Torquay United: January 2010

Hello friends and welcome back to the next installment of my Torquay story.

The new year began with a Third Round FA Cup tie at home to Swansea in front of a capacity crowd of 6,100 fans. We put Swansea under pressure immediately with both Barrowman and Freeman going narrowly wide and yet again Nicky Wroe hiting the woodwork. An injury to Shane Hooks saw us briefly down to ten men and Swansea took full advantage of the extra space in midfield and produced the only goal of the game after 20 minutes. Realistically we didn’t cause Swansea that much trouble though I felt we could have done a lot better.

After the defeat in the cup we were looking to get all three point from our league visit to Barnet and we did just that with two goals from Andrew Barrowman in a match played on a frosty surface. The home side made things difficult for us taking the lead after 20 minutes but we fought back with Freeman setting up the equalizer and Barrowman converting from the spot 10 minutes from time. Austrian Dominik Hofbauer made his debut on the left flank, joining us for three months  to replace the injured O’Kane.

Here’s Hofbauer’s profile..

Our next game was at back at The Plainmoor Stadium against Dagenham & Redditch. Danjiel Subotic put us into the lead early on neatly placing the ball into the net off a Benyon pass who is now the starting “Poacher” one again as Freeman’s loan has finished. The real story of the game was the weather as it absolutely downpoured for most of the game making our short passing game difficult. After the interval I asked the team to play a more direct game and that produced two more goals from Subotic and Benyon to wrap things up nicely.

The following game was away to Chesterfield and provided the opportunity for Cedric Evina and Omar Koroma to make their debuts as both are on short term loans. Along with Barrowman and Benyon they all had great chances but none were able to score. At the other end a sloppy pass by Carolan set up Chesterfield for their first goal and poor marking by the back four allowed the home team to double their lead and we had to taste defeat for the second time in four games.

After the defeat against Chesterfield we had chance to redeem ourselves in front of the home fans with the visit of Burton and we did just that. Elliot Benyon got off us to a great start scoring a real poachers goal after a game of head tennis ended up in the box which Benyon pounced on to strike home. He added a second 7 minutes later, attaching himself to a lovely through ball by Barrowman and was unlucky not to complete his hat-trick hitting the post twice in the same move before half time. Burton were a little more adventurous after half time but we caught them on the break which resulted in a penalty allowing Benyon to get his third goal. Subotic came on as his replacement and immediately scored to complete the rout.

The final game of the month was at home to Bradford City which turned out to be one of those “bore draws” though a Danjiel Subotic equalizer from a free kick spared us from a home defeat.

Aside from the three players already mentioned I also picked up Victor Palsson from Liverpool on a short term to act as cover just in case of any injuries due to hard playing surfaces.

Here’s the league table.

As you can see we have widened the gap even further over the chasing pack so just a few more victories could hand us the title quite early. I hope so!

February Fixtures

After getting knocked out of The FA Cup we can now concentrate solely on winning the league .

Thanks for reading.