Enfield Town 4 Chatham Town 0
Report by Andrew Warshaw
(photo: Tom Scott)
Sublime, dazzling, collectively and individually imperious from first whistle to last. Football from the Gods.
No excuses for running out of superlatives to describe Tuesday night’s sensational win over a distinctly over-physical Chatham Town to keep us flying at the top of the table.
No-one is getting carried away because we’re not even a third of the way through the season and every team has an off-day — as we’re bound to have at some stage in the weeks and months ahead. But the standards being set by the players cannot be over-estimated with confidence sky high and the way we blew away a virtually full-time team who train three times a week was mightily impressive.
Billy Holland made three changes from the FA Trophy team and it wasn’t long before we imposed ourselves on the Chats in what was our first meeting since that memorable playoff final.
The visitors may have been without two of their key defenders but hardly posed a threat as we started on the front foot and maintained our dominance throughout.
It took just six minutes for Town to impose themselves as Billy Leonard played a gorgeous ball to Tommy Avgoustidis who found himself free on goal but saw his shot blocked by the legs of Nathan Harvey.
It set the tone for some great link-up play and it wasn’t long before we took the lead. Amrit Bansal-McNulty skipped past two opponents and his pass to Tariq Al-Sadi was superbly drilled into the net from the acutest of angles.
Straight from the kickoff, Dylan Thompson had to backpedal to keep out an instinctive long-ball Chats response but it was a rare moment of danger from the visitors.
Five minutes later, our lead was doubled courtesy in part to a brilliant piece of Dylan distribution. His inch-perfect ball to Al-Sadi wide on the right completely caught Chatham out and Sam Youngs was on hand to convert Tariq’s pinpoint cross.
Shortly afterwards, Chatham, whose game plan of disrupting us failed miserably, were lucky to still have 11 players on the pitch as Oliver Hobden took out Declan Rydings yet only received a yellow.
He wasn’t the only culprit over the 90 minutes but Town refused to be unsettled. Youngs saw another effort fly just over the bar while at the other end, Mickey Parcell rolled back the years with a wonderful display of composure.
Chatham simply couldn’t live with us and Billy Leonard’s right-foot volley was sensationally saved by Harvey on the stroke of halftime.
H-T 2-0
They say 2-0 is a dangerous scoreline but as Town continued where they left off, the silky football – all pace and movement – was a joy to watch and within 10 minutes of the restart, we put the game to bed.
A sensational diagonal ball from Rydings – arguably the pass of the season so far – found Al-Sadi in space but he still had a lot to do, moving inside before steadying himself, rounding the keeper and rifling home (pictured). “Three-nil again” chanted the Town faithful, referring to our playoff victory a couple of years ago.
Chatham responded with arguably their best spell of possession and Dylan had to get his angles spot on to keep out a ferocious Bradley Stevenson strike.
But by now Town were cruising to another three points, wowing the fans with some trademark interplay. Luke May-Parrott, off the bench, couldn’t quite beat the keeper to the ball after being played in by fellow sub Dan Efobi.
But five minutes from time, the rout was complete courtesy of our on-loan 17-year-old whose strength and hold-up play have added an extra ingredient to Town’s options. Put through by Avgoustidis, Efobi sent the Town faithful into raptures as he buried his third goal in two games since arriving on loan from Cambridge United.
Yet another goal spree then by the Town, described by Billy Holland as our best all-round performance so far. Now on to Burgess Hill on Saturday to try and keep the momentum going before a much-needed week-long respite.