Forthcoming Fixtures

City reserves usually play similar teams each pre-season so it was a nice change to travel up to Cumbria and play Barrow. City fielded a strong team with the United States contingent returning but it was perhaps the younger players that showed the style towards the end of the match that helped City win the game two nil with goals from Abdisiliam Ibrahim and Harry Bunn.

Barrow started well despite struggling to field a full squad and they had  two good early chances that City's David Gonzalez Giraldo had to get behind, with shots coming from Mark Boyd and Simon Spender. City were facing Steven Drench in the Barrow goal who we have played against many times before when he was at Blackburn, Morecambe and Southport and he certainly did his job to deny City on many occasions with some very fine saves.

Those saves started in the eighth and ninth minutes when he denied Felipe Caicedo, John Guidetti and James Poole's all in quick succession. Then a minute later Poole played a great cross field pass to Kelvin Etuhu who laid the ball back to Tom Smith who hit the ball first time towards the far corner of the goal and Drench who was unsighted flung himself to tip the ball away.

The game then went through a little lull for a while but woke up with ten minutes to go to half time when the former Stoke City player Marc Goodfellow cleverly attemped to lob Gonzalez from the right side that went just wide of the post. One of City's better moves came a couple of minutes later when they pushed through the heart of Barrow with Guidetti starting the move with Jeremy Helan and his new shortened hair being involved before Caicedo played the ball into the area on the right where Poole had a great first touch and almost instantaneously hit the volley into the near post which Drench reacted well to turn behind for the corner.

The last action of the first half saw Guidetti and Caicedo have double chances that were either blocked or pushed away by Drench.

City as I said saw the better of the second half and Drench was again called into action eight minutes in with an Ibrahim shot from the edge of the area that he tipped over the bar. 

City took the lead in the sixty sixth minute when a free kick from the right was swung in and Ibrahim rose well to head in from close range.

Barrow's only real clear effort in the second half came when substitute Simon Wiles latched on to a half cleared ball and he turned sharpley and flashed a shot straight back just wide.

City were able to double their lead with just over ten minutes remaining when Omar Elabdellaoui made a strong run down the right and he beat two defenders before crossing in, but the clearance came to substitute Harry Bunn who had a good first touch and fired into the far corner of the goal.

City nearly got a third in the ninetieth minute with Barrow pushing for a goal were left open for the counter attack but there was Drench quickly off his line to smother the effort.

Teams:

Barrow: Drench(GK), Spender, Emanuel, McArten, Milne, Owen, Rutherford, Boyd, Walker(Capt.), Forrest, Goodfellow.

Subs(all used): Wiles, Hubert, Bayliss, Sheriden.

City: Gonzalez(GK), Smith, Helan, Ibrahim (Olle 83), Kay(Capt.), Veseli, Etuhu (Elabdellaoui 58), Tutte (Abu 58), Caicedo (Rasak 58), Guidetti (Bunn 72), Poole (Benali 58)

Sub: E Johansen(GK)

Attendance:660