football rambles

 Bank Holiday Monday saw King's Lynn and Peterborough Sports take on each other in a local derby. Both teams came into the game with good wins a couple of days before with Sports having beaten Buxton at home and Lynn beating Marine on the road. There has been a sense of optimism around the Walks in preseason as they added a few good signings to a team that always had the ability to do better than scrape away from relegation last season and at the same time they have cleared out players who were not performing at the level. Therefore, I think that the expectation would have been the playoffs for Lynn. Conversely, Sports know that they are punching above their weight and will be happy to stay in the league for as long as possible. Some of those expectations will have to be reassessed though if yesterday's game is anything to go by. Lynn were lacklustre and it was Sports who looked like the team who could be upwardly mobile.  It took Sports just three minutes to take the lead whe...

 I imagine there are some people who regretted leaving this game when Blackpool went 4-1 up as they missed a very impressive comeback. Last week it was the forward line who I was critical of, but this week the defence let the side down for periods of the game and despite a poor game last week Shayne Lavery who scored a brace helped secure a point for the Us. The game got off to the worst possible start when the Us were caught napping at a corner and James Husband headed in at the far post. The rain poured down and Lavery thought he had an equaliser shortly after but was denied by the offside flag. That didn't deter him or the Us though and on 28 minutes Brophy found Lavery who slotted home for an equaliser. The lead didn't last long though as 10 minutes later Husband scored with a carbon copy of the first goal - you would have thought Cambridge would have learnt from the first one. Things then went from bad to worse as from the kick off Kyle Joseph burst forward and lobbed Reye...

Over the last three seasons in League 1 Cambridge have struggled for goals and this season doesn't look like it is going to be very different. I might be being harsh but I think that it might be even harder for them to find goals this season. The line seems to be being led by a very young Dan Barton and Shayne Lavery, who will need to find some fitness and his goal scoring boots quickly if the Us are to avoid the drop. Overall it wasn't a bad performance and Cambridge had the better of the chances and were overall pretty resolute in defence. It was the decision making in the final third that led to problems and to be fair some good saves from Jojo Wollacott in the Crawley goal. However, as often happens on these occasions a lack of decisiveness in front of goal goes punished and with 4 minutes left Ade Adeyemo sealed the three points for the visitors when Josh Flint made the most of Cambridge committing too many players forward and finding Adeyemo on the break.

 I tried to avoid being too boring for others on this trip by visiting every football ground in Prague, but Sparta came as a bit of a bonus. I had a list of all the important places to visit in Prague - of which there are a lot. The last place on my list was Letna Beer Garden, which offered some spectacular views of the city and as luck would have it was located close to Letna Stadium (the clue is in the name) where Sparta play. I didn't go on a tour of the ground, but here are a few photos from around the stadium.

 Nice ground. Shame about the game! On Saturday I was in Prague and Dukla had always been on my bucket list (well would be if I had such a thing), so it was great that they were at home and I got to visit their impressive stadium at Juliska.  The views of the city and the actual stadium are great. Unfortunately, we got there too early and there wasn't much going on, despite this there was a massive police presence, so we went further up the hill to get some drinks from the nearest supermarket before the ground opened. Once the ground had opened the facilities were great and the beer and hotdogs were probably the best you could get, especially given the price. The police presence seemed to be an easy way of them getting overtime as most Dukla fans seemed to be in family groups and didn't look like they'd ever cause trouble. We were also joined for the game by Rol (Andrew Kysil) who was one of my old Arsenal Kyiv gang. As for the game itself, Dukla appeared pretty toothless a...