Group Game Round 1 - Results

[Fenris]

Games and Statistics

[Eduardo]

Reds 2 - 0 El Fortin

Always hard to face these South-American teams on opening day. You never know what to expecet from them but thankfully we did the job and played a great opening game. Sandro Tonali scored late in the first half to put us a goal up and we had to wait until very late in the game before we secured the win. Four minutes into added time Joao Pedro won us a penalty. He took it himself and made no mistake. A good 2-0 win to start off with three points.

[Eduardo]

Bees 3 - 2 Black and Gold

We went behind early in the game when Milos Kerkez scored for the home side but goals from Adrian Wibowo and Oliver Giroud turned the game around for us. We though we could go into the dressing room a goal up but the home side levelled very late in the first half through Steven Bergwijn. The game was ruined for us when Ryan Hollingshead was sent off at the early stages of the second half. Torrem Moffi scored the winning goal for the home side ten minutes after we was reduced to ten men. A tough start but still every chance of making it into the quarter final.

[stocko74]

Brentford 3 - 2 Los Angeles FC
M_Kerkez (5) Adrian_Wibowo (12)
S_Bergwijn (41) O_Giroud (32)
Torrem_Moffi (62) Sent Off: R_Holl'gshead (51)

Very happy to win this hard fought match with moffi getting the winner just after the hour mark we did have to hang on a bit but in the end we got the win

[Nocky]

Aston Villa 2-0 Cordoba

We came up against the predicted 5-1-2-0-2C formation but we had decided to not try and counter it with the traditional E but go quite conservative ourselves - albeit with a more conservative counter attacking formation. It led to a cagey game but Zack Butterworth scored his first goal back at the club on his first start to give us the half time lead and then Ansu Fati also reopened his account to seal the points. The only negative was the sending off of Pongracic who will now miss the next game.

So a winning start as we look to qualify directly to the quarter finals. we can't ask for any more and it's our first win of the season. All round a good day

[Nocky]

Newcastle United 0-3 Al Ahly
A fantastic and dominating away win in this one. Nobody was more surprised than me how much we dominated away from home in this competition and got the campaign off to a flying start. We had the better of the stats and scored regularly keeping a clean sheet. A faultless performance.

Winning home games is the key to progression in this comp and away points are what gets you over the line so to take them all here is a great start. Hopefully we can build the momentum to get us straight through to the quarters this season

[freeriderau]

Monterrey had a bye this week

We watch Darren Lear and Arsenal closely and look forward to visiting London next week.