football rambles

 We followed up the game on Saturday with a trip to London to see Shakhtar take on Spurs in a friendly at the Tottenham Stadium. It was good to catch up with Jonny, Phil and Dean and also to go to the Elbow Room for the first time in years. Not for Spurs fans, but for me the highlight of the match was the chance to see Piatov play in goal for the Miners for the last time before hanging up his gloves. He only lasted 15 minutes and was given a guard of honour.  Ukrainian football has obviously been impacted by the war and to be honest Shakhtar look to have suffered a bit more than other clubs and for the first time in years are not favourites to win the title, therefore it's perhaps not surprising that Spurs dismantled what was a bit of a makeshift team.  Tottenham opened the scoring in 38th minute when Maddison went down like the proverbial sack of ..... to 'win' Spurs a penalty, which Kane converted from the spot. Their lead was short-lived though with Venezuelan, Kevin K...

We didn't go to the second day of the tournament, but for the record West Ham won the trophy after beating Espanyol 4-2 and Shakhtar came second after beating Cambridge 3-2,

The tournament started off with a young Shakhtar team taking on a young West Ham team. The temperature didn't help with the pace of the game, but there were still plenty of chances with the Hammers probably having the slight edge. Kieran Sadler had the best chance of the game when his blasted shot rattled the Shakhtar crossbar. Artem Gabelok who came on as substitute for the Donetsk team also came close and looked lively in front of goal. Those chances did come though when West Ham had changed almost their entire team. The first chance of the game fell to West Ham who came close to scoring through Elliot Lee after Seb Lleget had done the hard work, but Shakhtar keeper Yevhen Grytsenko was equal to the shot. Shakhtar came back and came close from corner, which was expertly controlled by Rotislav Rusin who found Nikita Bezugliy in space, but he was unable to keep his shot on target. In the first 10 minutes Blair Turgott tested Grytsenko again, but he was able to save with eas...

A few photos from the game: West Ham clear the ball.  Some midfield action West Ham come close

Shakhtar and West Ham's under 21 squads line up before playing out a 0-0 in the heat at the Abbey Stadium yesterday. The bald fellow is Shakhtar coach Miguel Cardosa.

With the temperature in excess of 30 degrees I am not sure if the young West Ham and Shakhtar players really had to warm up, but here are a few photos of them going through their paces before the game.

Yesterday we went to the first day of the Absolute Sports Travel Cup sat the Abbey Stadium in Cambridge. We saw Shakhtar draw 0-0 with West Ham and Cambridge draw 2-2 with Espanyol on what was and probably will be the hottest day of the year. Match reports will follow, but firstly I am going to upload a few photos.