For Those Who (Reasonably) Did Not Attend

After a fair old schlep across northern France, Belgium and Luxembourg, I am now back in the Shire and back at work, so naturally the time has now come to waste time penning articles on JA606.....

Firstly, we had a very warm welcome from our hosts; we got a tour round the ground, visited the dressing rooms, were allowed to have a walk pitchside (unlike the lads who did it during the first half ) and it was a genuinely good event they put on.

Although getting a beer proved to be an administrative nightmare, we got there in the end and took a spot in the east stand, facing the rather impressive Kop end "Westcurve". There were not that many 1FCK fans there, nor were they particularly noisy, but the game was played in a decent atmosphere. Songs were sung and beer was drunk, in some pleasant afternoon sunshine. We even witnessed the birth of a 'new' chant for David Nugent

As for the players involved, my impressions were:
Carson - solid as ever
Fozzy - nice to see him back, got up and down the flank ok
Keogh - Less panicky than normal
Pearce - solid, if unspectacular
Wisdom - strong, athletic, prone to hanging on to the ball a fraction too long though
Huddlestone - dropped deep, collected ball, pinged it about lovely. may suffer from the same problem Hughes had in that other players do not seem to always be on the same wavelength
Butterfield - took me 80 minutes to notice him
Johnson - put himself about but didn't boss that midfield, despite getting a goal not much contribution
Russell - usual headless chicken stuff
Weimann - kept coming in off the wing, got a couple of assists, hopefully he can get established this year and do well
Martin - Although he scored, he did not get around much and looked slightly lethargic. I remain unconvinced he is the solution to our problems

Bennett - not much chance to influence things but didn't look materially worse than the rest of them
Nugent - offers far more mobility than Martin, and I think he's my first choice up top
Bryson - needs to rediscover his form running off the front man, when he's not doing that although the workrate is there, the influence and defining contribution isn't.

I can't recall Anya, Olsson or Baird doing much, although you can probably blame the beer, sunshine and me for that rather than them necessarily.

All in all, a good trip away and some promise for the coming season. I thought we'd get shown up by a decent, technically proficient German team, but at no point did we look the poorer side in any regard really.

The important thing now is to get the first 11 decided, get some patterns of play well honed, and get that style of play properly embedded.

COYR