SENTINELCELTS

Morning,all.

Yesterday wasn’t just Paradise Regained for me, as I attended in person for the first time since January. It might also have been Paradise Regained for the players too, especially in the second half. AJ and Trusty were given a rest-the latter on the bench-as were Kyogo, Kühn and Hatate who all came on for their say in the second half. Kühn and Hatate in particular looked much sharper than of late, and I was pleased to see them both get on the scoresheet. 

I was equally pleased to see Engels and Maeda on the scoresheet too. Engels looked much more like the player who excited us all so much in his early games for us, and he got his reward with the opener in added time in the first half. ( And the MOTM award.)  In fact,it was his pass to Yang which saw our Korean winger upended by the keeper for the penalty. 

Up until then, I thought that our final ball and the service to our wide men had been very poor, and it improved some in the second half as Motherwell were forced to chase the game. Not that they did much of that, looking content to keep the score down in the hope that they could hit us on the break. But our centre backs were more than a match for their opponents, and Schmeichel could have taken his Christmas Compendium of Crosswords on to the pitch with him. 

Twelve minutes into the second half and Well’s game plan was completely oot the windae. Engels took a peach of a corner on our left, and Scales caught a glancing header at the near post. Maeda was lurking for just such an event, and headed the ball home. Two up and time to see the game out.

The raft of substitutions which followed soon after put paid to any hopes of leniency that the visitors might have been hoping for. As I said,Kühn and Hatate really looked up for it and they both scored late on. A fairly harmless looking case of keep-ball in front of their box resulted in Kühn hitting it from 25 yards, and the deflection took care of the rest. And with ten minutes remaining, Hatate picked the ball up in a similar position to fire home a cleaner effort into the bottom corner.

All in all,a fairly bloodless victory against a side which, while more adventurous than Dundee United on Sunday, didn’t offer much in the way of entertainment. I have to give the referee a special award too, for I have never seen so many dead-balls moved back to a more correct position. Talk about picky? 

We return on Sunday for another home match, then we can relax over New Year. We can preview those matches as they come; for the moment, I’ll sit here content to wallow in a 12 point lead. Well done, lads. Proud of yeez…

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Above article by BMCUWP