MOLTEN SPARTAN SOUTH MIDLANDS LEAGUE DIVISION ONE
Stony Stratford Town 2 London Lions 3

London Lions made hard work of their win at Stony Stratford, with midfielder Daniel Stanton scoring in the last minute to steal all three points and win the game 3-2.

In truth the Lions should have had the game sewn up by half-time, but they were incredibly wasteful in front of goal and spurred a number of good opportunities.

The Stony pitch was both hard and heavy which made playing any kind of football extremely difficult. For the first 15 minutes the home side were camped inside their own half.

Lions missed two good chances to take an early and deserved lead but both Josh Kennet and Sam Sloma missed the target.

Then, in what is becoming a familiar frailty, Lions fell behind from a cheap free kick totally against the run of play.

Lions continued to dominate right up to half-time and eventually equalised before the referee blew for the interval. Josh Kennet chased down a back-pass which the Stony keeper completely missed and with a gaping goal he tucked the ball home.

The second half continued in the same manner with Lions in full control and Stony huffing and puffing. Andy Glynne, who worked tirelessly all afternoon, continued to get in and amongst the Stony midfield winning endless tackles and headers. It was he who put Lions ahead following a scramble in the Stony penalty area.

All that hard work and domination was undone five minutes later when a routine corner wasn’t dealt with by the Lions defence and Stony were allowed a free header which was dispatched clinically into the goal.

It was hard to understand how, given Lions domination and the numerous chances they had created, that on 70 minutes the game was 2-2.

Aron Barnes and 16-year-old Connor Perlmutter, who was making his first team debt, were both introduced. Reverting to a 4-4-2 Lions decided to go and try to win the game.

Two more chances went begging for Lions and the game looked like heading for a 2-2 draw. However, deep in injury time young Perlmutter got to the Stony by-line and delivered an inch perfect cross which Stanton buried into the goal having made a late run to the far post.

There was no question that Lions deserved the victory but they made heavy weather of it.

Lions manager Tony Gold said: "Once again we conceded two awful goals but ended up getting away with it. No disrespect to Stony Stratford, but against better opposition we would have struggled to get anything from the game today.

"As it was we did just enough but in truth our defending especially at set-pieces and our lack of finishing in front of goal is getting rather boring.

"We seem incapable of doing the basics right whenever a free-kick is awarded against us and don’t take our chances in front of goal when good opportunities present themselves. It can only be put down to a lack of concentration and discipline because we have some pretty intelligent players out there with the quality required.

"On the plus side we won the match in injury time which is always nice it shows the players do have character when they pull on it and we outplayed Stony for quite a bit of the game.

"I didn’t expect the energy from Stony in the second half they got tight to us and stopped us playing on what was a very difficult pitch but thankfully in the end our superior quality told.

"I may need to freshen things up a little over the next couple of games to get that physical edge and desire back as some of the players are starting to look jaded."

Lions: Mario Cenolli, Danny Berg, Ben Lampert, Kyle Bentwood, Adam Myeroff, Sam Sloma, Josh Kennet, Andy Glynne (sub: Aron Barnes), Daniel Stanton, Matt Stock (sub: Conor Perlmutter), Dean Nyman

Scorers: Andy Glynne, Josh Kennet, Daniel Stanton

Man-of-the-match: Andy Glynne