West Bromwich Albion kicked off their pre-season programme with a 2-1 defeat at San Jose Earthquakes.The Baggies suffered an early set-back at Buck Shaw Stadium as they went behind to a freak goal after just three minutes when home goalkeeper David Bingham scored from 90 yards on his professional debut.His long kick took a bizarre bounce to deceive his opposite number Boaz Myhill.Albion went further behind on the stroke of half-time when Khari Stephenson rifled in from 30 yards.Jerome Thomas pulled one back eight minutes after the break, beating two defenders before firing home from the edge of the area.Assistant head coach Michael Appleton felt the match was a good work-out and said there were plenty of encouraging signs to take into the remainder of the team's 12-day tour of the United States.He told the official club website: "If truth be told, we played well. We could and should have won the game comfortably."We limited them to maybe three or four chances and we probably had about ten. Both their keepers had inspiring evenings. They seemed to get in the way of everything we put in their way.Liverpool began their preparations for the new campaign with a 4-3 win over Chinese side Guangdong in Guangzhou.Christian Poulsen put the Merseysiders ahead on 19 minutes steering in Joe Cole's deep cross.The lead was doubled three minutes later when Jonjo Shelvey's pass carved open the defence for David Ngog to finish smartly.Ricardo Steer pulled one back with a bullet header on the stroke of half-time.Kenny Dalglish made 11 changes at the break and Conor Coady restored the two-goal advantage on 73 minutes, latching onto Andy Carroll's pass and racing into the box to shoot home.Carroll made it 4-1 five minutes from time, sweeping home via a deflection following a one-two with Maxi Rodriguez.But the Reds then conceded twice in stoppage-time. First Lu Lin curled home from 10 yards and then Yin Hongbo cut past Daniel Agger before firing home.Arsenal got their pre-season preparations underway with a 4-0 win over a Malaysian XI in Kuala Lumpur.Aaron Ramsey drilled Arsenal ahead from the penalty spot on five minutes after Jack Wilshere had been brought down in the area.Theo Walcott made it 2-0 before half-time when he lobbed the goalkeeper after running on to an exquisite through-ball from Ramsey.Manager Arsene Wenger made a raft of substitutions at half-time and Carlos Vela scored the goal of the match when he lobbed the onrushing goalkeeper just before the hour.After Robin van Persie and Samir Nasri had been introduced, Tomas Rosicky headed in Andrey Arshavin's cross from close range to cap a dominant Gunners display.
No comments:
Post a Comment