Pre-Season Friendly

St Neots Town    1      Millwall     2

This was another very useful work out for Pete Gill’s embryonic side against a very good youthful visiting Millwall side. After creating the better first half chances St Neots conceded two goals in the first seven minutes after the break and then roared back to score once and really deserved an equaliser late in the game. However, the minutes gained on the pitch as the Manager sorts out his squad for the first competitive action of the season less than two weeks hence will have been extremely useful as the players pitch their challenge for places in the side.

The home side were the first to settle on another hot afternoon and their best early openings came from the long throws delivered into the six yards area by Aaron Smith. One of these after a quarter of an hour saw the visiting defence happy to concede a corner and six minutes later from an Andre Hassanally free kick, Manny Osei should have done better than fire over the bar.  The first real opening for the visitors saw Laquay Coleman go clear of the defence, but his wild finish was far too high. Osei then shot wide after a neat build up and a snapshot from Brandon Njoku brought the save of the first half from visiting keeper George Evans. Too many Millwall attacks were falling foul of the offside flag and from another long throw by Smith, Toib Adeyemi headed narrowly wide, and the half ended with Millwall’s best chance as Josh Stephenson set up Romain Esse, but a last-ditch tackle by Charlie Lewis saved the day for St Neots.

St Neots were a little slow to resettle after half time and concede twice in the opening seven minutes of the second half, the first just thirty seconds after the restart, saw the home defence open up to let in Henry Hearn for a simple finish, and then six minutes later it was 2-0 to the visitors when Romain Esse produced a solo run past his marker to fire in a shot off the far post.   St Neots rallied well taking the game to their visitors and after Callum Anderson had brought a good save from George Evans, St Neots deservedly pulled a goal back as a Robbie Mason flick from a Hassanally cross set up Toib Adeyemi for a deserved reply. Substitute Declan Nche was a welcome addition to the St Neots attack, and he was twice close to levelling the scores – his first effort deflected and his second, just inches too high. The St Neots keeper made an important save at the feet of substitute Kavalli Howland and the match ended with St Neots man-of-the-match Charlie Lewis unlucky to see his late effort just clear the crossbar.

 

Att. 183

(John Walker)