[madsteve]

Joao did two things that impressed me on Saturday, first was the way he left the defender for dead and calmly side footed the ball past the keeper, a lot of strikers would have blasted it or tried to be clever and take it around the keeper, he just saw his gap and put the ball into it!!  The second thing that impressed me was the way he didn't rise to Button at all.  Would have been very easy for him to either retaliate or to have gone down like a sack of potatoes, neither would have been good for him or the team but he showed great maturity and awareness of the situation to not really get involved!!

---

As regards the ref, ask any professional sportsman they will say the thing they need from the officials during a game more than anything else is consistency!!  They need to know their boundaries and to me this ref was inconsistent as to his decisions regarding the cards he dished out.  He didn't appear to get the actual decision for the fouls or penalty wrong, it was the treatment of the offenders that was all over the place!!

I was right behind the line of Joao's shot because although he moved in from slightly the RHS of the goal, he opened up his body to place the ball to the keeper's left into the gap. It was clear even from 75 yards away that there was a gap there and we knew instantaneously that it was going in.

Haven't felt confident of an OWLS striker in a one on one situation for a few years. Just imagine if that chance had fallen to Nuhiu.