I have now had four weeks of hard training under my belt, injury free, and I’m starting to feel a lot better about things. My fitness is improving and I’m getting back into the swing of things.
After being out for so long, and missing a huge amount of football, it’s obviously going to take a bit of time to wipe off the cobwebs and get going again. From Christmas 2008, I think all-in-all it’s about three and a half months I have been out. I’m sure our Physio, Stuart Wardle will have a lot more spare time on his hands now I’m back training!
I also managed to get 75 minutes under my belt against Millwall last week in a friendly game at their place. I was due to play the full 90, but after 75 minutes my legs felt so heavy and started cramping up.
It was a hot day as well, so taking everything into consideration it was really positive for me. My goal now is to just stay injury free and to try and work my way into the team. As I have two second year apprentices in my position it’s a hard task to try and get in the team at the moment, but it’s a challenge that I am willing to take on and all I can do is work hard and do my best.
After our positive start to the season, things have taken a turn for the worse in recent weeks. After beating Watford away, we have lost three on the bounce to Reading, Portsmouth and Arsenal. The most frustrating thing though is that in all of the the games we could have easily come away with a win.
Readng Game
We dominated the first half of the Reading game and came in at half-time 1-0 in our favour. We were all over them and could and should have got more than the one goal. The second half couldn’t have gone much differently for us though. We never got out the changing room and consequently conceded three goals and ended up losing the game. After the great first half performance we took our foot off the gas, got sloppy and got what the performance deserved.
Portsmouth Game
The Portsmouth game was a frustrating one to say the least. In their last two matches before us they had got beaten 5-0 in both games. We knew they’d be short of confidence and in the week building up to the game we felt that we could get a really positive result. We lost the game 3-2 but the game was marred by an incident that happened early in the first half which saw Michael Abnett sent off.
Arsenal Game
Our next game was a difficult looking trip to Arsenal. Just like the Man City game we knew we would be going into the game as the underdogs. We had a game plan in place and we were looking to frustrate them and use our pace to catch them on the counter. We kept the game at 0-0 until well into the second half and as the game went on it looked as though we were the team more likely to score.
Just before they scored we should have taken the lead through Nathaniel Pinney. Pinns had a great game and it was just unfortunate he couldn’t take the chance. They went straight up the other end, scored a very fortunate goal and that was that. We were disappointed with the result but yet again we gave a good account of ourselves and frustrated them.
We now have two home games on the spin against West Ham and Ipswich Town, so we will be looking to get back to winning ways against them.
