After drawing against Istanbul Basaksehir in our first friendly, we faced Trabzonspor to play our last friendly of the year. I was looking forward to this game as I wanted to see what improvements Rosenior has made to the team. I have to say that there were minor improvements; however, there are still some issues that need to be resolved.
The starting line-up consisted of: Ingram (in goal); Coyle; Elder; Jones; (as the back three); Longman; Mcloughlin; Smith; Seri (in the middle); Slater; Simons and Jarvis (up front). I was not too bothered about the starting eleven as I was sure that our main men would get brought on some point in the match. It is good to see Elder back and Jarvis and Simons getting to start as well.
In the first half, we conceded very early – in the fourth minute. Jones got pressured near the corner flag, resulting in him making a loose pass that ended up at our opponent’s feet. He smoothly passed it to his teammate, who then went on to slot the ball, cleanly, into the bottom right corner of the goal. This is one of the issues that consistently happen in every match we play. Our defence needs to start switching on more and remain calm when they receive the ball near our own net. We, also, seemed to struggle to get out of our own half and that is something that I have not seen us do this season. Normally we dominate in possession and create chances. To be honest, I think that Trabzonspor were good, and they controlled the game well. We did have a couple of chances but there was only one that nearly went in. Tyler Smith had the ball played to him over the top, and he had a lot of space as well. Their goalkeeper came out to try and take the ball off him, but Smith managed to dribble past him and take his shot. It was an open goal and it looked as if it were going in until their defender made a superb block making the ball go out of play. Other than that, we played quite poor.
It ended 1-0 to the opposition at halftime.
In the second half, we started with the same squad for the first 15 minutes and eventually our main men came on. This last half of the 90 minutes was much better than the first, and we started to look more threatening. We had more time with the ball, and we started to make more chances. The defence was much better, and we did not make any unintelligent mistakes. We are still, though, going backwards instead of going forwards and this is something that we have been doing for a while now and it must stop. I know that we, sometimes, run into trouble or a dead end and we have to go back to a defender but the majority of the time we have men open on the other side of the pitch and all the have to do is switch the play. It was starting to get to the end of the match, and I was thinking that it was going to be a one nil loss. Until Sinik was brought down in the area and the referee pointed to the spot. I have not seen us being awarded a penalty since the Bristol game, at the start of the season. Normally, the referees are against us and give all the free kicks and penalties to the team we are playing against. So, I was very surprised to see us have a penalty. Tufan was put up for the job and successfully completed it. He smashed the ball into the bottom left corner of the goal beating the keeper. After this penalty, the game started to slow down and get scrappy. Neither team were able to get another goal and the match ended 1-1.
I am happy with the result, but I want to see us apply what we did in the second half into the league games. Our next opponent is Watford away and it will be nice to see the championship back in progress.
👏 x