football rambles

 Last year's ill fated season started off with Ely putting Haverhill Borough to the cosh on wet Summery night and this year was no different. Haverhill got off to a good start with a fabulous goal after just 4 minutes. An equally impressive goal from Ben Tate (not sure if he's signing) on 26 minutes made it all square and he scrambled in a second on 36 minutes to give Ely the lead at the break. Ely continued to dominate the second half as Haverhill's early onslaught crumbled and Ely added a further 3 goals to give themselves a convincing 5-1 win in their final warm up game ahead of the season starting with a game against Woodbridge on Saturday.

 The first time I have managed to get to a league ground in ages and it was for a preseason friendly between Ipswich of League 1 and Premier League Crystal Palace, who have just appointed Patrick Viera as their manager and who I last saw on the touchline at Nice. It was a different experience to last time I was here when they took on West Ham also in preseason, 3 years ago, but a lot has changed since then. The crowd was pretty sparse in that a lot of people had hardly been able to get to a game in 2 years and a slot safety checks including proof of vaccination or lateral flow tests were in place. The game was entertaining enough and Nsiala in the heart of defence for Ipswich had an especially good game. Matata fro Palace on the other hand was guilty of wasting a lot of chances. Before the goal both teams had their chances and hit the post. Overall, it was an entertaining game, so it was a bit disappointing that it was decided by a slightly dodgy and not entirely unpredictable Zaha...

 I am hoping for a clear run at the season this time, as last season started off with some top trips out and a few new grounds, but even with this being the first trip out, it seems that that might be asking for a lot, so I am going to try and make the most of it while it lasts. I had been to Peterborough Sports before, but that was when they were a Step 5 club and since then they have climbed up to the Southern Premier League. The quality is there to be seen too, as they made easy pickings of Concord Rangers who are in the league above in the National League South. They seem to be getting it right on the pitch, but there still needs a lot to be done off it. There used to be a really enjoyable social club, but that appears to have been bulldozed in order to make a new stand. I imagine that there will be a new social club eventually, but at the moment there is just a burger van selling warm cans of soft drinks, which on a day that reached around 30 degrees was a bit disappointing. I...

 Mash'al are one of the few teams that I had seen ahead of this season, although they didn't seem that great and have got off to a shaky start again this season with one win and two losses.  The club started in  the fine year of 1982.  Up until independence they played in the Uzbekistan Soviet League. In 1992 with independence secured they started off in the first division before gaining promotion in 1994. Their highest finish the club has secured is 2nd in 2005 - a season that saw Shurat Mirkholdirshoev score 20 goals. A job that he had been trusted with after finishing the top scorer in the league the previous season for Navbahor. Unfortunately Pakhtakor pipped them to the championship. The team are usually a mid table outfit and that is probably where their aspirations lie this season. They were relegated in 2012 and were promoted in 2013 and since then have been safe, but not really done anything of note. Mubarak is a city well-known for oil and gas, but unlike s...

 Well, we have had a bit of time off for international week. I always found the international breaks boring and without being able to go to lower league football due to the pandemic, it could have been worse. Fortunately, the lower divisions in Ukraine are now all streamed on YouTube, so a quality weekend was bookended with the 2 reincarnations of Metalist, my favourites and friends Metalist 1925 and FC Metal. I''ll leave the controversies for the other places on social media where I have spoken about this. It was great to see Metalist 1925 beat promotion rivals and cup winners over Ahrobiznes to really gain a foothold in the race for promotion. After a weekend of watching games in Group A such as Dinaz winning at Bukovyna and Karpaty Halych turning over a lacklustre Chaika, it was time for the much more interesting Group B where the other Kharkiv team, Metal FC took on  Dnipro Cherkasy. It was a really good game.  On Sunday afternoon with an attendance of nearly 9,000 (...

I have started concentrating more on the Uzbekistan league this season, but last season I saw a few Navbahor games, mainly because they seemed to be the ones that were on when I had some time and also I was interested in the fact that Andrei Kanchelskis was the manager. He's since been sacked, and to be honest it isn't a massive surprise as they were pretty poor and weren't as entertaining as any of the other games that I have seen this season. That said, they did have a mid-table finish last year and this year have failed to win a game, having posted 2 losses and a 0-0 draw in the opening 3 fixtures. They might want to hurry up in appointing a new manager as caretaker, 69 year old Victor Jalilov doesn't look like he's up for the job anymore. It hasn't always been like this for Navbahor though, in the 1990s in the country's early infancy as an independent state they won the league once and the cup three times. The club were originally founded in 1978 and cal...

  Turon are newcomers to the Super League and it really is hard to find much information on them. They come from the town of Yaypan, which has a population of about 16,000. Having watched their recent home game against Lokomotiv it looked like most of the town were in the stadium and the noise that they made sounded like double that. with a draw and two losses in their opening gams, it would be brilliant to see what the atmosphere is like when they actually win a game.  The game against Lokomotiv was especially exciting, although they surrendered a 2 goal lead and centre back Vladimir Kosmynin had an especially eventful game. After firing in Toran's second as early as the 11th minute, he was given his marching orders in the 68th after intentionally handling the ball in the box. Loko got their second from the penalty that ensued. They gained promotion to the Super League this season after being founded in 2017. They seem to have brought in what is pretty much a completely new s...