Good to see us get our first win with Danny. The earlier friendlies had shown a big gap behind our striker, so we didn't look particularly likely to score in those games. Today we played a much more attacking formation, so had many more players forward, so created lots more chances.
The departure of last season's top scorers gives Antony a chance to show his skills, and he scored a fantastic free kick that maybe last season may have been taken by another player, so it is great his confidence brings out the best in him. Crossley was back from injury, carrying on looking one of the most eyecatching new signings, which is doubly impressive realising this is a move to a higher level than he has played before, starting so well so quickly is a great reflection on him and Danny. Taofiq played well today after some shakey earlier games.
Everyone involved has done a great job in building this team in just 6 weeks since Danny was appointed.
Hopefully a few more come in, maybe on loan. I like our starting 11 but then bench looks very light weight. I noticed Bradley Ryan on the bench today and came on with 5 to go, strange that one....
In our first 5 pre season games we've looked really good in the first half (ahead twice, drawing once, behind twice) then we dipped in the second half when some lower profile players had a run out. But I like Danny's management, avoiding the temptation of playing his strongest team all match long to get a result and ignoring the lower profile players, instead he has given all a real chance to show him what they can do. So it has been a productive pre-season. Jamison is spot on about the bench, it shows how hard it is to step up from U23 to first team. But it will be good to finally see 90 minutes of our main players once the season starts.
Well done to whoever put the pre-season fixtures together. Last season we played one pre-season game against a higher team, Charlton, which we lost, and played lots of games against lower teams that we all won. But the problem was lower teams didn't really prepare us for tougher league games, and so we didnt learn how to respond positively to defeat, so fell apart in the league once we started losing. Under Danny we've played a great mix of higher and lower teams and the Beckenham game showed we learned lessons from recent challenging games.
That Beckenham number 4 enjoys a challenge, he wanted to fight the whole of the Welling team single handed! Just a shame Stefan has gone, he'd have stepped in to act as peacemaker!
