City 1 Yeovil 0
Some weeks after City were displaced at the top of League One we are finally back. A strong Leicester side would have been out of sight by now in a league where defences have the whip hand over attacks but it would be churlish not to acknowledge the character shown by the team to battle back to the top of the table putting automatic promotion back on the agenda.
I have given much thought to how I could avoid saying this was a match of two halves, but I'm afraid it was. The first half was the best we have seen this season and by quite a margin. 1-0 did little justice to our supremacy and at 3-0 Yeovil could not have complained. We had some 80% of the possession though the opposition occasionally threatened on the break. It was not diffficult to see why they tend to do better away rather than at home, recently beating Oldham 0-2.
City began brightly at the quicker tempo which is vital for success. When the tempo drops we are invariably poor. Fryatt, Howard and Oakley, playing incidentally in the wide right position he occupied on Saturday except for the first 20 minutes, all went close with half chances and it came as no surprise when City took the lead in the 25th minute. Howard, who had by far his best 45 minutes for the club, was winning everything in the air and his flick header in the penalty area found Dyer in space on the left side of goal. He made a couple of yards and then smashed the ball into the far corner of the net.
The pattern of the rest of the half was one of continuous attack against the massed ranks of the Yeovil defence. We did not make clear-cut openings but were always threatening to do so. Warm applause at the interval and thoroughly deserved….
Special mention for Mattock who was outstanding going forward and looks a class act. He occasionally loses his bearings as a defender but has great potential. On the other flank we started with Edworthy who suffered an injury very early on and was soon replaced by Morrison. He gives us a stronger physical presence and his relative weakness in the air is less of a factor at full back rather than centre-back where substitute Hobbs slotted in well.
The second half was like watching a different match. Yeovil's centre backs were clearly under orders to get tighter to Howard who responded by reverting to the form he has shown nearly all season which is not a pretty sight! For half an hour we were like a superior boxer with good moves but no punch. Far too often we tried fancy first-time flicks which we are not good enough to bring off. These invariably gave the ball to the opposition and wasted the often decent approach work. Our passing overall lost its pace and accuracy and we played the sort of football which is bringing crowds gradually lower, less than 17 000 tonight.
During this period Yeovil were bit-part players. Their only shot on target in the whole game came from a needless free kick which was blasted straight at Henderson. On the subject of free kicks City showed they had done some work on the training ground with an interesting variety of efforts involving 3 players around the ball. None looked like succeeding as the basics of the move had not been mastered but the ideas were sound. Yeovil were never quite sure what we were going to do, but there again neither were we!
In the last 15 minutes Yeovil pushed men up and went for the equaliser. For some strange reason we dropped back and just defended. Yeovil never created a chance but the crowd became increasingly anxious and vocal with it as time and again we had the chance to counter-attack but simple passes went astray. They knew we should have been home and dry and might pay dearly for our failure to kill Yeovil off in the first half. Fortunately they were even more powder-puff than we had become and they were, as the old saying goes, lucky to get 0.
So 3 valuable points and a few days to peer down on the others until Scunthorpe go back to the top on Friday night. Will we win at Swindon on Saturday and leapfrog them again?
City: Henderson, Edworthy (Hobbs 31), Morrison, Tunchev, Mattock, Oakley, King, Berner, Dyer, Howard, Fryatt (Campbell 90)
Booked: Berner
Yeovil: Wagenaar, Forbes (Murtagh 88), Skiverton, Owen, Smith, Schofield (Welsh 64), Way, Roberts, Peltier, Downes (Warne 68), Noel-Williams
Booked: Downes
The views expressed in this report are the opinions of the Trust member nominated to file the report only and do not represent the views of the Foxes Trust organisation