Burscough v AFC Liverpool, 24th March 2018

We had our new signing Elliott Nevitt up front. Meanwhile, relegation rivals Burscough had signed some fella from Marine before transfer deadline day. For my part, I brought John my Father-In-Law along with me. The Sat Nav's misfiring directions taking us to Burscough FC was frustrating. We did thankfully manage to find it on a fine sunny afternoon for football.

 

I think it may have been the Linnets' new signing who gave them the lead inside the first ten minutes with a fine lob over Jack Cookson. The not so good defending of our right back Chris Brady was not impressing John.

 

AFC were playing some good stuff and creating a few openings. Unfortunately, one corner was low and poor. We did restore parity on 35 minutes with a good header at the far post from none other than Chris Brady!

 

After drawing level the home side responded, forcing a good flying save from Jack Cookson. Then, just before half time the Linnets had seemingly taken a half time lead courtesy of an unmarked header from a corner. Astonishingly it was not the final word of the first half, as Jay Howell found himself played through in the inside left channel to find himself one on one  with the keeper at a tight angle to equalise.

 

A brief conversation before the start of the second half with Chairman Chris, who along with Dave the Goalkeeping Coach and a few others had done a charity walk, suggested this was a game to be won. The concern as the second Burscough goal illustrated, was that we also had a not so good defence.

 

Myself and John watched the second half in the stand. So I gave Steve Fraser one of my rattles, to ensure a rattling presence behind the goal. Within four minutes of the restart it was our turn to score from a corner, courtesy of a Callum Edgar strike into the roof of the net after a corner.

 

For most of the rest of the second half, we were generally comfortable and chances were created. There was one hairy moment not long after taking the lead when a move down their right saw a dangerous ball go across our area, and be met by an important defensive intervention.

 

Elliott Nevitt was impressive with his running and holding up of the ball, which was something we had missed in recent weeks. Jay Howell was solid in midfield, and doing a lot of things with pure simplicity. We created other corners, but our best chance of scoring a fourth came with a later one on one involving one of our subs. That effort was saved by the Keeper.

 

Burscough did have a few late freekicks awarded which promised pressure on our defence. We managed to hold out to reduce the deficit with Burscough to six points, with two games in hand.