19th October 2015 Welcome to the latest Club update. After a week's break I have two matches to report on, and while we won one and lost one, our Management team will not be particularly happy with either performance. Against Banstead Athletic in the League Cup we started well and were completely dominant, leading through a low Alex McGregor strike, until Sam Currie and then Kyle Hough got kicked and although both challenges received cautions, both were poor and could easily have resulted in red cards. The first was clumsy and the second downright cynical, yet we had to wait until extra time before they finally had a player sent off. Having been knocked out of our stride, literally, it looked like we would hold on, but the hosts made it 1-1 just before the end of the ninety and a nervy period of extra time followed before we scraped through 7-6 on penalties. This was only our second ever competitive penalty shootout win, improving our record to 2-4 and much credit goes to Michael Eacott, who made two saves, the first of which was world class as he got down low to his left. If you want to see them, Gemma of course has all of the pictures from the match and shootout, and additionally Michael is shown on this Tuesday's match programme cover making that very save. What I found quite amusing after the game was Banstead's criticism of the match report. They described our full and detailed description of the events as "poor" and the timing of their goal as way off, which is of course entirely their right to do, yet eventually produced their own "report" a few days later, summing up two hours of football in a few lines, agreeing with my timing and saying that the game was not dirty! The ensuing discussion did at least have one benefit which was that we broke our single day viewing record on the website with 501 different people looking at the report on the Wednesday alone! The disappointing aspect here is that the Banstead team are young and impressionable and if their club condones this sort of behaviour, then they are heading down a dangerous path. Personally, and having already spent 17 years up at Merland Rise with Epsom already, I have no desire to make any further visits, so with luck we'll be kept apart in future competition draws. The walking wounded then took the field against Chertsey Town on Saturday but we were edged out by a single goal, although it was a strike worthy of winning any game as Andy Crossley's free kick flew into the top corner with just 16 minutes remaining. When you consider that we were without Sam Currie, Matt Ferdinando, Rob Hendry and Alex McGregor, while Dan Dean limped off for the second consecutive game, Glyn had the opportunity to give new boys Conor Davison and Thomas Neale a good run, but there was in my opinion a key reason why we didn't get any sort of result on Saturday and the reason is "service". More accurately, a lack of it. If we are able to get the ball to Kyle, then we know what he can do, but he hardly had a touch on Saturday and that obviously means that others have to step up in those circumstances. This didn't really happen on the day as a number of set piece deliveries and crosses just sailed out of play and we can't blame any injuries for this occurring. Hopefully many of our absent players will have recovered as we face two very tough games this week before having a well earned break. On Tuesday we host Ryman League new boys Dorking Wanderers, but they aren't just there to make up the numbers. They are challenging at the top end of the table, and although results haven't been quite as good recently, and they lost 2-1 at home to Molesey on Saturday, they will still give us a tough examination in this Surrey Senior cup tie. Following this we have a League game against one of the teams at the top as we make the journey to table toppers Ashford Town (Mx) on Saturday. We have a poor record over there, but won 3-1 on our last visit back in January and the game takes on added significance as we have been drawn together in the League Cup, although this match won't be played until 12th January of next year! Following the Ashford match, we then have a fortnight off before hosting Chessington & Hook on Saturday 7th November. Come on you Salts!