When Saturday Comes

Oh, the trials and tribulations of being a football manager!

Now I know how Fergie and Jose feel...

As I mentioned before, my youth team were playing a semi final of a local tournament last night.

The pre match team talk was tricky: how to relay the importance of the game, encourage the boys, but not make them overconcerned and nervous - needed to try and get the balance right.

Three minutes into the game I was beginning to think we had got the balance all wrong. The boys were not in the game at all and were already two goals down...

Thankfully they rallied and a couple of quick goals from our "midfield general" brought us back level and banished the nerves.

The boys were growing in confidence with every passing minute and soon started to play some great attacking football.

At this level there is a lot that can be done with brute force and direct play i.e. get the big boy at the back to knock people over, lump the ball up the park and hope that somebody gets a scoring touch in amongst the confusion. However, I don't like to play this way, our boys are encouraged to get the ball down, pass and move, and to use our pace down the flanks whenever possible - I firmly believe that playing good technical football wins out every time.

This proved to be the case last night as, despite a great deal of effort and application from the opposition players, our boys linked up well and gave the opposing midfield and defence a torrid time.

We eventually ran out 17-2 winners, the most pleasing aspect of which was that just about all the squad managed to get on the scoresheet. Actually, being honest, the most pleasing aspect was that the wee fella had a great game, scoring 5 goals and setting up a few of the others, I guess I'm a dad first and a coach second!

The final of the tournament is on Saturday and will be played at Peterhead's Balmoor Stadium. The boys are excited about playing on a proper pitch at a real league ground and I am sure that with all the parents, brothers, sisters, aunties and uncles etc crammed into the main stand we can generate a bit of an atmosphere.

Just need to hope that they can pull off a similar performance in the final, it would be great if they could win the thing!!