retired_cathylynn820

The problem with the Danish tournament is that you have a 4 month break from November to March. A team can easily loose it’s focus during those months. As we played hosts to FC Arrhus in the first match after the break I got my first chance to see if any of my players had lost their focus. 2 goals by John Laursen and one by Kenneth Knudsen during the first half brushed any doubts I might have had aside. It also seemed that Martin Andreasen had had time to settle in the team during the past few months, as his debut made for an impressive performance.
Allthough the second half didn’t offer any further goals we did see the best general performance from Vejle so far. John Laursen’s performance even earned him the MOM award.

The game had taken us up to only 3 points behind the teams in the promotion zone. It was time to make a run for it and we couldn’t have gotten a better start. If we got the momentum at this stage we could still win the entire ****ing division.

I didn’t get to celebrate for long though. Martin Pedersen got into a bad tackle and twisted his knee. He would be out for at least 3 weeks, but since it was a knee injury I suspected that it might take a bit longer to get him into full match fitness.

AC Horsens manager Kent Nielsen was the first to get the axe during the spring season. Allthough they were seventh and still in contact with the top brass, the Horsens board didn’t seem to be happy about it. I could only hope that the Vejle board would show more patience when I got in trouble.

An early goal by Gravesen and the dismissal of Jacob Høj should have led to more than just the one goal during the first half of the home game against B1909, but an excellent performance by their keeper kept them in the game. At this point it was about wearing them down, so I told the lads to keep at it and to stay sharp in defense.
B1909 keeper, Mikkel Petersen continued to be a veritable wall during the second half and neither side was able to score. A hard fought game finished 1-0 in our favour, but we couldn’t be unhappy as we got the 3 points.

As we got to the break of our 3rd consecutive home game of the season our luck seemed to be running out. B93 took the 1-0 lead and the second half was surely going to be an uphill struggle.
As Lyhne made the early equalizer the tension doubled. Both teams were battling for the winning goal and as the clock was about to run out neither team had managed to get the winning goal. During the closing seconds Chris Sørensen struck a hopeful through pass in the direction of Jerry Brown, Brown found space and struck a low shot past Anders Rasmussen for the final score 2-1.
It was another hardfought 3 points, but 3 points none the less.

Next up was a tough away game against HFK Sønderjylland a team that would no soubt be out to regain the 2nd place we’d stolen from them the previous week. On the other hand, a win would give us a nice buffer against the teams immediately behind us. So it was a week of figuring out how to best beat the opposing horde.

With the aid of Holmark we had set up a pretty good recovery program. We had successfully managed to get players back into shape far faster than we’d usually managed to do it. I was hoping that would prove a decisive advantage during the remainder of the season, actually I was certain it would. We were finally in a position where we were fighting for the positions we wanted to finish in, and we needed to follow up on the good start we’d made to the spring season and secure promotion as soon as possible.

retired_cathylynn820

In honour of my finishing all my last exam of the year yesterday and sorting out the main project that is at the end of this course I've decided to post 2 updates today
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It looked good as we took the early lead on a Brown goal, but it was a game where Stig Olsen showed his lack of expeirence. HFK Sønderjylland managed to get the ball past him 3 times during the first half and we realised that we had to climb Mount Everest in the coming 45 minutes. I made it clear that we were not going to call it quits after that performance, it was time to show them what we were made of.
Allthough we didn’t manage to turn it around, we did keep them from scoring goals. They were now second with us trailing 1 point behind. Now we had to focus on shaking this loss and return to form for the next game.

Right before the game against Randers Freja a young defensive midfielder was promoted to the reserves. Carsten Frederiksen was hard working, accelerated fast, had excellent movement and stamina, but he wouldn’t feature in the senior squad for quite a while. It was too early to determine his potential, but he looked good enough to be offered a permanent contract. After that the following years would be the judge. However, I was pleased to see that our youth team was still producing youngsters deemed good enough for promotion to the reserves.

Randers Freja looked keen on getting an early goal…they got 2. That left us with our backs against the wall and I made the call for an all out attack. Kenneth Knudsen reduced their lead to 1 goal as he scored his 10th of the season. That would be tha final goal of the first half. Seeing as Ribers had earned an early booking I felt it was time to give Kielstrup the chance to prove his worth in the second half.
After Brown scored the equaliser, for his 10th of the season as well, I decided to go for a slightly less adventurous approach. Seeing as it was an away game I could live with only earning the 1 point which we managed to do in spite of some heavy Randers Freja pressure towards the end. I would have loved to walk away with 3 points, but at least the 1 point was enough to get us past HFK Sønderjylland in the table.

At this point we were second, but that could be short lived as B93 who were only 2 points behind had a game in hand. If they didn’t manage to move past us we would get the opportunity to expand our lead in the coming weeks as we faced relatively week opposition. Frem looked to be likely winners as they had a 5 point lead on us and a game in hand as well. However, at this point winning the division wasn’t as much of a priority as getting ahead of the remaining teams in the promotion dogfight.

Brown got a bit of attention as various journalists had caught on to his run of form, I had to agree with them that he was indeed an excellent prospect and a player I would certainly try to keep for as long as possible.

It was just one of those games. Allthough HIK keeper Kasper Broholm’s goal had been turned into a regular shooting gallery there was no way past him. Chris Sørensen had managed to catch him flat footed on the rebound once for the 1-0 lead, but other than that there had been no way past him. Luckily our defense was as impenetrable as our offense seemed incompetent and the first half finished 1-0. All I could hope for was that we would be able to wear him down.
As Diara scored the early equalizer, smiles faded all over Vejle Stadion. However, this was a match of quite a few firsts as Tychosen brought us back on track with his first goal of the season. With 10 minutes to go Blom secured the game by making it 3-1. That meant that we were still ahead of HFK Sønderjylland and even though B93 still had a game in hand they wouldn’t be able to catch us by winning that game.

A month with mixed results finished with us in second and looking for promotion. All we had to do was shake off the contenders.

retired_cathylynn820

Actually 3 updates I failed to notice that the text in my previous post was followed by a table. So I figured you might as well get the table too.
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<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre"> ************************************************** ********************************************** Danish First Division - Sunday 31st March 2002********************************************** ************************************************** ================================================== ============================================== 2001/2 Table============================================= ================================================== =Pos Team Pld Won Drn Lst For Ag Won Drn Lst For Ag Pts--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1st Frem 20 8 2 0 19 4 4 5 1 14 10 43 2nd VEJLE 21 9 1 1 34 10 3 1 6 19 23 38 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3rd HFK Sønderjylland 21 7 4 0 20 9 4 1 5 12 14 38 4th Fredericia 21 7 3 1 18 9 3 2 5 14 24 35 5th B 93 20 5 3 3 22 13 4 3 2 19 13 33 6th Ølstykke FC 21 8 1 2 23 11 2 2 6 11 16 33 7th AC Horsens 21 7 0 3 20 13 4 0 7 12 22 33 8th Herfølge 20 5 3 2 19 12 4 2 4 11 14 32 9th B 1913 21 8 1 1 22 11 1 2 8 15 26 30 10th B 1909 21 6 3 1 23 14 1 1 9 10 23 25 11th FC Aarhus 21 6 1 3 17 12 1 3 7 9 27 25 12th Randers Freja 21 5 1 5 21 16 2 1 7 11 21 23 13th HIK 21 6 1 3 23 17 1 0 10 8 21 22 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------14th Hvidovre 21 3 3 5 13 18 3 1 6 8 21 22 15th Brønshøj 21 3 3 4 15 13 0 5 6 13 23 17 16th Skjold 20 4 2 3 15 12 0 3 8 8 26 17 </pre>

retired_cathylynn820

As the league was getting tighter, the family suffered. I didn’t have much time to spent with them at home and when I was home I was constantly thinking about football. Sara had seen me like this before. Not to the same degree, but she knew what was going on. That’s why she accepted it. She had seen me those 10 years ago, pretty much lying in the gutter and to her it was a blessing to see me so focused on doing something I loved.

I can’t stress her importance in my life. She was the reason I was doing so well. For a while she feared that if it went bad for Vejle I would suffer a breakdown, but she saw me rise to the challenges ahead. While cursing the mistakes I made I always went to work with a big fat smile on my face.

I was in the “zone.”

Allthough HFK Sønderjylland put us under pressure by winning the early game I had learned from my mistakes. Some would say that cution had got the better of me, but our style wasn’t exactly cautious, we just didn’t go on an all out attack from the beginning of the away match against Hvidovre. The early lead brought on by by a Knudsen put [Hvidovre under pressure. However, they did manage to equalize the match prior to the break. I told the lads not to loose their heads from the beginning of the second half, but if it looked like we were loosing or couldn’t find a way through I’d make the attacking call.
During the second half my young squad really came together. Berierholm put us back in the lead early on and Knudsen settled the game with his second goal. It was a game in which especially Ribers, Knudsen and Beierholm came off with top mark perfomances. After this game we really looked good for the remaining games. HFK Sønderjylland were still our main contenders, but if we could continue to pull of this kind performances nothing would be able to stop us.

I was happy to see that the board of directors agreed with me.

By the home game against Ølstykke it was becoming quite obvious that Frem were slipping. We wouldn’t be able to move past them at this point, but if we remained patient and consistent it might still be a possibility. We took a 2-0 lead pretty early in the game, so I decided to let of the pressure a bit. That let to a goal by Ølstykke and I told the lads to resume the pressure in the second half. However, we were getting to a stage in the season where I wanted to spare my players whenever I got the chance. I did not want to loose it all because my players were tired. It was decided that whenever we had a 2 goal lead we would slow down the game.
As Ølstykke managed to score another 2 goals, and their keeper managed to pull off an amazing performance we dropped the first home game of the spring. I was gutted to say the least. I felt we had lost the game due to my “shrewd” tactical thinking. We were now 3 points behind HFK Sønderjylland and even B93had managed to slip past us again. The gloves were coming of. It was do or die time.

In a tight contest our strikers proved to be more than the AC Horsens defense could match. We left the first half with a 2-1 scoreline in our favour. It was clear that we would have to maintain pressure for the remainder of the match and hopefully score one or two more goals.
We played the second half with great discipline. Jerry Brown earned the MOM award due to a good performance spiced up by an early goal. We got the 3 points and we were once again closing in on the leaders. I was especially happy to note a rare away win. From now on out we had 3 home games and 3 away games and a very tight contest.

The top teams weren’t moving an inch. We did our job against Skjold, but at this stage it was as much about who slipped. 5 teams had a realistic chance of winning the division, but our 3-1 win ensured that we stayed close to the top. We were still third, but HFK Sønderjylland only had one point on us.

retired_cathylynn820

I received a great deal of criticism for selling Olesen at this stage, but AaB came in with a huge £525k cash offer + 25% of any future transfer fee. I made the choice for two reasons. The first was that we were getting low on funds, the second was that he had an £80k non-promotion release clause. While I still felt that we had a pretty good shot at promotion I didn’t want to take the chance. I wouldn’t have sold him if I didn’t think we had adequate backup, I also felt that the money could be used to add depth to the squad. Something I would attempt to do right away.

Herfølge away was always going to be a tough game. I had hoped that my strikers would show why the media had praised them in recent weeks, but in spite of the fact that we created the majority of the chances we were unable to convert. With 4 points to the leaders and 4 games to go promotion started to look far less likely. The only fair result would have been a draw, but Herfølge managed to score from their only shot on target.


<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre"> ************************************************** ********************************************** Danish First Division - Tuesday 30th April 2002********************************************** ************************************************** ================================================== ============================================== 2001/2 Table============================================= ================================================== =Pos Team Pld Won Drn Lst For Ag Won Drn Lst For Ag Pts--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1st Frem 26 9 2 1 20 5 5 7 2 21 17 51 2nd HFK Sønderjylland 26 9 4 0 25 9 6 2 5 19 17 51 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3rd Ølstykke FC 26 10 1 2 27 12 5 2 6 21 21 48 4th VEJLE 26 10 1 2 39 14 5 1 7 24 26 47 5th B 93 26 7 3 3 27 15 6 5 2 27 17 47 6th Fredericia 26 8 4 1 21 11 4 3 6 18 28 43 7th Herfølge 26 7 4 3 26 16 5 2 5 14 17 42 8th B 1913 26 9 3 1 26 14 2 2 9 16 28 38 9th AC Horsens 26 7 2 4 21 15 4 0 9 12 26 35 10th B 1909 26 7 5 1 29 17 1 2 10 14 28 31 11th Randers Freja 26 5 1 7 23 22 4 2 7 17 22 30 12th FC Aarhus 26 7 1 4 18 13 1 4 9 10 33 29 13th Hvidovre 26 3 3 8 16 28 4 1 7 9 24 25 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------14th Skjold 26 6 3 4 23 19 0 3 10 11 32 24 15th HIK 26 6 1 6 26 26 1 0 12 9 25 22 16th Brønshøj 26 3 4 6 18 19 0 6 7 13 24 19 </pre>

retired_cathylynn820

We managed to win the home game against B1913. It wasn’t a tight game and the win was never in any real danger. However, the other top teams managed to win as well, so nothing had changed at the top. I was delighted to see my team performing well and to see Knudsen get his 15th goal of the season.

Nothing had changed after the last round and we were still 4 points behind the leaders. I was considering altering the tactic in a major way, but I wasn’t sure about it.

I had a meeting with Brian where we had a long discussion on the topic. I felt that we could indeed win the remaining matches with the current tactics, but I also knew that I was going to alter the tactic for next year anyway. I was also very interested in how my future role would be if we failed to achieve promotion, but he couldn’t give me a straight answer.

That off course left me concerned, but I decided that caution was the better part of valour in this instance. We would be deploying in much the same manner we’d done so far.

This years Champions Cup final would be an affair between [/b]FC Bayern[/b] and Roma as they had beaten Deportivo and Real Madrid respectively. The UEFA Cup final was going to be an Italian affair as the two Milan teams were up against each other.

Fredericia were right behind us in the table, and they had no intention of making it easy for us. They managed to get a 2-1 lead by the end of the first half and I felt it was time to make some changes. This felt very much like a winner takes it all kind of situation, or to be more accurate do or die. If we didn’t turn this one around and won the game we would certainly be looking at another year in the 1st division.
Knudsen scored the early equalizer, but after that it felt as if Fredericia keeper Thomas Jespersen had put a hex on his goal. There seemed to be no way past him, until Brown drove a low ball past him with one minute on the clock. There was a sigh of relief from all the travelling Vejle fans. We were still hanging in there, but it was going to be very difficult. Fortunately Frem had drawn their game and were now within reach, but whether we could get past them and Ølstykke remained to be seen. There was no room for error, but the new tactic had proven it’s worth during the second half.

Allthough the UEFA Cup final was to be played at Parken in Denmark I wouldn’t be able to watch it. We were approaching the final stages of a long, hard season and I had to focus on the matters at hand. However, I did wathc a short recap of the match. It had proven to be a tight contest between 2 teams who where all but equal. Inter grabbed the trophy in the end when Rivaldo and Leonardo missed their penalties.

To claim that we dominated the game against Brønshøj would have been a major understatement of the truth. They managed to fire of 1 shot against our 11. From that perspective the one goal scored was a bit of a dissapointment. However, it was the goal from Schram that secured our win. [b]Schram had played exceptionally well all season and it came as no surprise that an important goal like this one came from him. The bad news were that the other contenders won their matches as well which left it all to the final round of the season.

retired_sethy

ooh.. exciting.. looking forward to the season concluding update

retired_cathylynn820

Well, debski here you go
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We played the final game of the season on a Saturday. 1 day before the remaining teams. In a game that might not have been even, but certainly was exciting, we managed to beat B1909 4-2 at Odense Stadion. Our goals came from 4 different players in a game that will be remembered for the exciting never-say-die attitude from our players. At this point we had to wait untill the next day to find out if we were going up. We had certainly put some pressure on Frem and Ølstykke. Even if we didn’t go up I had to be proud of the boys. They had done their best and that was all I could ask for.

We were all following the game between B1913 and Ølstykke and the game between Frem and B93, but we had to wait right untill the clock ran out in both games before we knew how it would play out. B1913 scored an early goal in their fixture, but were under pressure for the remainder of the match. However, they withheld the pressure and ruined Ølstykke’s promotion campaign. It was an even tighter contest at Valby Idrætspark as the score was still 0-0 with 10 minutes to go. A draw wouldn’t be good enough for us so it was a great relief when Drost sent a left footed volley into the net with 3 minutes to go.
As soon as we heard the final whistle in the last game Brian cracked open the champagne. We had managed to win promotion with the tightest of margins.


<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre"> ************************************************** ********************************************** Danish First Division - Tuesday 4th June 2002********************************************** ************************************************** ================================================== ============================================== 2001/2 Table============================================= ================================================== =Pos Team Pld Won Drn Lst For Ag Won Drn Lst For Ag Pts--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1st C HFK Sønderjylland 30 11 4 0 31 11 7 2 6 23 20 60 2nd P VEJLE 30 12 1 2 43 15 7 1 7 31 30 59 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3rd Frem 30 11 2 2 26 9 5 8 2 22 18 58 4th B 93 30 9 3 3 30 16 7 6 2 30 19 57 5th Ølstykke FC 30 12 1 2 33 16 6 2 7 22 22 57 6th Herfølge 30 8 4 3 29 16 7 2 6 21 21 51 7th B 1913 30 11 3 1 30 14 2 2 11 17 32 44 8th Fredericia 30 8 5 2 24 15 4 3 8 18 33 44 9th AC Horsens 30 8 2 5 25 19 5 0 10 17 30 41 10th FC Aarhus 30 9 2 4 26 19 1 4 10 10 34 36 11th Randers Freja 30 6 2 7 24 22 4 3 8 19 26 35 12th B 1909 30 7 6 2 33 23 1 2 12 17 34 32 13th Skjold 30 7 3 5 27 23 0 4 11 11 35 28 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------14th R HIK 30 7 1 7 29 29 1 0 14 9 31 25 15th R Hvidovre 30 3 3 9 16 30 4 1 10 17 35 25 16th R Brønshøj 30 4 4 7 21 21 0 6 9 14 27 22 </pre>