2-0 fine by me, would love to see Daniel score,as I think the expression is ‘run his socks off ‘ in the opening games. Will also be nice to see Antonio and Manny back as both are now at Whyteleafe
Excellent performance against a very good Whyteleafe team. Totally deserved the win and Rogers had very little to do although he still makes me bloody nervous. Stone and Elphick different gravy and what a goal from Pope who had his best game in a Hastings shirt. Definitely our strongest 11 on show today. Very well done 👏👏👏
Fantastic performance. Controlled 80% of the game against quality opponents, Another clean sheet. Pope quality finish and deserved at least 1 more. when we looked in trouble our back 5 came to the rescue.
Aggy and his coaching team are laying down the foundations for a great season. all the hard work on and off the field is paying off. Well done boys
Our defence today looked very good apart from a couple of wobbles from Louis in goal. Craig Stone and Ben Pope proving to be two brilliant signings. Craig and Gary Elphick-what a pair of centre halves! Good to see Ryan Worrell available- he looked a quality player in our pre-season matches. One moment of brilliance-great ball forward from Jake Elliott and brilliant finish from Ben Pope- the difference between two good sides.
Thought Whyteleafe a decent side ,but we are improving with each game. Vastly improved at the back, but still some squeaky bum moments. Need to get other players on the scoresheet. Jake Elliott had his best game in a United shirt. bring on Worthing ,surely 700-800 crowd.
Great team performance against a good Whyteleaf side. Deserved the win and the clean sheet. We are one of the only three unbeaten sides in our division and still no goals against. Looking good.
Proper meaty game of football. Really engrossing even if there wasn't a huge amount of goalmouth action. Having not seen us since pre-season, I have to say that I was impressed: we looked an altogether better side without the ball than we did last season, both when put under sustained pressure and, particularly, when Whyteleafe tried to counter. We didn't switch off, didn't get sloppy, didn't get over-committed when we had the ball; it was our opponents who let their concentration drop for a crucial moment and got punished instead.
Much credit rightly goes to the defence, but I thought Ben Pope put in a tremendous shift. Well-taken goal, might've had another...but more than anything, he fought for every ball, made a contest of everything he could and played the role of target man quite superbly until he ran out of puff. Fantastic.
Enjoyed the game today between two good sides who will clearly be up there challenging for promotion at the end. Very few chances created by Whyteleafe in open play thanks to our impressive defensive though, as has been mentioned, our keeper is prone to the odd lapse and we got away with a couple of bad moments today.
Brilliantly taken goal by Ben today who looks a really good signing....and a goal that proves that sometimes getting the ball up to the forwards quickly is actually the best way to score against well drilled sides who will be difficult to penetrate if we give them time to organise their defence.
Feel I need to mention Lanre and Daniel who haven't scored yet this season but continue to terrorise defences. Their time will come, I am sure.
Yesterday's performance was impressive against a Whyteleafe side who - once they had got over a very nervy first 10 minutes - looked composed and confident. I agree with the positive coments above, particularly Phil's about Jake Elliott. He made one mistake I noticed, but generally he fits in very well with Stone and Elphick. With Sam Beale as well (and Ollie Black on the bench yesterday) at last we have a defence that looks secure, playing the way Chris wants to play. There will be yet sterner tests to come and, of course confidence is a fragile thing, but I didn't think we would progress as quickly as this. Well done.
Ben Pope is another very positive feature of our opening games. He looks fitter with each game. From the start he demonstrated a goal scorer's instinct to be in the right place at the right time; but yesterday he was watching the line well and winning headers often from difficult balls against a tall and competent defence. We have not seen that in someone playing for us in a centre forward role for quite some time.
What was not so good, however, was that for much of the time there was a very big gap between Ben and our mid-field. Daniel and Lanre were wide and there was no-one to feed off his knock downs. I understand we can't necessarily have it all ways - that a deep midfield helps the defence and that if we have someone to partner Ben upfront we must sacrifice a wide player or a midfield player. What we can't do is to expect Ben to score all our goals this season (as he is presently doing); we must make better use of Daniel. Of course he can beat any full back this league might offer up, but we need goals from him too!
