard attacking and aggressive set up hoping that we would manage to score at least once. The starting minutes of the game were quite entertaining for the neutrals, goalkeeper Davide La Rocca saved us twice before Liam Parker missed a huge chance of our own. He did much better on 33 minutes when Fran Merida played a great ball for him inside the box, he took it on the bounce and smashed in! The crowd was roaring and my lads were looking full of confidence, especially Parker who doubled the lead nine minutes later by powering it home after robbing a defender. We were leading 2-0 at half time but I was quite worried because I had to replace three players that were on the brink of total exhaustion. One of the substitutes was 17-year old defender Raul Munteanu who replaced Bahamondes, it was going to be a tough test for the youngster. Things were not looking too bad though, we were still intercepting lots of balls in midfield and creating chances on counter attacks. Unfortunately striker Jonathan Ezquerro missed two chances one on one with the goalkeeper and, as usual, we paid the price for that as Robinho and Tevez found the back of the net. The last minutes of the game were spectacular, both teams were trying desperately to score the winning goal and it could have gone either way but it remained level. Our winless streak in the league stretched to four games but the team’s performance gave me some hope for the future.

The next game was another very difficult test, away at 3rd placed Tottenham. We managed to beat them 1-0 in November but we were quite lucky I remember, they were down to 10 men but still dominated much of that game. The game was fairly quiet until the half hour mark but then Tottenham woke up and started to push forward so they took the lead six minutes before the break and could have added another one on the stroke of half time. We had some good moments after the break and with a bit of luck we managed to draw level when Dacian Varga converted a penalty kick on 63 minutes. We only enjoyed that for two minutes though, Jermain Defoe easily went past my two centre backs and Tottenham were back in the lead. Our reaction was weak, the attacks were easily handled by the Spurs and Defoe could have added another goal to his tally on counter attacks. Five games without a win, that was the most difficult situation I’ve had to handle all season.

The last game of the month was our best chance to end that poor run, we were playing away at 19th placed Burnley, a team that was having a similar run to ours but theirs was even worse: five straight defeats. I was not feeling very confident though and I thought that starting the game with a counter strategy would be the best option, I was hoping to let Burnley attack and steal the three points on the breakaway. The first half was quite boring as a result of my tactical choice because Burnely were not really attacking so there were no gaps behind for us to exploit on counters. I wanted to change the strategy at half time but I figured I could stick to it for a few more minutes to see what happens. Nothing was happening though and just when I was preparing to switch to the usual attacking strategy Ryan Carolan played a poor back pass, it was intercepted and Burnley took the lead! From that point on the game was all fireworks, I made the switch to attacking and it worked right away: Iulian Marin showed great vision to find Packie Doolin inside the box and the Irish winger powered it in on 70 minutes. We continued to push forward and five minutes later Fran Merida played a good through ball for Jonathan Ezquerro who slid it past the keeper to hand us the lead. Burnley switched to a kamikaze 4-2-4 formation but we were hanging in well and could have wrapped it up on a counter attack. We held on to the lead until the 89th minute when a shot from the edge of the area beat my keeper, I was desperate… The referee indicated five minutes of additional time, there was still hope and both teams were trying to score the fatal blow. The clock was ticking without mercy, four minutes went by before Fran Merida found another exceptional pass, a 40-yard pass that found Liam Parker with some space inside the penalty area and the striker kept cool and put it away! Phew, we won it…

Parker was chosen Premier League Young Player of the Month, he surely deserved the honor. I don’t know what we would have done without him…

Birmingham’s poor form continued, they slipped into 8th place with Sunderland climbing up behind us in 7th. Manchester United beat Arsenal in the Carling Cup final so we can be sure that finishing 6th would grant us a place in next season’s Europa League, we just have to hang on to that spot…

The last seven games of the season will make or break our European dreams and we don’t have an easy schedule at all.

Last season Aston Villa finished 6th with a total of 64 points so we would need another 15 to match that total. That would be five wins and I doubt we’ll get that many considering the poor form that we’ve been showing lately. However, there is still hope so we will fight for our chance as it all might go down to the very last game which will see us play Birmingham at home. That’s about it for now, thanks a lot for reading this update.