City 2(Batten)Compton ) Concord 0 ft

10m in nothing happening.

Jack Batten breaks the drought.

James Morton. Class midfield performance today.

Agreed. Different player from his debut v Hemel.
Indifferent opening spell from City but good last 20m in 1st half where shots started to fire in and a deserved lead at ht though Concord might well have scored earlier from a couple of lapses.
2nd half more of the same without really liking like scoring until Comptons rasping shot which was worth the trip in itself.

I must confess that I though Batten had scored the first, but it got announced as Compton. Also, Compton's work in the run up to his rasping shot was worthy of applause in itself. Surely one of our best goals of the season. If you can remember that far back...

Nice win!

I’m sure I announced it as Batten for the first!

EDIT listened back, I did. Phew.

Really enjoyed this afternoon. Morton had a great game and I thought Frankie played well doing the dirty work in midfield. Not many teams in our league will have two better wingers than Compton and Stearn, just hope we can keep them both.

At last I sense some momentum building in this stop start season. Some of the football today was very pleasing on the eye and the patience of the fans was rewarded with two excellent goals. Morton's debut back in December couldn't have been more anonymous but he has improved with each appearance since and he totally bossed the game today. Also gave an excellent interview in the bar after the game. Hopefully Amankwaah's injury is not serious.

Great game, excellent football ... and goals! ... two of them! ... fantastic ones at that!

A marvellous team performance across the board and agreed, James Morton ran the show today. He didn't get a look in when he was with Chippenham and looked lost on his first game for City too. I did think he played really well against Truro, but thought he was absolutely superb this afternoon. Never was a man of the match award so well deserved!

Finally a home win. Loved Jack’s goal to kill the game.

Feeling much better about us after that

We rode our luck at times with some shocking defending but for once we got the rub of the green. Overall we stood up well to the physicality. Concord committed a foul every time they lost the ball but we kept going and for once there was end product to our dominance.
I thought Semenya looked nervous but grew into the game. Hopefully we will see more as he grows in confidence.
I liked the shape of the team and the style of play. We still need to work on making goalkeepers work but overall there is genuine progress.

Super display, after a bright start Semenya became quite anonymous, but he is only 18 and probably one of his first games in Men’s football.....James Morton was exactly the same in his first game, and now look at him! Morton was superb from finis( to end....never seemed to lose possession (except right at the end, where he instantly won it back with a crunching block tackle).
The pleasing thing now is we have the majority of players (except Stearn) in that first eleven who are tied in with us for the rest of the season (we never cleared up whether Compton is on non-contract terms, but he hasn’t gone to Torquay as per rumour anyway).
Hopefully we can keep Stearn for another month or two, but if not I suppose Watts can slot in there, so very pleased with shape of squad now.....bar a quality forward becoming available.

Actually the problem with the formation is that we have two wingers and often nothing for them to aim at in the middle. Crosses are a complete waste of time. Fortunately both are quite prepared to have a go themselves.

It was a very open game and had Concord a decent striker themselves the result could have been rather different. However, I reckon that just shows how close the teams are in this league and no points are guaranteed. We did look more creative up front and took the game to the opposition through flowing football at pace. We have the players with skill to work the opportunities and they performed really well. Morton was sensational, but I thought Miles was brilliant too; always in the right place and provided the attacking players with great service. If only that rasping left foot shot had found the top corner of the net. It would have been no more than his performance deserved.

the demon headmaster wrote:It was a very open game and had Concord a decent striker themselves the result could have been rather different. However, I reckon that just shows how close the teams are in this league and no points are guaranteed. We did look more creative up front and took the game to the opposition through flowing football at pace. We have the players with skill to work the opportunities and they performed really well. Morton was sensational, but I thought Miles was brilliant too; always in the right place and provided the attacking players with great service. If only that rasping left foot shot had found the top corner of the net. It would have been no more than his performance deserved.

Whilst Morton was clearly the man of the match I agree about Miles. And his performance was all the more impressive as he was booked in just the 5th minute. As an aside that was his 4th in his last 5 games having not been booked for us before that this season.

I thought the shot rate was encouraging today as well. Much more willing to have a go.

I think the linos yesterday were a bit discombobulated by the quality of some of the through balls we played in behind defenders as well. A couple of decisions were very suspect.

Again, I thought Concord were a decent away team so it was good that we beat them and kept a clean sheet.

Didn't realise Compton is a Welsh lad from Cardiff.

Is that why he needs to be wound up by the opposition before he does his stuff?

BenE wrote:Actually the problem with the formation is that we have two wingers and often nothing for them to aim at in the middle. Crosses are a complete waste of time. Fortunately both are quite prepared to have a go themselves.

I am guessing that's why Jerry played them on the opposite flank to where you'd expect, so that they were cutting onto their stronger foot, and then opening up the option to shoot, which worked really well for Compton's strike in particular!

Fair play to Morton, having been as anonymous (and that's possibly being kind) as he was in his first game, he's shown some character to keep demanding the ball, there were a few moments on Saturday of real quality.

Jon_BOA wrote: Fair play to Morton, having been as anonymous (and that's possibly being kind) as he was in his first game, he's shown some character to keep demanding the ball, there were a few moments on Saturday of real quality.

I agree 100% - Morton really was SO good on Saturday and just got better & better. Some of his passing on the deck was Premiership class and at times he was looking one way and releasing a slide rule pass in the other direction, quite a skill and something Michael Carrick did well in his prime. Tom Smith, who didn't quite reach his usual high standards in this game, should have scored at least twice from his inch perfect through balls but delayed his shot each time and although Morton is a Bristol City player and again no long term future with us, if he plays like that for the rest of the season we should have no excuses for not getting into the play-offs.

I think we need to be patient with the young lad Semenya up front - he is only 18 and as with Morton a few weeks ago had a very quiet debut and looked a bit lost - but he is quick and well built and has a great scoring record in his age group, so maybe he will grow into the striker we need in the next few weeks....lets hope so!

One point that needs answering though - whatever happened to the pitch on Saturday?  It is usually very good but looked like it had been played on 24 hours earlier and if JG is to get the best results from his footballing philosophy, the club do need to make sure he has a good surface to play on because on Saturday you needed two touches almost every time to control the ball which slows the entire passing process down.

Overall a very good, solid performance by the team against a Concord side who were quite dangerous at times and despite them being unbeaten in the League for ages, we made them look pretty ordinary with some great football and Compton's cracking goal was the icing on the cake.

Agree your comments whole heartedly regarding the all round and quite outstanding performance of James Morton...............I have been watching City for years and can't remember anything close to his quality on Saturday for an 18yr old playing at NLS standard. Only Bobby Zamora's debut versus Crawley Town comes to mind and look where his career took him to !!
However regards the pitch I think this is quite harsh as Twerton Park is probably one of the best surfaces in the league now, through the work of Andrew Pierce almost single handed has put into it. Lets remember a number of games were even postponed due to the difficult weather in the preceding days which no doubt made it almost impossible to undertake the usual preparations. I know a small number of people have responded to Andrew's request for help with the pitch and I'm sure any additional volunteers to help him would be greatly appreciated.
Lets hope this is the start of a more settled side with the semi permanent loanees to the end of this season and we are on the roll...Up the City !

Just to underline what westonpundit has said, there have been several requests made for supporters to offer assistance to Andrew - after the players' warm ups, at ht, after the match and on Sunday mornings. A couple have kindly volunteered and their efforts are greatly appreciated, but we need more. Please give it serious thought!

westonpundit wrote: However regards the pitch I think this is quite harsh as Twerton Park is probably one of the best surfaces in the league now, through the work of Andrew Pierce almost single handed has put into it. Lets remember a number of games were even postponed due to the difficult weather in the preceding days which no doubt made it almost impossible to undertake the usual preparations. I know a small number of people have responded to Andrew's request for help with the pitch and I'm sure any additional volunteers to help him would be greatly appreciated.
Lets hope this is the start of a more settled side with the semi permanent loanees to the end of this season and we are on the roll...Up the City !

It really was not my intention to criticise the work Andrew Pierce and his volunteers do because having also been watching Bath City for more years than I care to remember these days....I know only too well that 99% of the time our pitch is as good as you get at this level and they all do a fantastic job. However, on Saturday, even accepting the weather has not been kind, it wasn't prepared to anywhere near its usual standard being very bumpy and bobbly and my question was simply why was this??

Unfortunately because of the relatively wet summer the grass did not put down sufficient roots. The pitch got into a right old mess during the previous home game because there was a frost that loosened the top soil layer, and it isn't recovering between games (there was an under 23s match on it).

The teams warmed up off the pitch on Saturday but as soon as the game started it cut up badly again. When you get close up there are a lot of bare patches.

My solution would be to get the players to lift their feet up when they tackle.

BenE wrote:Is that why he needs to be wound up by the opposition before he does his stuff?

I have found that Cardiff lads don't tend to need a reason to get wound up.