Confidence has been lacking a little recently, but this was a game where it really came into sharp focus. We were missing a couple of key players, but the squad was strong and for 30 minutes we were in a game - until an incident which should have swung the odds into our favour, but somehow was flipped and inspired a truly dreadful 60 minutes.
FC Sutton HKr are a very good footballing outfit and they started sharply, and you could see they had pace to hurt us, getting in twice but being thwarted by Andrew. But we settled and started creating ourselves, Danilo getting into a great position and his cross just eluded all, and both Renay and Joe went close and were denied by the keeper.
At this point the game was in the balance, pretty much 50-50. Then from a corner for them, Andrew pulled off a great point blank save but the ball ricocheted off Ryan and in. Probably sums up our luck right now.
Minutes later, though, they were given a red card when a player reacted to a Jeremy tackle with a shove in the face. They were pretty overly physical all game, but this was one the ref did spot. That should have been the cue to start playing and working the ball, but within minutes we were 2 down when we had 3 chances to clear the ball and all failed, before their dangerous forward swept home.
We tweaked the formation at HT to go more attacking, but proceeded to create literally nothing. We struggled to make 5 yard passes and went long far too often, and the spirit just ebbed from us. In reality, FC Sutton HKr could have scored more as Andrew pulled off 3 great saves, and Chris - let’s not forget 49-year-old Chris - saved us twice with last gasp challenges.
This was a truly painful watch. The team from August/September is a distant memory and right now we should concentrate on just doing the basics rather than thinking about anything grander than that.