WOW! The best performance I’ve seen by Arbroath this season, easily! We outplayed and outfought a woeful Dumbarton side. The defence looked solid, the midfield were spraying some good passes about and Gavin Swankie scored, not once but TWICE!
Arbroath lined up with
Things started pretty even in the first 5-10 minutes and Arbroath looked to have things under control. The first real action was a good shot by Dumbarton which produced a very good save by Neil Inglis. A good shot from the edge of the box saw Inglis unsighted and the ball swerved towards the corner of the goal, but Inglis got to it and make a great 1 handed save.
A few minutes after this Arbroath scored their first. Some good pressure on the Dumbarton left back forced him into passing the ball back to his keeper. Gavin Swankie read the play well though and intercepted the ball and rounded the keeper to finish from a tight angle!
Ten or so minutes later Flyer scored to make it 2-0. A good overlapping run by Euan Donaldson saw him get a good cross into the box. As the ball dropped at the edge of the 18 yard box Kevin McMullen connected to it with a perfect left footed volley into the bottom corner of the net! Three minutes later and it was Half Time with the Lichties winning 2-0.
Dumbarton came out in the 2nd half with a more attacking formation, but to no avail. After a few good attacks early on Swankie scored a third with a breakaway for us. A long ball was played over the top of the defence for Swankie to run onto. The keeper came rushing out and Swanks cleverly lobbed the ball over his head and into the net! This really was the end for Dumbarton. There heads went down and it looked like they had given up. Ten minutes after Swankie scored Dumbarton were awarded a debatable penalty. The ball was crossed in from the left and the ball hit Jamie Bishop on what looked to be the shoulder. The referee pointed to the spot and the Dumbarton captain coolly sent Inglis the wrong way to make it 3-1.
A few minutes later Stuart MacDonald had a great chance to make it 4. Duncan McLean got played through and after the keeper came out played a neat pass to MacDonald. From 25 yards out and no keeper it looked like he must score, but a defender got back in time to deflect MacDonald’s shot out for a corner. This was the last of the action and the Lichties players received a standing ovation from the travelling “army” at the end.
Overall, everyone was great! Not 1 player had a bad game. Inglis did well with what came his way and the defence all round looked solid, especially Chris McLeod. In midfield we passed the ball around well and gave good service to the attackers. Gavin Swankie even scored…..TWICE! Hopefully this is a sign to come! An overall good performance and hopefully we can continue this into next week!