SPARTAN SOUTH MIDLANDS LEAGUE DIVISION ONE

BRIMSDOWN 3 LONDON LIONS 4

There were no excuses for a poor playing surface, as the 3G was excellent as Lions went in search of their tenth league win of the season.

Lions started brightly, moving the ball around, and a four-pass move was finished off superbly by Adam Bolle.

However, the total dominance of the game seem to create complacency around the Lions team. An under-hit back-pass by Levi Levenfiche, and perhaps a slightly slow response from goalkeeper David Myers, allowed the Brimsdown forward to nip in and round Myers and tap into an empty net.

Lions regained control and Bolle scored again, following a good move from back to front.

There was a sense of dé jà vu as the Lions switched off again and a very soft opportunity saw Brimsdown pull it back to 2-2.

This time Lions did not snap out of their laid back approach, and this only encouraged Brimsdown to take control, and they were rewarded for their efforts with a third goal, giving them a 3-2 advantage at half-time.

It was “tempting” for Lions’ manager Andy Landesberg to lose it during the break, but he decided that we had the quality and ability to win this game, and “kicking the players when they were down was probably not the solution”.

A positive slant was put on the first-half performance, and “some of the heads that were down, reacted well to the information, and instructions that were shared”.

Landesberg made some tactical changes ten minutes into the second half, with Austin Lipman replacing Reiss Mogilner and 16-year old Max Davis replacing Nathan Schindler - a back three formation was the major change - and Brimsdown could hold on no longer.

Lipman made an immediate impact and got on the ball, and started to link up the play, finishing a low 20 yard drive into the bottom right hand corner of the net to make it 3-3.

Chance after chance went begging for Lions, but eventually Max Kyte made it 4-3 with 12 minutes left.

The formation was changed again, with Lee Goldberg being replaced by Benji Weinberger and the 4-3-3 formation was resumed, closing out the game, with even further opportunities being missed.

That makes it just one defeat in the last nine games, and again Lions start a steady climb up the table.

Manager Andy Landesberg told JC Sport: “It could have been so easy to have lost it at half-time, but I recognised that every player was disappointed with their own performance. It needed some encouragement and a game-plan that they could take on board and then deliver, and that is exactly what they did.

“Complacency is something we have to eliminate from our game if we are going to continue to push up the league, hopefully it was a lesson learnt.”