SPARTAN SOUTH MIDLANDS LEAGUE DIVISION ONE
BEDFORD 4 LONDON LIONS 0
London Lions manager Tony Gold described his team as "an embarrassmen" as they suffered their heaviest defeat of the season, going down 4-0 at Bedford in the South Midlands League Division One.
Having thumped Wodson Park 8-1 just three days earlier, the Lions were well and truly brought back down to earth following a real horror show.
The Lions performance in the first 30 minutes wasn’t at all bad, but they somehow found themselves two goals down with some poor defending against the run of play proving costly. But the real body blow came with the sending off of Ben Ellis 10 minutes before half-time for an off-the-ball incident.
Full credit to Bedford though, who embarrassed the Lions in the second half in a 45-minute period the Lions will want to forget very quickly.
It was really a toothless performance from the Lions and a stark reminder of how much work still needs to be done in order for Lions to sustain such a promising start.
In actual fact, for the first 30 minutes Lions dominated possession and were not playing too badly but two counter-attacks and some very poor defending allowed Bedford to take a two-goal lead completely against the run of play.
Any hopes of a comeback went on 30 minutes when Ellis received a straight red card for kicking a player off the ball right in front of the referee. Lions' misery was compounded by the early withdrawal of Sam Sloma who picked up a thigh strain.
Even amongst all the mayhem Lions still created several good goal-scoring opportunities but once again their inconsistency in front of goal put an end to any hopes of an incredible fightback.
Looking to find a way back into the game, Lions reverted to three at the back and switched to a 3-4-2 formation. The visitors second half performance was without doubt the worst this season and arguably, according to Gold, the "most spineless" in two years.
Bedford scored a further two goals and were fully deserving of the three points leaving Lions with no excuses.
Gold said: "We were a collective embarrassment today, the players know it, we have spoken about it and we will move on, nothing more to be said."
Lions: Mario Cenolli, Danny Berg (sub: Adam Hakimi), Adam Myeroff, Michael Sacks, Craig Ellis, Sam Sloma (sub: Josh Kennet), Daniel Stanton, Dean Nyman, Ben Ellis, Adam Bolle (sub: Dan Green)
