Stotfold 2 Knobs 3

The Vets recorded their third league win of the season in their first league match of the season in a hard fought, and at times fractious match against Stotfold.

Shocked to be playing on a proper pitch with dug outs and seating Knebworth were forced to defend in the opening exchanges, but the reshaped back 4, with Vinny moving to left back, held firm. With the ball, Knebworth looked strong, Sergio and Jono looked dangerous with good support from Paul and Darren.

Against the run of play Knebworth took the lead with a great pass from someone finding Jono who declined the opportunity to round the wide keeper and slotted home from the edge of the box - much to Wayne's, James' and Jono's surprise who thought the keeper had tipped it wide.

Knebworth survived the loss of Vinny who fell awkwardly on his shoulder twice, and Martyn came on at left back. Knebworth then went 2 up following some great work from Darren and Paul - this released Sergio who continued his good form with his first goal of the match.

Stotfold then forced their way back into the match, with a break down the right wing and a deep cross that was volleyed home. It got worse for Knebworth, poor marking from a free kick allowed a free header and the Stotfold equaliser. Disappointing to give some soft goals when we had just cleared 3 off the line.

2 each at half time. The managers Darren and James looked at the stats and came to the conclusion that a like for like substitution was needed so Greg replaced his brother Dave.

The second half was a bit scrappy, but with fitness a relative concept, Knebworth looked much stronger as time went on. In the 75th minute some good work from Martyn and Greg released Sergio who beat 3 players, surged at the goal and calmly mis kicked it through the keepers legs.

The back 4 defended well, kept Tony C out of trouble to see Knebworth home for their 9th point of the season.

Great all round effort from everyone - this was a tough fixture but everyone (apart from Woody!) committed to the challenge and victory was deserved.

White sliced sandwiches for 6 of us after the game led to calls for healthier alternatives after home games from Greg. The managers are considering this request, but have pointed out to Greg that his BMI and general fitness is determined by the other 6 days and 20 meals in his week.

Knobs 3 Saints 4

A casual performance from the Vets led to defeat. We began much more brightly than last week, goals were assembled with minimum fuss, the only hiccup was Gerry forgetting the balls. Unfortunately shambolic Saints arrived with only 8 players and the match was downgraded to a friendly (league points to Knebworth we assume).  Big thanks to Darren Bedford who accepted the late invitation to join the fixture for Saints and to Gerry and Sergio for doing the same.

After an impressive victory last week perhaps we thought this would be an easy win again, especially after James hand/shouldered in a corner in the early minutes to give Knebworth the lead. There was plenty of possession for Knebworth as the ball was passed around well. But Sergio, angered by his demotion to the bench and then onto Saints had a point to prove and put himself about like a Saints veteran. Sergio levelled the score after turning past the defence - his delight in proving a point to the management was tempered when he realised he had turned past Vinny and not under pressure joint, deputy assistant helper joint manager James.

Knebworth continued to dominate possession but found themselves 2 - 1 down at half time after a shot found its was past Tony from close range. A few expletives followed from the big stopper, but obviously he remains a legend.

Under pressure joint deputy assistant joint manager helper james called Chairman Al for a vote of confidence at half time. The vote of confidence was offered by Al in exchange for a return to the side next week in a free role behind the front 2.  A few tactical changes were made at half time with the newly signed full back Rob moved from right midfield to left midfield, woody moved to midfield and captain for the day paul (play me up front or I am taking my ball home) Matthews, moved up front. This tactical masterstroke appeared to be working as woody equalised after a cross from Rob. Knebworth then proceeded to dominate again, but missed chances and lacked the killer touch. The final ball as drifted across the Saints penalty on numerous occasions.

A great run from Rob saw Knebworth take the lead, and again maybe we relaxed too much because Sergio was still trying to kick Bully, Gerry was angry as we've ever seen him and Darren had a variety of Knebworth forwards in his left pocket. Saints were not in the mood for giving up and equalised with a once in an 8 aside season shot, and then sealed victory with a great strike past Tony as Knebworth were caught on the break from an attacking corner. 

Disappointingly result - if we had defended better, crossed it better, finished better and not given them 3 players a victory would have been ours.

More selection headaches await management duo laurel and hardy with a squad containing 8 centre backs, 9 centre midfielders, 14 centre forwards one keeper and 2 full backs. Thanks to angry Brendan Walkden, Chairman Al and Martyn Brown for stepping down from the squad with good grace. We had 17 players available, Saints had 8, and we lost. Darren "hardy" Aldrich, chief joint, supremo manager has woved never to give the opposition our 3 best players again.

Great start with the whistle from Gavin, you wonder why he ever tried to play, he was that good. Look forward to those brown shorts  gracing the theatre of dreams for many more matches.

For the record, 3 points a clean sheet for Tony

Knobs 7 Walkern 1

With 21 originally declaring themselves available for selection the managers had a tough task deciding who would play where and how to give everyone a game. However with 3 late dropouts and a retirement from football we had a squad of 17 ready for action.

The 30 minute reconstruction of the goals warmed the players up tremendously.  Who needs time with a ball before a match?

Pre-season had clearly gone well as the starting 11 were immediately on the front foot giving Walkern little time on the ball and creating chance after chance.

There were too many shots, goals and assists to describe, suffice to say it was little surprise that Walkern’s players were begging the ref to end the game early.

Wayne’s debut for the team was a positive as were goals for the returning Woody and Sergio.  Last season’s top scorer Dave M already leads this season with 2.

Joint manager James gave us a glimpse of what is to come by ensuring he was the only player to get a full 90 minutes.

Knobs 1 Whitewebbs 3

Season over!

Knobs 4 Buntingford 6

I will try to keep this brief, since this match is best forgotten, and I doubt whether many of you will be inclined to read this blog anyway!

We played well in the first half, showing some lovely passing at times, and we held a deserved 4-2 lead at half time.

For the second half, Dave J rotated the team, in order to give everyone a chance to play, including himself. Now, this was an end-of-season friendly, and I fully support the laudable aim of allowing everyone to play a half. Unfortunately, however, the team was weakened by the various changes, particularly the loss of Dave himself in goal, and Buntingford were the better team in the second half. With the help of individual errors by some of our players, they ran out 6-4 winners. This was a great way for their retiring manager to bow out in his last game, and it was a good day for the landlord of The Station Bar and Dining, since the Buntingford players packed into the pub to celebrate. Quite a few of our players also came along, to be fair, and Dave amused us by being incapable of finding the winner of the scratchcard, when it he had won the prize himself...

I must give credit to all of our players for their exertions on a very warm day. There were many excellent performances, but I must mention Dave M, for his tireless chasing and running, and a very sweet finish for our first goal, and Paul, who showed great composure in scoring a quality hat-trick: he should be very proud of that. Finally, it was good to have Rob back - and now he also knows how to find the brooms, when it's his turn to sweep the pavilion!

Good luck next week.

Chairman.

Knobs 2 Dun Cow 5

We put our 6 game winning streak (8 unbeaten) on the line against county champs Dun Cow.  We knew this was going to be tough, especially those of us who used to line up against Garston each pre-season for our annual mauling.  Anyone who beat Garston in the cup final was going to be good.

A couple of our steady and solid back 4 were unavailable for various reasons which was not ideal so we had a bit of a reshuffle at the back.  Gavin, carrying a slight hip injury slotted in at right back, a returning Martyn slotted in at centre back.

In hindsight, talking Dun Cow up may not have been a good idea!  Dun Cow were very, very good.  They passed the ball well and quickly but no better than Owens (league Champs) had when they visited us back in December.  Against Owens we dug in and were robbed at the end. From the kick off in this game some players were like rabbits in headlights. Over the past 2 months we have played some great football.  For the first half of this game some of our players just wanted rid of the ball and lumped it away.  Getting it back again was hard! There was very little of the passing football we had been good at recently and not many options for a Knobs player in possession.

The first goal we conceded was “one of those things”.  Tony C who has been in a great spell of form and who made a number of great saves throughout just got it wrong and let the ball through him from a cross shot.  He’d save the next 10 if they were hit at him the same.  Unfortunately a few heads dropped and a few moans started to escape people’s lips.  Not long after, the 2nd Dun Cow goal was scored.  The striker took an early shot through defenders which gave Tony little chance.  We were 2 down in about 15 minutes so this was to be a test of character.

We finally dug in and despite little possession we harried, chased (a lot) and limited the chances.  It looked like we would get to half time at 2-0 down and have a chance to regroup.  Unfortunately Roberto Carlos chose the final minute of the half to Rugby tackle a DC player in our box.  It was a needless challenge and James was keen to point that out to him!  So we trudged off 3-0 down and dispirited.

Half time was memorable!  We had 2 subs (Banksy and Rob H).  Banksy went up top whilst Dave M had a rest.  Rob H returned after a whole season out.  He said he was not fit enough to play in the mid field yet so he was asked to play left back for Roberto.  Roberto clearly still “emotional” after giving away the penalty picked up his stuff and declared he was going home!  This left us all stunned and Greg fearing he’d have to sweep the changing rooms rather than Roberto, went after him to persuade him to come back. 

With Rob eventually slotting in at right back and Gavin at left we kicked off and went straight on the attack.  Silly us.  They countered and despite a miraculous goal line clearance from Gavin they scored from the resulting corner.  2 minutes later it looked like deja vu as again the ball slid of Gavin’s head on the goal line, this time though into his own net.  5-0 with 35 minutes to go.  Oh dear!

We’d talked at half time about wanting the ball and trying to play and it being better giving it away trying to play than punting it away.  The penny seemed to drop despite the score line and we starting keeping the ball for longer, playing some 1-2s and gaining some territory.  We were still working hard when they had the ball and Tony made a couple of great saves but it was much better.  Jono put in a real shift up front.

We made a couple of subs, with Dave M replacing Bully and going to right midfield, Paul moving to the middle.  Roberto (toys back in pram) returned to left back to give Gavin’s hips a rest.
Finally we put a good move together.  We released Dave down the right who using his pace went past his man, slotting a perfectly weighted ball in between the centre backs for Banksy to run onto.  Banksy had no choice but to shoot first time and did so with great accuracy finding the far corner of the goal.

Ten minutes later more Knobs pressure led to a corner.  Our 2 centre backs decided they would wait on the half way line to give our shorter players a chance to score.  The corner came in and looked to be well cleared by Dun Cow.  However it fell to Roberto on our left who sent back a lob from a full 35 yards over the despairing keeper and under the cross bar.  He could have been at home sulking but instead he has a goal he’ll always remember!

And that is how it ended.  If only we hadn’t let in a soft first and a silly penalty it would have looked a respectable score.  We didn’t deserve a draw as they were by far the better team.  But there were many positives. The biggest one was that we are the only team to score more than 1 goal against them all season. Owens, Welwyn, Rickmansworth, Garston didn’t manage that!

Off to the pub.  No opposition turned up and only a few of us.  Instead of the brown stuff we all had bacon sandwiches! (The bacon was brown.)

Knobs 3 Goldings 0

On the back of 5 straight wins and playing a team we beat 2-0 away earlier in the season confidence was high amongst the team.

The hat-trick heroes from the previous 2 games were away together on a narrow boat holiday so we were an inform striker and a Banksy light but such is the depth of the squad and attacking players this season that we could field strong replacements so the management were not concerned.  We felt the only thing that could beat us was our own complacency.

Goldings have 1 tactic.  The hoof!  They have 1 decent player who Ron, every time we played them over the past 5 years, used to tell us was 29. He still looks the youngest in the team, plays up front and is the recipient of each hoof up pitch.  It didn’t take too long at the weekly management meeting for the management to come up with a plan to nullify this tactic by giving James the job of marking him supported by Richard.

We kicked off and Goldings proceeded to lump the ball up pitch on every occasion. In response, either James or Richard headed it back and when Peter Pan pulled out to our left the self-declared “Roberto Carlos” (Lee) did the same thing.  Other than a rugby tackle on James, Peter Pan did very little and ended up asking to play in midfield half way through the 2nd half.  He didn’t get many touches in there either and with no big lump to aim at up front Goldings run out of ideas.

With the 1 and only threat cancelled out Tony C remained pretty much a spectator throughout.  He had the odd goal kick, ran off his line a few times, shouted some abuse and that was it.  The back 4 played as a unit, supported each other throughout with Tony K and Lee raiding down the flanks at will.  A great platform for the team to play from.

On the odd occasion Goldings tried to play through the middle Bully and Darren simply took the ball off them with ease and launched further attacks.  Gerry and Greg on the wings were getting on the ball and causing problems and preventing Goldings’ wingers getting the ball.  Total midfield domination throughout.

There was lots of possession and lots of great passing football with every single player involved.  Paul and Jonno up front showed great movement, held the ball up for the midfielders to join the attacks and terrorised the Golding back 4 all game.

It was about 15 minutes in that we scored our first.  A pass out of defence up to Jonno’s feet was flicked wide for the on running Darren.  Darren’s cross from near the right corner flag was met by a thundering header from Jonno, leaving the keeper with no chance.  It was the least we deserved even at that early stage having had a few half chances and shots saved.

We continued to dominate for the rest of the half but no further goals followed. 

Dave was happy at half time and brought himself on at left back and Gavin on at right midfield.

We were even more dominant in the 2nd half but best of all passed the ball with confidence.  It was no wonder Golding tired as they spent most of the game chasing the ball.  When they did get it, we won it straight back.

Paul got his deserved goal early in the second half.  He picked the ball up 10 yards out and sent a rocket into the top right of the Goldings goal.  Again, no chance for the keeper who was clearly tired from hoofing the ball up the pitch every few minutes.

The 3rd goal came when Roberto Carlos, back at left back after a breather, collected a ball at the byline just inside the Goldings box on the left, cut the ball back to the on running Darren who slid the ball in from inside the 6 yard box despite Jonno stamping on his foot.

And there you have it.  6 straight wins!

We scored 3 probably had 70% possession and every player played well.  You couldn’t ask for more.

Next week we have a league game against new boys Rickmansworth town.  Dare we dream of making it 7 straight wins?