Burnham move to within striking distance
Improving Blues come from behind to beat Broadfields away
Burnham have moved to within striking distance of the play-off places in the Combined Counties Premier Division North after coming from behind to beat Broadfields United with a battling display on Saturday.
Boss Ben Murray likened their 6-4 defeat to Reading City at the 1878 Stadium on December 27 to 'an under 12s basketball game’, but he was far happier with the discipline and intensity of his side's display against Broadfields, a side who've moved into the top half with some impressive performances of late.
Their in-form strike force of Anas Igozolin and Jabir Laraba were once again on the scoresheet as the Blues withstood the early blow of falling behind and came back for a competent victory, with Anas helping himself to a brace.
The result moves the Blues to eighth in the table and to within a couple of points of the top five. The play-offs are Murray's stated aim for the side this season and they remain very much on course to achieve that after rediscovering their league form in the past couple of months. A strong start was disrupted by their progression in cup competitions and several sloppy performances; however, the Blues have looked more focused of late as they reel in the sides above them. They still have games in hand on all of the sides above them and are scheduled to play at bottom of the table Edgeware & Kingsbury on Saturday, provided the poor weather eases up in time.
“We were good on Saturday,” said Murray. “It’s been a weird one over Christmas because you don’t get any time to train. We played Reading City on December 27, and it was like having a game in the middle of noman’s land. Everyone was off and doing their own thing, so getting them back in was difficult and I think that’s why it was such a crazy game to be honest.
“So, Saturday, was a good reaction, against a good side in Broadfields.
“We’re on the same points as where we were last season, which is good. We’re on target in that respect. And we’ve got a few months now where we can pick up points that we failed to pick up last season. We’ve got to have
a strong end to the season, but there’s no point looking into all of that. We just focus on the next game because this league is so mad.
“Edgeware won at the weekend, and we play them on Saturday. Every team that we play at the moment seems to have won the week before. They picked up a good result against Chalfont St Peters so I’m sure that will be a tough game as well.”
Murray was less happy with his side's display in their 'crazy' 6-4 defeat at home to Reading City on December 27, however, he felt the crowd were given value for money even if the result ended up going against his side.
“It was like a u12s basketball game, and I think both managers would say the same thing on that, it was crazy,” he said. “There was no structure to the game at all. It was a game in noman’s land and the only game on at this level on this side of the country. It was well worth the entrance fee though, everyone got a goal per 50p spent, people were saying afterwards.
“But we were on the wrong end of it. It was one of those games where we attacked, they attacked, we attacked,
they attacked, but they were able to snuff out a couple of our late attacks and went down the other end and scored. I’ve not really been involved in a game like that for a while.”
The Blues boss has also warned his players not to take Saturday's game at Edgeware for granted. The bottom club may have won only four matches this season, but they edged out Chalfont St Peter 2-1 on Saturday and Burnham have slipped up before this season when they've been expected to pick up a result.
“It’s not a banana skin,” he said. “Sometimes there’s a danger of us getting ahead of ourselves. When we do that, that’s when we lose games. We did that at Chalfont earlier in the season. We thought because we were at the top we’d beat a team down near the bottom, but we went there and lost. It’s so hard to win a game of football in this division because anything can happen. We’ve got two training sessions, starting tonight, which I can’t wait for because we haven’t trained in a while, and hopefully we can get some more structure into out game for Saturday.”