St. Neots Town 2-5 Yaxley

After Saturday's last-minute defeat, we flew out of the blocks at the start of this game, going straight on the attack and taking the lead after 5 minutes: a throw-in was nodded down by Charley Sanders in the box, with Tom Waumsley pouncing to tap-in. After some more bombardment of the St. Neots box, we doubled our lead in the 12th minute: Ross Watson headed in from a corner, with a defender getting a slight touch in his attempts to stop the goal. It should have been 0-3 to us three minutes later, but Tom Waumsley wasted a golden chance, shooting tamely at keeper James Philp after intercepting his poor pass.

We lowered our intensity after this, gradually allowing St. Neots to grow into the game as a result. However, due to some poor decision-making and finishing in the final third, they struggled for a while to create meaningful chances, even as they took more and more of the possession. Their first clear-cut chance came in the 27th minute, an audacious long-range shot from Prince Mutswunguma forcing an excellent save out of Aaron Butcher. However, even with their poor finishing, the amount of possession we were granting St. Neots - particularly in the midfield area - was always going to come back to bite us, and so it proved when the home side pulled one back in the 35th minute: a free kick was played into the box and one of our defenders got a touch on it, but this just saw the ball fall perfectly for Sam Goode to tap-in. 1-2 at half-time.

The second half saw St. Neots continue on the front foot, with our midfield continuing to sit deep and leaving St. Neots space to attack. Early in the half, there was a mass brawl after a terrible tackle on Joe Butterworth, with the referee inexplicably only giving out one booking after everything calmed down. In any case, we extended our lead against the run of play in the 55th minute: John-Paul Duncliffe played an excellent early cross into the box and Waumsley was in the perfect place to shoot and score. This should have calmed us down and allowed us to retake control of the game, but St. Neots caught our defence napping and responded immediately, Mutswunguma shooting beneath Butcher to score.

After a quieter fifteen-minute period, we began to take control of the game again, with a couple of substitutions in the 70th and 75th minutes improving our overall play. In the 76th minute, Waumsley had another excellent chance after a Dan Cotton cross, poking narrowly over the bar in front of goal. However, the referee judged that Cotton had been fouled inside the box while making the cross and pointed to the penalty spot. After a couple minutes delay, Cotton stepped up to take and calmly converted. The rest of the game saw us dominating proceedings and attacking quickly, resulting in our fifth goal in the 87th minute when Watson volleyed inside the box.

Overall, despite the margin of victory, I feel somewhat hard-pressed to call this an excellent performance. This is because, outside of the opening and closing fifteen minutes, we struggled to retain possession and were frequently overrun in the midfield. Fortunately, St. Neots were profligate in front of goal and our defence did well to hold them out, but there's certainly a few things for the manager and coaching staff to think about going into the Biggleswade double-header this Bank Holiday weekend.