Match Report

IBO Reporter: channonite

|The second match of the season in early August, but not in the crucial Championship; instead, a League Cup round away, against a League One team. How many times in the past have we come unstuck in similar circumstances? That we didn’t this time is as much to do with a moment of brilliance from Mateus Fernandes as anything.

The team was mostly made up of fringe players, together with some names that ordinarily would be the first names on the teamsheet. McCarthy in goal is clearly the second choice to Baz now. Harwood-Bellis and Fernandes needed game time, and probably would manage 60 minutes of game time. Manning had hardly had time to enjoy the heroics of beating Wrexham on Saturday. For Sugawara, Downs, Edwards, Brereton Díaz, and, probably to a lesser extent, Archer, it was another chance to show Still what he could do. Accepting the two needing to regain their match fitness, the only one in the team you would expect to be a regular in the first team was Shea Charles.

Looked at like that, it goes some way to explain the simply abysmal performance in the first 45 minutes...

A quote from Franny Benali summed it up for me:

Clearly, a number of players haven't taken their chance or done anywhere near enough to have impressed Will or shown the desire that they want to either stay or break into the first team.

That game was an opportunity, and from what we witnessed, especially in that first 45 minutes, it's nowhere near the kind of reaction that you would be expecting if you're the manager.

So, that’s more than enough about the first half.

From the start of the second half, it was clear the players had been told to move the ball quickly, and it paid an almost immediate dividend. Downs, under pressure, played the ball back to Matty Fernandes, who quickly moved it on to Brereton Díaz, and set off like a hare upfield. Meanwhile, BBD found Archer out on the right, who cut in, while Matty ran behind him. Archer slipped the ball to Fernandes, who trapped it with his right, and then hit it with his left - bang - into the roof ot the Northampton goal. Brilliant work by Matty. 0-1. From the moment Downs passed to Fernandes, not a single Northampton player got near the ball until the keeper fished it out of the net. Quality.

Shortly after, there was a run of two or three decent chances, the most notable of which was Sugawara volleying from distance and hitting the post.

Between that flurry of chances and the final whistle, neither keeper was troubled much, other than a couple of half-chances for Northampton near the end.

So, banana skin avoided and through to the next round, away to Norwich, on Tuesday, the 26th August at 7.45 pm.

Man of the Match

|No competition here, Matty Fernandes. Even if he is not quite 100% yet, he produced the one bit of quality in the match. I really, really hope we can hang on to him.