Five-Star NWN B Beat Raiders A
MSFL Division One
NWN B 5 NL Raiders A 1
Sunday, 7 February, 2010
PHOTOGALLERY
Neasden manager Sammy Carr claimed Ryan Sher was "simply unplayable" as the striker helped himself to a hat-trick - and Neasden to joint-top of the table as they recorded this ultimately comprehensive win over their fellow title-chasers.
A tap-in, powerful header and coolly converted penalty, coupled with strikes from Alex Bowman and Danny Cohen completed what Carr described as a "real team performance", though he reserved special praise for his prolific striker.
He said: "Ryan was simply unplayable today. He put on one of those performances where the other 21 players were in awe of his talent. If he can carry this form onto the end of the season then we hope to be gaining promotion. He is definitely one of those players who the rest of the team look up to, and has the ability to turn a game on its head with one or two touches of brilliance."
However, it was by no means a one-man effort, as he added: "We asked the boys to carry on their early season form into today and that's exactly what they did. I was particularly pleased with our centre back pairing of Rob Bloch and Jason Bookbinder who stopped their attack from having a sniff of goal and won every header and challenge.
"But this game also showed that not only can we play pretty football, but when the going get tough, we can get our heads down and outmuscle teams, something that has definitely been missing in the past."
The eventual winning margin may have suggested something of a rout, though Carr acknowledged it wasn't that easy. "To be fair, we scored two goals on the counter-attack when Raiders were putting us under some pressure," he said. But the quick counter-attack is something we have been working hard on over the course of the season. Credit to them though, they came out in the second half with the bit between their teeth and got themselves back in the game. But ultimately our experience and skill on the ball paid dividends and we always looked more of a threat going forward then they did. You had a sense that every time we went forward we could score. In the end the score line did flatter us, but we never felt in danger of losing the game."
Reflecting on the performance overall, and what it means for their title challenge, he said: "Myself and assistant manager Ryan [Glynne] were delighted with the performance today. We knew we had the talent to destroy a team and have been playing well lately and a result like this has been on the cards for a while. It has to be up there with the Brady result from earlier in the season, but we are taking nothing for granted yet and will continue to take each game as it comes....the season is a marathon and not a sprint.
"It's obviously very nice to be leading the table after eight games, and doing so undefeated. But the team will continue to work hard for each other taking each game as it comes. There are too many good teams in this League to start thinking about winning the title, but we will go about our job every Sunday of trying to get results and see where it takes us at the end of the season."
Raiders joint-manager Danny Caro says his side will have to learn from the defeat, and although Nicky Woolf's fiercely-driven free-kick gave them hope to pull the score back to 2-1, they gave themselves a mountain against a team of Neasden's quality.
He said: "Overall, I was not displeased by our performance. In terms of work-rate and commitment, I couldn't fault the boys. However, we gave Neasden a two-goal headstart and must learn from our mistakes. After that, we were always playing catch-up, which isn't easy against a team that is excellent on the break.
"Sloppy defending for the goals was very disappointing and we didn't put in a worthy challenge in the first half, standing off them too much. We put that right in the second half but the damage had already been done.
"We went into the game without our two main strikers, who between them have scored more than 20 goals. Our top-scorer, Jonny Blain, failed a fitness test before the game and we were also missing our captain David Rhodes who'd have loved the physical aspect of the match."
"In terms of what this loss does to their own title credentials, he said: "Back-to-back defeats against two of our promotion rivals is sure to knock the confidence is what is a young side, but I'm confident that we can bounce back. We have two tough home games coming up that we know we must win as I believe that all the teams battling for promotion will take points off one another.
"Much depends on how soon our injuries clear up. We will treat our remaining games like cup finals but it's still all to play for."
