St Albans City bounced back from two shattering cup defeats to climb to third in the Southern League on Tuesday with a slick performance and 1-0 win over in-form Arlesey Town at Clarence Park.
Playing some of the best football of manager David Howell’s reign City were, particularly during the opening 45 minutes, an impressive sight and once again it was 20-year-old Sean Shields who stole the limelight with his seventh goal of the season.
Arlesey started with the XI that pulled off a shock 4-3 FA Cup win over Conference North leaders Brackley Town on Saturday while City made one change from the side removed from the competition by Lowestoft with Chris Henry replacing the ill Barry Hayles.
City were far from their best when going out of the FA Trophy – to Arlesey – and then the FA Cup, but were soon into their stride against an Arlesey side boasting a record of nine wins from its previous 11 matches.
After an even opening couple of minutes St Albans took control with a positive passing game that stretched the visitors but still had a tough time in breaking down a resilient defence, and the deciding goal came from a deadly counter-attack when the Blues defensive big guns were at the wrong end of the pitch.
Richard Graham intercepted an attempted through ball by Christian Tavernier and played it forward to Shields who went from 10 yards inside his own half to well into the Arlesey half before feeding Henry and storming forward to take the return ball.
Reclaiming possession inside the York Road penalty area Shields cut inside and with a powerful right-footed shot fired high to the right of keeper Nathan Abbey to give City the lead on 18 minutes – the same time that they took the lead against the Blues in the FA Trophy before going down 2-1.
City’s central midfield partnership of David Ijaha and Micah Hyde were more dominant than in recent games and Abbey saved low from Ijaha as the former City captain shot from 20 yards.
Another former City captain, Ryan Frater, now in the colours of Arlesey, demonstrated how he failed to score in 127 games for the Saints by blasting a half-volley high out of the ground.
While Lewis Toomey and Henry worked hard up front for the Saints most of the success was coming from the flanks through Graham and Shields, and Abbey had several anxious moments when City skimmed low crosses into the six-yard box.
From one such cross by Shields, Sol Davis did extremely well to clear when under pressure from Curtis Ujah, while a loose piece of control by Toomey close to goal let Arlesey off the hook following Graham’s delightful chip.
Although on the back foot for much of the half Arlesey broke several times with equally impressive passing football and James Hatch forced Jupp into a low save before the City keeper failed to reach either a Davis free kick or corner with the latter crashing against the crossbar via Hatch’s header.
For a while St Albans suggested that they would dominate the second half as they the first with Abbey being called upon to save in some style from Shields, twice, and Toomey, while Ujah stretched to poke an effort narrowly wide from a Ryan Watts cross.
Gradually City’s control on the game began to wane and Arlesey, as they sought to save the game, resorted to a mostly long ball game that certainly caused City problems, although St Albans did not help themselves by rushing to clear their lines instead of looking to retain possession.
Chris Marsh, on at half time for Tavernier, cut in from the left and curled a teasing effort just beyond the diving Jupp’s left hand upright.
Henry continued to cause problems at the opposite end and Toomey also went close before Arlesey, in the latter stages, really pushed St Albans back.
As the pressure mounted Arlesey had penalty appeals rejected as Drew Roberts and Frater went down under challenges from Ujah and Watts respectively.
Town manager Zema Abbey became an increasingly active figure in the visitors dug out and frequently complained about the decisions of Ukraine referee Oleksandr Saliy despite the official having a perfectly decent game.
For all of their possession late in the game Arlesey failed to seriously test Jupp and even Abbey, when bringing himself on for the final few minutes, was unable to stop City from securing a fourth consecutive Premier Division victory.
After the recent setbacks in the cup competitions City’s continued good form in the league was the perfect present for manager Howell on the eve of his 54th birthday. |
