Southampton 1 v 4 ASB

Some lovely weather greeted ASB on the south coast for a match against the saints. After finally having the squad in the changing rooms with a few new faces we set up like this.

Rob

Zack Woody Dave Frangi

Kevin Sam Tina Sharkey

TJ Steve

From the off it was evident that ASB held a greater quality of players but many who had not played with each other before so it took a good few minutes for everybody to gel. Southamptons approach was basic at most with ball after ball heading towards the sun in a style that Steve Mclaren would be proud of. 

It didn't take long for ASB to get on the scoresheet, some good work from a Kev flick on set up Sharkey on the edge of the box, the lanky striker pivoted like a ballet dancer away from his marker and drilled a left footed shot into the bottom corner. 1-0.

The game was very stretched now due to the neverending long ball from the hosts and with ASB trying to get the ball down on a pitch which looked ok but was quite poor under feet, it was getting scrappy. Due to this players were all over the place postionally and it made work very hard especially in midfield where there was so much space you could have parked a 747 in there. It wasn't long before it was two nil when TJ battled hard on the left a swung in a cross towards Steve, saw this opportunity to show his stuff and hit a volley that Mr Van Basten would have been proud of that flew in off the post. 

The back four were hard and this was summed up by Woody's numerous impressions of WWE wrestlers evertime a saints player got near the ball, this was really ticking them off and after a few more times i shall admit it was annoying me a bit because of the ammount of dangerous free kicks they had, but in all honesty we were always comfortable and Rob was putting in another display to show his manager why he should be wearing the number 1 jersey. So half time and 2-0.

One change at half time Polo Gears came on for Sam in midfield. It was quite early into the second half and Tina got caught in a clash in the middle of the park with a nasty dead leg (it really effin hurt) and this seemed to cause trouble to the captain and Southampton pulled a goal back after a very very sloppy and slack pass from Tina was intercepted and sent over the defence who didnt quite deal with it, but to the credit of the striker he finished it superbly. Things were getting quite niggly all over the park and there were alot of tackles going in. But ASB stepped up the pressure, Zack, Kev and Steve were linking up very well with alot coming from Zack's little one two's and Steve's strength was really showing. Sharkey continued to terrorise the right side of the saints with his touches and runs. 

It was a very basic goal which stretched the visitors lead, some commanding keeping fromRob gave him the chance to send a long ball over the back four of the hosts and the centre back totally missed his header letting Steve run onto it and calmly slipped it past the oncoming Southampton custodian. 3-1 super hoops.

The few chances that came saints way were very well dealt with by Rob and the back four. Frangi in particular was having a strong game and has clearly been practising using his left foot. The game was then finally put to bed with Steve hitting the back of the net for his hat-trick after some clever work on the right.

A great battling performance by ASB who in truth could have made it 5 or 6. It was scrappy at times but even with some different faces the style that ASB tried to play was still on the floor and quick football. Special mention to the back four, Rob and Steve.

Well done lads.

Il Capitano.