Football Icon 2 - Down to the last Six!
Any14ATreble
By 41 Years A Blue
November 19 2006
The Academy and West Ham fought out a highly entertaining 0-0 draw at Cobham on Friday lunchtime and coach Ruud Kaiser was extremely delighted with the performance of the team.
He said, "It was a really good open game, both teams played positive football. We had several chances in the first-half to score, great attacks building up from the back four, through midfield, through the Number 10, out to the wingers, we had six or so attacks like this. But the last ball or the run to the near post wasn’t quite there, and we just couldn’t score. "West Ham were playing good football too, and this was not a boring game at all." With the Reserves due to play on Monday night, loans and injuries, Kaiser did not have many options to use in his team selection. Kaiser welcomed back 16 year old Goalkeeper Rhys Taylor from injury and 17 year old Ricardo Fernandes in midfield. As Fernandes would be required for the Reserves, he was only going to play for a short time. Sam Hutchinson suffered a recurrence of a knee injury in the first half so Kaiser had to reshuffle moving Sawyer from midfield to right-back, Bridcutt into centre-back and Michael Woods also being saved for the Reserves coming on as a sub into midfield. Football Icon winner Sam Hurrell played the whole ninety-minutes and has now made seven appearances plus three sub appearances from the Academy's thirteen matches this season. In this week's Football Icon 2, David Milton and Jack Steele were released by Academy Chief Neil Bath and the competition is now down to the final six. The boys met Carlo Cudicini and spent most of the week training with the Academy squad. Team (4-2-1-3) Taylor; Bridcutt (c), Worley, Hutchinson (Woods 35), Hurrell; Sawyer, Hibbert; Fernandes (Saarelma 70); Stoch, Cummings, Nielsen (Sahar 60). The Reserves are in action on Monday night for the first time in three weeks when they play Watford at The Rec, Aldershot Town FC, kick off at 7pm. There will be LIVE updates on the message board. COME ON CHELSEA GET FIT SOON PETR 41 YEARS A BLUE