football rambles

Here's a list of the different competitions I saw teams compete in with the number of games in brackets: Eastern Counties League Premier (11) English League 1 (4) Pre-season friendly (3) Absolute Sport Travel Trophy (2) Emirates Cup (2) Northern Premier League Premier (2) Cambridgeshire League Senior A (2) Eastern Counties League Division 1 (2) English Premier League (2) FA Women's Premier League Cup (1) FA Vase (1) William Coad Intermediate Cup (1) Bundesliga-1 (1) FA Cup (1) Central Midlands League (1) Creake Charity Shield (1)

Here are the stadiums that I visited last season with the number of games and home team in brackets. The Unwin Ground,Ely (Ely City - 15) London Road, Peterborough (Peterborough United - 5) Villa Park, Birmingham (Aston Villa - 3) The Abbey Stadium, Cambridge (Cambridge United - 2) The Emirates Stadium, London (Arsenal - 2) The Walks, King's Lynn (King's Lynn Town - 2) Memorial Playing Fields, Downham Market (Downham Town - 2) Recreation Way, Mildenhall (Mildenhall Town - 1) The Recreation Ground, Thetford (Thetford Town - 1) Cricket field Road, Newmarket (Newmarket Town - 1) Westfalen Stadion, Dortmund ( Borussia Dortmund - 1) Brisbane Road, London ( Leyton Orient - 1) Hillsfield, Rocester (Rocester - 1)

I saw slightly fewer games than usual last season, mainly due to a lack of mid week games and other football type commitments. I still managed to get to 37 games and see 121 goals though.  The biggest home win was Arsenal 5 Benfica 1 on 2nd August in the Emirates Cup and the same score between Downham Town and Halstead on 11th April. The biggest away win was Ely City 0 Ipswich Wanderers 7 on 15th November. The most goals in a match was also 7 from the above game and Mildenhall Town 4 Ely City 3 on 26th August.

I have taken a long time in summing up last season and we aren't that far from the start of pre-season now. One of the reasons for this is that it was so disappointing. With Villa it was another season of battling relegation, although the sacking of Lambert and replacing him with Sherwood helped to galvanise the team, it was still a disappointing season. At least Sean finally saw a league win when we saw them beat West Ham in May through a Tom Cleverley goal. What could have been the real highlight of the season ended in disappointment when Villa lost 4-0 to Arsenal in the FA cup final. We had already seen how powerful Arsenal could be at the start of the season when we saw them destroy Benfica 5-1 at the Emirates. The real highlight of the season was going to Dortmund and visiting not just the stadium, but also the museum. It was an amazing weekend and an amazing stadium to visit. Unfortunately, BVB went down 1-0 to Hannover, which was basically the story of our season. BVB like t