This weekend we play in Round 2 of the FA Cup at the Abbey Stadium in Cambridge, the home of Cambridge United from League One. As Darren Ferguson says we could have had an easier draw and the hope of getting to the Third round.
Cambridge have recently appointed Shaun Derry as their new manager, someone who we understand was on the short list for our vacant managers job. He has gone in and begun to shake things up, as DF has at the Keepmoat. It should be an interesting game., as the next round could see the winner playing a top Premier League team or a non league outfit on a roll.
The game will be on Sunday kick off 2 pm, 8 am over here in the States. We should be looking to go into the game on a high and as DF says he goes into every game expecting to win. In this case we may draw and then have another game to play, but we don't need that to be honest.
Fillipe Mattioni will not be available for this game and the Crewe game, but Matthew Lund is fit and able to come back into contention. Conor Grant has had his loan extended until early January and DF says he will be talking to Everton about extending both players to the end of the season, but the decision will be down to Everton.
I wathed the Cambridge highlights in their win last week against Derry's old club Notts County and there was a goal second to none. If you haven't seen it try and do so. Roy Carroll came to the edge of his 18 yard line and went to kick the ball out of his hands. This he did, but the ball hit a Caambridge player on the back, looped high over Carroll, bounced up, hit the bar and fell over the line. It's one for the what happened next on Question of Sport.
The Match Officials
Referee Mark Brown
Assts Gary Stretton and Akil Howson
4th Off. Robert Mackay.
Hopefully we win, and get a good draw in round three, Enjoy the game.
COME ON YOU ROVERS
Cambridge v ROVERS
posted on 6/12/15
No.52 Doncaster Rovers.... will play....
posted on 6/12/15
Nice to come back again from being a goal down that gives the team more confidence
posted on 6/12/15
Not sure why I've put that number roverian think it's as I've read the headline being Wycombe being ball 55
posted on 6/12/15
Again typo Bury
posted on 7/12/15
Great news Micky, I watched most of the game, how Portland didn't score another four is beyond me.
Bet it's a good few days in the City.
posted on 7/12/15
Thanks, NY. They should have had a bucket full! Except for Columbus GK stupidity in the first minute, he did a good job.
Needless to say, Soccer City USA is going crazy!
You do not need expensive European "stars". OK, we have Liam Ridgewell (not expensive) who gave away the penalty when Rovers beat Aston Villa 3-0 in the League Cup....
posted on 7/12/15
I cannot say that I identify much with the idea that we are The Vikings. On the other hand were I a Cambridge fan I could quite easily associate their brand of football with the plunderers and the pillagers. Indeed, symbolically we were more like the female sheep than the “U”s themselves, even to the habit of almost the entire team scurrying to the right hand side of the pitch to receive Stuckmann’s goal kicks which time after time went straight into touch.
So we were over-run by the energetic, somewhat unsophisticated Cambridge big men, especially in the first half. Their goalkeeper booted the ball straight up the middle of what seemed like an artificially shortened pitch and Corr and Co galloped after it, bundling Butler, T-S etc off the ball before they had chance to control it.
We seemed to take the view that attacking could only be via Tyson down the right and he never really got a run going. But despite the repeated failure of the plan, we carried it on. Evina on the other side was rarely given opportunities even though there were fewer of the opposition to contend with on that side and skill might well have prevailed over brawn. Cambridge were, as their manager said, the better team, but at scoring goals they lacked the necessary precision, even with the penalty, but the follow-up summed up their plundering spirit.
Ferguson earned his money at half time by changing the approach in the second half; whether it would have turned out as well if Stewart had not been an enforced replacement, we will never know. At the time I thought it was courageous rather than necessary to withdraw Tyson, but Stewart operated down the left side from which the cross (from Copps) came to provide Lund’s opening, coming in behind the defence, miskicking his centre, recovering quickly and sensibly putting it back to Grant who scored with the shot along the ground which always seems a better option than in the air.
The other goals followed with Stewart’s classic winger’s dribble past the full back along the goal line to provide Lund’s finish. Grant’s superb second followed and then it seemed safe.
Cambridge battered the Rovers end of the pitch in the second half with numerous corners and a great deal of speed and brute force. I say the Rovers end of the pitch rather than the goal because apart from hitting the bar their ability to strike the ball accurately at the goal was plainly lacking. We were too far away to get a good perspective of this offensive and we may have forced them to shoot from distance. They appeared to believe that if they blasted the ball in the general direction of the goal it would eventually yield a score, but it did not. They missed the target time after time.
So I came away feeling that we had done enough, been “clinical”, as they say, but there was a degree of good fortune because the opposition had not exploited the defensive sloppiness in the first half. The young players, Lund and Middleton look really good at times, but are also prone to naive errors which did not cost us today, but this and the failure of the whole team to pull themselves out of trouble in the first half shows how far we need to progress to really make strides in the League 1 promotion quest. There is a need for more discipline and more imagination on the pitch. Doing the same thing time and time again when it isn’t working is not intelligent. Even in the second half Stuckmann was still punting the ball up the flanks and it went out of play time after time. Had he even occasionally kicked it straight up the pitch for Williams to gather it would have been useful. In fact Williams looked really dangerous when he got the ball and ran at their defence. I like his style and he must be really worrying to mark.
posted on 7/12/15
Stoke city at home 😮😮😮
posted on 7/12/15
That'll do nicely!!
posted on 8/12/15
Well, Man U have managed to avoid us again, that must be the hundredth and something time. I expect no one remembers that 6-0 defeat in 1905 and you'd have to be 85 or so (with the memory still intact) to recall the two 0-0s in the mid 1930s.
Perhaps we'll get them in the next round.