Torquay United: November 2009

Hello friends and greetings from Canada where the 40C humidity has finally broken thank goodness.

The first game of the new month was away to Stafford Rangers in the FA Cup First Round. I knew this would be a difficult game but nonetheless I decided to rotate a few players in that hadn’t managed a first team appearance for some time. With their match fitness a bit suspect and the prospect of an upset, Stafford put up a brave fight in both halves but Eunan O’Kane coming on as sub was picked out by Luke Freeman on the far side of the box and his shot on the volley flew into the net and put us through to the next round.

The following match was also a cup game, the JPT quarter final away to Millwall. The home side were strongly favored and my scouts reported that they did extremely well against a 442. For the first time this season I changed the formation to a 4141 with Subotic as the lone striker. We went behind after 23 seconds from the kick off. We fought back and began to gain the upper hand but with only one striker it was never going to be easy. Andrew Barrowman came on for a tired Subotic and looked really up for a battle and his hard work paid off late in the game when he chipped the Millwall keeper after a poor defensive clearance to send the game to a penalty shoot out. However we were unable to take advantage from the spot and missed two penalties and so were eliminated.

The following game was a league encouter against promotion hopefulls Shrewsbury. The home side took an early lead  which is beginning to become a pattern with us but Conor Henderson soon put us back on level terms after 7 minutes. Luke Freeman then gave us the lead after the interval with a powerful effort from just outside the box but Shrewsbury hit back immediately as suddenly the defence became  like statues. The home side with their tails up began to control the game and our passing and defending fell apart in dramatic style as we conceded two more goals in the last 10 minutes to suffer our first league defeat of the season.

We were back at home for our next game in front of the biggest crowd of the season; a whopping 4,700 people as we took on second place Rotherham . After the humiliating defeat in the previous game we needed to get back on track and we did so in emphatic style. Luke Freeman got us off to a great start after just 4 minutes when his pace proved to much for the Rotherham defence. We went two up 12 minutes later when Barrowman headed into the six yard box for Freeman to sneak in for a easy tap home. Ryan Carolan who I switched to the DCL position headed in the third from a corner after which Rotherham got one back themselves in similar fashion. The second half though belonged to Carolan who netted two more from set pieces and had another two cleared off the line though Freeman put the icing on the cake with a super strike from 20 yatds out to cap a magnificent team performance.

The following game was a trip to Port Vale who were in 19^th in the table but were heavily favored by the bookies to win. As is now the case in almost every match we conceded a goal inside 2 minutes as we stood around watching Port Vale do their thing. We created very little up front and it wasn’t until the second half that we came alive with Barrowman setting up two goals for Freeman, one a magnificent strike on the volley in which he injured himself. Port Vale found the equalizer on the hour but Elliot Benyon who came on for Freeman headed the ball into the path of Barrowman who slotted home for the lead once more. Just when it seemed the points were in the bag Michael Poke did something completely erractic and came charging out of his goal for no apparent reason leaving it wide open for Port Vale striker Davies to chip over his head and secure the draw.

The final game of the month was against Redditch in the FA Cup Second Round. For a change we got off to a flyer after Falkinghams long pass from midfield was perfectly placed for Benyon to hit home and give us the lead after 2 minutes. When Carlisle added a second and Redditch had a player sent off I was expecting a festival of goals but disapointingly that never happened and so we went through to the third round in a less than glorious style.

Well that’s it for this post and stupidly I forgot to take a screen shot of the league table an upcoming fixtures as in real time I’m already two games into December so my apologies. Hopefully you will accept my word when I say that Torquay are still top of the table :)

Thanks for reading.