Greetings Kankas
and Kankies.
Ankaragucu
followed up last week’s impressive win in Denizli with another victory in
Ankara tonight.
The Ankaragucu
revival continues therefore, and from apparently languishing and cut adrift at
the bottom of the league a few weeks ago, they are now moving up to challenge
for mid-table security. However, this
progress must be maintained in the weeks ahead with so many teams in a similar
position !
ANKARAGUCU 3 Yeni Malatyaspor 1
Team – Ricardo,
Kitsiou, Atakan, Sarlija, Atila, Voca, Saba, Endri, Lukasik, Paintsil and
Bolingi
Substitutes –
Erdi, Adzic, Diousse, Borvan and Cetin
Ankaragucu was
quick out of the traps and ahead in the 3rd minute. Paintsil was sent an excellent pass and off
he went scurrying down the left to the goal line. His cut-back was parried by the goalkeeper
right into the path of the in-rushing Lukasik who tapped-in the rebound.
Paintsil was a ‘livewire’
throughout and had his best match for Ankaragucu (man of the match !). He almost made it two 3 minutes later from
his shot inside the box, but it was saved.
Bad news on the
half hour mark when, Captain for the Day, Kitsiou, went off injured and
replaced by Erdi.
Shortly after,
Paintsil had another effort from outside the box saved.
Then, 3 minutes
later, Bolingi played a good pass into Paintsil on the left and he took off on
a run, cut into the box, and was brought down from behind as he was about to
shoot. He dusted himself down, picked
up the ball and stuck it under his shirt.
This is mine, and nobody argued
!!! He then calmly stroked the
ball into the right with the goalkeeper diving to his left.
Into the 2nd
half and Ankaragucu should have made it 3 when Paintsil went on one of his runs
down the right and passed into the centre for Bolingi, but a defender was well
positioned to deflect the pass out for a corner.
A scare and a
wake up call for Ankaragucu on the 72nd minute mark when a Malatya
attack and shot was saved by Ricardo, but it hit the post and was fortunately
cleared.
2 minutes later
and another save from Ricardo as Malatya stepped-up the pressure searching for
a way back into the match.
It came one
minute later with a cross from the right which was headed down to Yousef who
slid the ball in with the Ankaragucu defence caught out.
5 minutes later
there was a flare-up on the touch line with 2 players which eventually included
most of the players – it seemed like someone said the wrong words !!!
The referee calmed things down
and produced 2 yellow cards, and then he obviously received a message in his
earpiece and went to consult VAR. On
his return he produced the RED card for Hafez which I can only assume was for
violent play. There were lots of head
to head confrontations and obviously his connected with an Ankaragucu
player !!
3 minutes to go
and the match was over for Malatya when Cetin made progress down the right and
crossed for Borven to clip the ball in via the inside of the left post to make
the match safe heading into time added on !
Ankaragucu had 2
more chances to score No4 in time added on.
First, Ankaragucu scored, but Saba had been ruled offside in the build
up. Secondly, Diousse by set-up by
Saba, but blasted his shot high and wide.
So, the bottom
line is that Ankaragucu secured 3 more valuable points in their fight against
relegation. However, I have to say
that Ankaragucu was fortunate on a few occasions that the Malatya forwards were
wayward at crosses and corners with the final efforts going over the bar or
past the post more often than not.
Next up for
Ankaragucu is a difficult away match on Tuesday in Gaziantep. Of course, as I have said many times here,
there are no easy matches in this league, but if they play with the same spirit
and determination which they have shown in the past few weeks, then we should
be optimistic of bringing at least one point back to Ankara.
As always, keep
watching this space for the outcome.
All the best
from Eski Kanka Jim
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