Swedish Premier Division - Match 9 - Kalmar FF (Away)
Kalmar FF were our next opponents, and I restored my three supersubs to the starting lineup in place of the three who were disappointing last time out. We were the away team, and so I was desperate to get the monkey off our backs with a win here.
Disaster struck in the 34th minute when Guillermo Molins was forced off by injury. I replaced him with Lepiller and switched Forsberg to right wing.
In the 40th minute, Johansson had a point blank header following a corner, but smashed the bar.
Four minutes later however, Simon Thern found himself in some space 20 yards out following good work from Eriksson, and doubled his season goal tally with a thumping drive into the bottom left corner!
Second half, and in the 63rd minute, a brilliant killer ball from Eriksson found the run of Forsberg, 6 yards out, yet somehow Forsberg managed to skew his shot so far wide it was almost horizontal. They took a long goal kick and suddenly their striker, Ericsson, had space for a shot - fortunately, it was held by Olsen.
I took Johansson off after an error riddled performance, and his replacement Blomqvist sent a long ball into the left corner in the 70th minute. Lepiller first-timed a cross to the near post, where Eriksson’s shot struck the post from a sharp angle.
Come the 77th minute and a clever play from Forsberg, who drew in defenders, allowed Lepiller to take a shot from an identical position to Thern’s in the first half. It was almost straight at the keeper but full of venom and the goalie only managed to help it into the net!
From the restart Moussi headed the ball to Possebon who sent it forward to Eriksson. Eriksson made his way forward with it before unleashing an absolute howitzer of a shot which struck the frame of the goal where the right post and crossbar connected.
84th minute and we raced upfield on a counter attack. Lepiller and Eriksson exchanged a quick one two which led to a close range shot for Matthias, which he managed to send underneath the keeper for a 3-0 lead!
The final whistle went to end proceedings after a highly dominant display!
Lepiller, Eriksson and Thern each had a match rating of 9, and whilst Lepiller deservedly received the match ball, in my opinion, the best player on the pitch was undoubtedly Eriksson, who performed superbly. It seems I have found a system that can bring the best out of him, something that was looking unlikely when he failed to perform and lost his place in the starting lineup earlier in the season. Finally, we have won an away match in the league, and in style too! What’s more, we’ve moved up to fourth in the table, just 4 points behind leaders Elfsborg, and just 1 behind second placed Helsingborg.
POM: Matthias Lepiller (9.0, 2G, 0A)
Injury News:
Disastrously however, Guillermo Molins injury proved to be very serious. A torn hamstring rules him out for 3 months! This is terrible news as he had just found form at right wing. We now have quite a long injury list at the club
The post match interview proves how we dominated that match - the first question involved how we struck the woodwork 5 times!