"How the Enemy are getting on" Summer 2008

LeixlipRed

Tempelogue Astros 3-0 IBM DSL.
SS Rovers 3-0 Jacques and the fat men.
Inter Yerauldone 2-1 Ravenhill.
Roy's Rovers 3-1 Faboulous Benedictine Monks.

LeixlipRed

Fabulous Benedictine Monks 0-2 Templeogue Astros
IBM DSL FC 2-4 Inter yerauldone
Jacques and the fat men 1-1 Ravenhill
Roy's Rovers 2-0 The full irish

So that leaves four teams on 6 points. Four more on 1 point and the other two with none. Think it's going to be an exceptionally difficult task to win this league but I think we can do it if we get a good turnout every week and everyone gives 100%. And as Ed would say, "Get stuck in"

LeixlipRed

SS Rovers 3-1 The Full Irish
Fabulous Benedictine Monks 1-3 Inter yerauldone
Jacques and the fat men 3-1 IMB DSL FC
Roy's Rovers 2-4 Templeogue Astros

FrankGrimes

good stuff, can you post a link to the league table? Looks like SS Rovers and Templeogue are the teams to beat so far then.

kaizersoze1980

http://www.astro.ie/LeagueTable.asp?CompetitionAssociationID=1&CompetitionLocationID=1&CompetitionID=1320&DivisionDetailsID=5

LeixlipRed

League table doesn't update properly until both teams enter there scores so not quite right at the moment.

FrankGrimes

nice one. Our 2 dropped points against The Full Irish does stand out, with 6 from 9 we'd be reasonably happy, 4 from 9 means we really can't afford to drop points against the weaker teams.

Teams like SS Rovers are continuously ruthless against the lower placed teams because they set themselves up to win the game by attacking as a unit, with the fullbacks really playing as wingbacks which means the centre midfielders never need to get dragged wide and can focus on bossing the middle. I've been really impressed with the way they've done that and I really believe we have the players to play with that confident approach in most games, naturally tightening up in certain situations.

With IBM and Benedictine Monks being our next 2 games and both being lowly placed with need to give it our all in both - if we do that there's no reason we shouldn't win both. We need to be going into the tough run of 3 games after that with 10 points from 15 an nothing less.

Inter yerauldone are an interesting one - their 9 points from 9 were against weaker teams, and though they've beaten us in the past we were always understrength playing them. Unless they've improved their squad as much as we have, if we play well we should beat them.

LeixlipRed

Tbh Jules there's too much switching around at the back to play a similar system to that. If we had the same 4 players on the pitch consistenly then perhaps we could give it a go alright.

LeixlipRed

Fabulous Benedictine Monks 0-2 Jacques and the fat men
Roy's Rovers 3-1 Inter yerauldone
Templeogue Astros 2-2 The full irish
SS Rovers 2-0 Ravenhill

So the United game seems to have skewed a few of the results. Next up for us are the Monks who have lost all their games. Second week in a row were a win is absolutely vital. We then play the 3 teams above us who we've not played yet. Those 3 games will make or break the season I think.

LeixlipRed

Ravenhill 1-2 The full irish
Roy's Rovers 2-1 Jacques and the fat men
SS Rovers 1-1 IBM DSL FC
Templeogue Astros 2-0 Inter yerauldone

That leaves us in 4th place with ten. Tempelogue and SS on 13 pts. Roy's Rovers on 12. We play Roy's Rovers next so a win guarantees us 3rd place. Gonna be tough though.

homerjay2005

hmm, would be nice to beat them next week and cement 3rd place as we hit 1/3 of the way through. next week will be a very tough game and we need everybody there. they appear to be a decent side.

the next 3 weeks will tell alot, if we are serious about winning the league, we cannot afford to lose any games from these 3 games, all big ones.

im also setting a challenge to the team that we concede no more than 20 goals this season, we have 7 conceded so far that that is an average of 1 per game for the remaining games. i think if we hit that target or better it, we will win the league as we generally score 1 or 2 per game. we need to be more clinical though at times.

kaizersoze1980

homerjay2005 wrote: »

im also setting a challenge to the team that we concede no more than 20 goals this season

How many did we concede last season, and the season before?

homerjay2005

kaizersoze1980 wrote: »

How many did we concede last season, and the season before?

cant remember, but something like 42 first season and 26 last season....definately trending in the right direction. we kept 6 clean sheets last season, we should aim for 9 or 10 this season, though keeping clean sheets is very hard on astro with no offsides, sliding tackles etc.

_blank_

A settled back 4 would go a long way to helping though.

homerjay2005

DesF wrote: »

A settled back 4 would go a long way to helping though.

ya, our defence is the one area that constantly gets changed. i think that we have 4-6 players that can do an excellent job for us, but making changes to it can weaken it considerably. in my opinion, with our best 4 players in there, our defence is the strongest part of the team. here is hoping that we show this over the next 6-7 weeks.

_blank_

homerjay2005 wrote: »

ya, our defence is the one area that constantly gets changed. i think that we have 4-6 players that can do an excellent job for us, but making changes to it can weaken it considerably. in my opinion, with our best 4 players in there, our defence is the strongest part of the team. here is hoping that we show this over the next 6-7 weeks.

If the best defence was there every week, the best defence would play every week.

homerjay2005

anyway, good start to the season. top scorers, ok defensively and creating chances. the next 3 weeks will tell alot. at least, unlike last year, all teams are dropping points and so far, we are the only team that has properly hammered anybody. lets try keep a run going for as long as possible.

LeixlipRed

I've no idea if i can make it next week. Exam the following morning so won't know if I'm ok to bunk off study until closer to the time. So there goes the settled back four

LeixlipRed

Inter Yerauldone 1-2 The Full Irish
IBM DSL 3-1 Ravenhill
SS Rovers 5-2 Faboulous Benedictine Monks
Tempelogue Astros 5-0 Jacques and the fat men

We're now 6 points off the top with hugely inferior goal difference. Next week is a huge 6 pointer. Must win game.

FrankGrimes

Yeh - massive game next week. We tend to play closer to our full potential against the better teams so hopefully we can give them a shock next week - their results have been consistently strong for the first 6 games. That said, 6 points off the top one third of the way through is not the end of the world - still time to turn it around.

Can't believe Roy's Rovers are only one point off the top - fair play to them for grinding out results with that style of football.

LeixlipRed

There lads up front are quite pacy though. Look at top scorers list. Two guys with a few goals for them. Other than that they're muck.

LeixlipRed

IBM DSL FC 1-2 The full irish
Inter yerauldone 2-1 Jacques and the fat men
Ravenhill 0-5 Fabulous Benedictine Monks
SS Rovers 4-0 Roy's Rovers

Roy's Rovers beaten 4 nil by SS :eek: Just shows how poor we were against them. Any chance of winning the league is gone now unfortunately. 9 points behind Tempelogue and SS.

Savman

LeixlipRed wrote: »

Roy's Rovers beaten 4 nil by SS :eek: Just shows how poor we were against them. Any chance of winning the league is gone now unfortunately. 9 points behind Tempelogue and SS.

I have to say I dunno where this "win the league" talk comes from, we still fall short of what is required for that kind of consistency. There are teams that are better and fitter than us and probably sides who can afford to lose a few players and still grind out results whereas we seem to lose our edge when we don't have our full squad. There's you gone for a couple of games, Ed gone for a few as well, I can't think of others but I'm sure there's more (Larry/Dave?).

We can't be expected to gain any kind of momentum when it's a different team every week!

LeixlipRed

Ah I never thought we could win it either but I remained optimistic for the sake of the team Yeh think Dave can play one more game then he's gone for the rest of the season. Larry is gone for 6 weeks at some stage. At least last season we had some hope of being in contention. But that's gone already now and we've only played 7 games. Depressing **** really.

FrankGrimes

Yeh I agree with most of that, the thought struck me last night that all the best teams we’ve played have a squad of just 12 or 13 and you can really see that they’re familiar with playing with each other week in week out. We have never come close to any level of consistency in terms of availability over the 4 seasons and consistency of performance is much tougher with that. It’s frustrating cos with our best 11 being stable we would definitely be in a position to challenge for a title. Look at our availability for the cup match this week and you’ll see we’ll be lucky to get a run going there too.

That said, we are still the 3rd best team in this league and even with the players we will be losing we should be pushing on to secure 3rd spot and get as close to the top 2 as possible. 3rd place is still progress so there’s plenty to play for – we won’t be happy with ourselves if we let anyone other than SS & Templeogue finish above us.