Muted Entrances
This game was a muted, hushed affair after the concerning and frightening events that had unfolded across Belarus on Friday. The crowd at the game seemed small, and had little to say for themselves- not that the players were to offer many talking points. In the wider scheme of things, the game this weekend seemed as an afterthought and so low was the quality that the players' minds also seemed to be on other things.
Vladimir again rolled his goalkeeping roulette wheel and this week the little white ball stuck on Sadovsky's square. I wish the coach would work out who he wants to go with and give them a run of games- this constant changing every week can't be anything other than unsettling for the defence. As predicted, big Yudchits dropped back to a wing back position, and Sovpel was again unable to win a place in the starting line up, with Umarov continuing in the middle of the park. Yak is still with us, so he turned out up front alongside the returning Dušan Bakić. As predicted Vladimir persisted with a 3-5-2 system to counter that of opposite number Leonid Kuchuk. Dinamo, perhaps indicating the importance they attached to the game, had rested quite a few players, with Plotnikov replaced by young
Shapko in goal, his first appearance of the season. Quite a few other
fringe first teamers and reserves turned out for them, but Kuchuk's spine of Goropevšek,
Bručić, Klimowich and Shikavka was still there.
Festival of Incompetence
The game was played at a soporific pace, only occasionally bursting into life; a game between two teams of gluttons after a fourteen course meal would have been more lively.We had a couple of half chances early on. Yakshiboev, who was more like himself yesterday, fired narrowly over from a Bakić knock-down in the first minute; the Montenegrin himself headed wide from a Yudcihts cross, being put under pressure by Shvetsov. These were fleetingly promising signs.
The first real chance, though, came at the other end on around ten minutes. A Dinamo "attack" was on the point of breaking down on our right touchline when a dithering Umarov was robbed of possession by Kazlov. The balding no. 71 drove towards the edge of the area and fed Shikavka, who immediately laid the ball off to the onrushing Ivan Bakhar. It was a slick move that completed bisected our startled defence. Bakhar hit a low shot across the face of goal but it maybe lacked a bit of power; Sadovsky did very well to push the ball away with his left glove and gather the rebound smartly. Bakhar perhaps didn't realise the time he had, and snatched at this very good chance.
A tedious, attritional game lazily chased it's own tail aimlessly for the next ten minutes or so. Slowly Energetik began to realise that they weren't facing Barcelona, and gradually upped the tempo. Kazlov was robbed of the ball at the edge of his area, after stumbling carelessly into trouble, and Umarov's stinging, dipping drive startled Shapko in the Dinamo goal; he grasped the ball unconvincingly at the second attempt. From a free kick shortly afterwards, Yudchits played in a perfect, angled cross, which the leaden footed Dinamo defence left to one another. Big Miroshnikov met the ball very well, and the centre-back was unlucky to see his header slip just wide of Shapko's right hand post.
The chance of the first period came on the half hour mark. Hesitant and uncertain passing between Shkurdyuk and Nosko saw our captain robbed of the ball half way inside our own half. With our defence hopelessly compromised and trailing behind, Bakhar fed Shikavka this time. Sadovskiy came out bravely from his line but he needn't have bothered. The effort from Dinamo's no. 9 was pathetic, an under-hit backpass that sclaffed wide of the right hand post. It's the kind of shot one would have expected from someone wearing carpet slippers in the back garden, and pretty much summed up Dinamo's efforts to break the deadlock in the game. A further effort from the misfiring centre-forward a few minutes later, after some ping-pong in our penalty box, boomeranged dismally off his right shinpad and barely made the goal-line, ten yards wide of the target.
The Unwinding Gramophone
There was a brief flurry at the beginning of the second half. Klimovich, who had had a quiet first half, sent in a powerful right footed drive from thirty yards that dropped just wide of Sadovsky's left hand post, and from the resulting corner he found space in our defence to head the ball unchallenged, into the side netting. But Dinamo were unable to sustain this brief surge in their energy levels. It was to be our big moment, so nearly, next.
Energetik had won a corner on the Dinamo left. Yakshiboev sent over a perfect ball skimming head height, and Nosko, lurking unmarked at the back post, met it powerfully from close range.. Young Shapko in goal made an instinctive save in front of his face, turning the stinging header onto the bar, from where it was hacked away to safety by Goropevšek, just as the lurking Miroshnikov closed in for the kill. We are paying dearly for the lucky streak we had a few weeks back. This is the fourth time the boys have hit the woodwork in little over an hour of play stretching back to the Belshina game last week.
Atemeng came on for a tired looking Bakić. Bakhar then stung Sadovsky's palms with a curling long range effort that was creeping just inside the top right hand corner. Yakshiboev fired over narrowly from the edge of the area. The game began to unwind dismally like an old gramophone running out of revs. Dinamo seemed to be having a competition amongst themselves, as to who could produce the worst set piece. For a side reliant on scoring from set pieces, they really aren't very good at them. The ref, peevish with boredom, began to break up an already disjointed game with fussy and in some cases dubious free kicks. Free kicks cleared the bar and were last seen bouncing down the ring road in the general direction of Vitebsk. Others barely cleared our wall's shin-pads. One dreaded a late, undeserved winner from Dinamo but they never looked remotely capable of making anything of the many promising dead ball situations they found themselves in.
With about ten minutes to go Atemeng had our last decent chance. He's a frustrating player; massive in stature, yet never jumps for anything, and far too slow with the ball on the ground ever to create space for himself. A little interchange with Yak at the edge of the Dinamo area, as their defence obligingly opened up to give the big Ghanaian a sporting chance, saw him hit a weak shot, falling over, onto the roof of the net. He should have taken the ball forward further and obliged Shapko to at least come out and meet him. but he has no confidence whatever. The Pershaya Liga or a new country altogether awaits, one feels.
The last moment of this dismal affair came with two minutes remaining. Dinamo were awarded yet another free kick just to the left of our area. Ukrainian defender Artem Suhotsky, perhaps despairing at the incompetence of his forwards, stepped up to take the kick, and finally Dinamo had one on target. Left footed, his shot bent dangerously over our wall and dipped towards the mid left hand corner of the net, but Sadovsky did well to lunge across and beat the ball away to safety.
That was it. Thankfully.
My eyes, My eyes
This was an awful spectacle between one side on a bad run, and another too fearful of the consequences of losing. We wrote in the preview of Dinamo being haunted by the ghosts of a more successful past played on bigger and more challenging stages; the ghosts of Malofeev's 1982 heroes wouldn't dignify themselves to haunt the present side. They're not worthy of the famous shirts they wear.
They may have the backlit fashion shoots, professionally sculpted facial hair, big wages by Belarusian professional standards, turn up yawning to training in branded tracksuit and flip-flops, and the cachet of playing for a club most football fans have heard of. But they are square-footed, and chicken-hearted, and have no idea how to play a watchable version of football. There's no passion, desire, unity at all in that side; badly oiled ball bearings in a malfunctioning engine. They may bludgeon the likes of Smolevichi and Slavia into submission, but they are in no danger of winning anything meaningful this season. I'm not sure what wealthy owner Yuri Chyzh thinks he's getting for his investment. Whatever it is, it certainly isn't entertainment.
As for us, the positives from coming through this grim, tedious affair unscathed is that we kept a clean sheet, Sadovskiy had a good game in goal, and if only we had believed a little bit more in our chances of success, I am sure we'd have won. We had our chances. Even on a bad run, we have managed to stay, deservedly, three points clear of them in the table. Moreover, most of us would have settled for a point before this game kicked off. I hope, however, that we are more ambitious against Dinamo when they visit Molodechno later in the campaign. They are certainly not worthy of the respect that we showed them in yesterday's match.
However, three games without a goal and four games that have yielded just two points are concerning stats. As fans we can see the anxiety in our forwards, the longer the goal-less run continues. Our next game in Molodechno is against Slavia Mozyr, who stuttered to an unconvincing win over unlucky Smolevichi on Friday. Now sitting sixth in the table, just three points behind second after Sunday's results, we have to work out how to somehow-anyhow- record a win as the first half of the season draws to a close.
tl;dr? Click on this link and I guarantee that even the most intractable insomniac will be snoring loudly before this highlights package has finished
Jon Blackwood
Twitter: @jonblackwood
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