|
I tell the lads to continue where they left off and we begin in a counter set up away in Sporting’s house. They are pushing forward in the first ten minutes and have a couple of shots on target but easily answered by us. Flowing move by Adriano to set up Rondon, but his shot is blocked in the 19th. I make adjustments in the 20s as pressure mounts as per my Assistant Manager’s suggestions. Despite a metric tonne of pressure, we finish the half 0-0. Stats for the first half – They’ve had 12 shots, 5 on target, we’ve had 3 and 2. Adriano gets free and scores at the 53rd minute but is called offsides. I pull Mexer for Rodrigues. Rondon is injured so I pull him for Kayke. Sequeira for Mariano. Game is over we tie 0-0. Not a bad result for on the road, against Sporting. That’s something to build on. Especially with Freire being the man of the match!
In the six matches today, there were just 8 goals scored.
I offer a few players for loans, and one gets a loan offer – Nuno Campos, a DR for me. I accept the offer.
During weight lifting, Miguel Rodrigues got a back strain and is out for two months. Ali will replace him in the backups.
Despite being at home against Braga, we are still expected to lose.
We have sold 900 season tickets.
We are ready to host Braga – we expect 3200 seats to be sold for today’s match.
We’ve had a pair of close calls by the 21st minute that almost went in. We’ve been controlling much of the tempo early on. I move from Standard to Control. After a quick 16 minutes of that, I go back to Standard. We get a header on target by Aurelio off a set piece but their GK stops it. Then they push forward off a counter and almost get a shot off before Mexer tackles the ball. Half. I tell them to keep it up and we can win tonight. We stop another counter, on target, by by GK. We make our first sub – Carlos, a bit banged up, for Sequeira. I then pull an injured Marcal for Zainadine Junior and I order us into more Controlling again. Our final sub is Kayke for Adriano. After a set up, Kayke has a beautiful shot on goal from about two yards out but the GK just manages to push it aside at the 82nd minute. Kayke pushes another shot on target for a corner in the 87th minute. We do nothing with it and end up as a draw. We should have won that one, we were dominant for much of the game. Ah well, MOM is Joao Aurelio.
|