Match Report

Goals scored
None

Man of the match
Shared amongst Brian Butler, Mark Hart and Dean Weaving

Today saw Landsdowne take on promotion chasers Ness Rangers in their own backyard. Three weeks had come to pass since their humiliation at the hands of Shoebury Old Boys III, giving the players plenty of time to reflect on their past performance and put it right today.

With this in mind Manager Peter Smart decided to change the formation to stop the middle being over run whilst also giving support to the full backs, however for any formation to work you need discipline and hard work.

The new 4-5-1 formation worked quite well despite loosing 4-0 to a very good side. It took the players half an hour to get used to the new formation, however for the remainder of the match the players battled well and worked tirelessly to get back into the game.

Take away a couple of errors and the score-line could have been less, however the better team on the day won and you could see why they are contenders for promotion.

Nothing is to be taken away from the Landsdowne players though. They worked their socks off today and lost with some pride.

Landsdowne got out of their half for the first time in three matches and did offer some shots on goal. Graham Rix cut in from the left and let fly with a couple of efforts, there was a rip rasper by Dave Allen, and a couple of headers and some good intricate play between Mel and Tony but unfortunately it was deemed offside.

There is always pluses and minuses to any formation but today despite the result there was plenty of positives.

The defence was not so deep and compacted play, the midfield battled well and at times made some good easy passes enabling the ball to do the work and up front you couldn't ask for a better target man. However,on the flip side Tony looked alone up front (ahhhh), also the work rate on give and go needs to be higher to create space and enable the midfield to join in attack, plus the fullbacks need to get higher up and support the wingers. With this in mind and a bit of tweaking tactically that Cup Final isn't as elusive as you may think!!!!!!!

For the first time this season "MAN OF THE MATCH" is shared not with two players but three. The three stooges of Mark Hart (aka Dennis Bergkamp), Dean Weaving (aka Golum) and Brian Butler the one and only German.

I tried to get an interview with them but to be fair I couldn't bloody understand any of them, one spoke German the other Dutch and the other one fluent French!!!!!