Solihull Moors 1-2 Bromley
The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
Another one chalked off the bucket list.
Have Bromley FC now completed football?
Ask 14-year-old me what I wanted to see Bromley do one day and my wish list would have included: FA Trophy, Promotion to the Football League, and a trip to the FA Cup third round.
In the last four and a half seasons, the club has achieved all three. Frankly, who can predict where the journey with this football club will end?
As ever, join me as I reflect on The Good, The Bad and The Ugly from the 2-1 FA Cup second-round win away at Solihull Moors.
Have a read and let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
The team vs Solihull Moors
The Good
Remember the days when some fans used to vociferously doubt Andy Woodman? Everyone should take a moment to reflect on the latest piece of history this club has created under his tutelage.
Bromley have fallen at the FA Cup first-round hurdle so often that you could be forgiven for thinking we would never see them in the hat for the second-round draw, never mind the third round. Yet here we are.
Fate made it Solihull who once again stood in the way of Bromley’s shot at history. The Ravens might be in League Two now, but they got the job done in a very National League way.
I don’t know how the game came across on TV, but in the ground, it felt bowling shoe ugly.
It had all the hallmarks of a National League scrap where gutting it out and showing the desire to get over the line would be the defining factor.
My good friend Rob remarked at full-time that the game had two outstanding players: John Bostock for Solihull and Danny Imray for Bromley. I find it hard to disagree.
On a day where nothing really fell to Michael Cheek, it felt like Bromley’s positive thrust was going to have to come via Danny Imray, particularly in the second half.
In a post-match interview, Imray stated that Andy Woodman made a crucial tweak at half-time, switching to four at the back. This pushed Imray up from wing-back into a more traditional right-wing role, allowing him to affect the game higher up the pitch.
Arguably, there was a 15-minute purple patch where the tweak had the desired effect. During that patch, Imray won the game for Bromley.
Danny’s speed is an obvious attribute, but his winning goal was about speed of thought. Watch his movement for the goal and you can see why he has netted so many times in his young career.
Imray will play Premier League football. It is only a matter of time for him.
Away from Imray, I can’t fault the effort and endeavour of the team, subs included. Bromley were nowhere near their best, but they did what they do so well: graft. It keeps them in games when the quality of their football is found wanting.
Of those grafters, I want to take a moment to recognise Omar Sowunmi. Here we have another player who the naysayers were happy to put on the ducking stool before he had even kicked a ball this season.
Only the most churlish of fans would argue that Omar isn’t playing well at the moment, and his equalising goal took his tally to two for the season.
With Omar, Byron, and Kamarl, the balance of the back three currently looks right. And certainly in the last month, Sowunmi has shown why Andy Woodman was so eager to bring him back to the club.
Is he the best with the ball at his feet? Not really. Will he be robust in both penalty areas? Almost certainly. It’s true he took a while to get back up to speed, but we are now seeing the version of Omar who was a standout for Bromley two seasons ago.
Solihull will probably feel hard done by, but there was one moment that summed up the game for me and highlighted the small margins between the National League and League Two. Early in the game, Grant Smith’s attempted clearance smashed against James Gale. When Gale recovered the ball, with an empty net waiting, he put his shot wide from a tight angle. If that had happened in League Two, Bromley would be a goal behind, and rightly so.
Ultimately, Solihull were punished for their wastefulness, but they showed signs that they may yet go on to feature in another National League postseason. In Connor Wilkinson, they have a proven goalscorer at higher levels. His opening goal in the cup tie was his ninth of the season.
I was impressed by the bright industry of Watford loanee Michael Adu-Poku, who gave as good as he got down the right wing. His end product could have been a bit better, but he clearly had talent to burn.
If the Moors can get several of their injured players back, like Jamey Osborne, Tahvon Campbell, and Josh Labadie, you would have to assume they will feature in the National League post-season come April/May.
And of course, lastly, we arrive at the third round draw itself.
I deliberately saved this write-up for the day after the draw to see whether the slugfest at Solihull would be worth the hassle.
My demands were threefold: No London clubs, no home tie, and an away draw that would be very financially lucrative. I got everything I requested.
Newcastle United were one of the teams that ticked all of my boxes. As Andy himself stated at full-time, Newcastle fans are a different breed when it comes to loyalty, and you can almost guarantee a sold-out tie in the 52,000-seater St James Park.
Robin Stanton-Gleaves will get a serious wedge from that tie and I recommend he gives a portion of it to Andy to boost his squad in January.
I’m not expecting the game to be televised, so it has the added bonus of being so far away that it will be a genuine reward for the hardcore 2k or so who consider Bromley to be their primary club, and not just an fun day trip for the floating fans.
Anyone who has ever properly cared about Bromley should do whatever is necessary to get themselves to that game. Events like this only come around once in a blue moon.
Make sure you enjoy the occasion.
The Bad
This is very much a game where the ends justified the means. It was far from vintage Bromley.
We could nit-pick about how this and that didn’t work on the day, but my deeper query is the art of last-ditch defending at the death.
Bromley are not the only team to fall victim to dropping deeper and deeper when protecting a goal lead in the final stanzas of a football match, but given they have conceded their fair share of late equalisers this season, it got me thinking about how teams counter this muscle memory.
What do good teams do to prevent this happening? Is attack the best form of defence, or is that tactically naïve?
By my calculations, Bromley have conceded three late goals this season, and on each occasion, it felt like they were the architects of their own downfall. They came close to conceding a late equaliser against Solihull, and had they done so, they only would have had themselves to blame.
I can’t and won’t pretend to be tactically astute enough to know how to fix it, and I trust Woody, Dunny, and the coaching staff are working to find a way, but it ain't half creating some nervous endings to all our matches of late.
The Ugly
I know the game was on TV on a Sunday afternoon, but given the high stakes, especially in light of the fact that Bromley went on to pull Newcastle out of the hat, the announced attendance was only 1,770.
I swear more people attended the league fixture between the two sides last season.
Why was the attendance so low for a history-making game? Having faced us five times in one year, were the Solihull public feeling Bromley fatigue?
Bromley, by my reckoning, took somewhere in the region of 400 fans to the Midlands. That’s pretty decent for a long journey on a Sunday, but the subpar home attendance made for a very low-key atmosphere. Did that help Bromley in the latter stages?
I don’t know what the metrics are for TV companies, maybe ITV wanted a narrative game, but a low-key one that wouldn’t matter given it was up against Liverpool vs Man City.
That said, it must have come across as even more low-key than they expected.
Bromley fans tried their best to create something of an atmosphere, but it didn’t really feel like a cup tie until the final 10 minutes when the realisation of what Bromley might do truly took hold.
By no means am I saying the lure of the FA Cup has died, but whatever that was on Sunday did not respect the truest traditions of what the Cup is about.
What did you make of this game and the resulting draw?
Get at me in the comments below.
Match ratings
Grant Smith (7)
Omar Sowunmi (8)
Byron Webster (7)
Kamarl Grant (7)
Danny Imray (9)
Jude Arthurs (7)
Ben Thompson (7)
Idris Odutayo (7)
Corey Whitely (7)
Olufela Olomola (6)
Michael Cheek (6)
Subs:
Cameron Congreve for Corey Whitely 82’ (6)
Louis Dennis for Olufela Olomola 82’ (7)
Carl Jenkinson for Danny Imray 82’ (7)
Levi Amantchi for Michael Cheek 88’ (n/a)
Thanks for taking the time to read the match synopsis above.
Please note all match photographs in this article are by Martin Greig - please follow him on Twitter here
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An extra game you have to pay for less than a month before Christmas was probably also a factor with the attendance and of course it was on TV.
From my view from the sofa, Solihull had lots of meaningless possession, just passing the ball around in front of Bromley until late on and then just didn’t do enough.
Play like that in League Two and we are coming away with nowt, but on the day it was an historic victory.
To be honest, getting three points against Gillingham tonight is top of my wish list right now. But away to Newcastle? That, simply, is dreamsville. I hail from that part of the world and believe me anyone contemplating the long trip will find it unforgettable, whatever the outcome. The welcome will be much warmer than the weather, the stadium is magnificent, and even tho my first love is Sunderland the Magpies do have a blooming good side. My only reservation is if AW plays Danny Imray as the right wing back. No doubt that the lad is probably the most talented on our books at the moment, but as an attacking winger/midfielder not a defender; he simply can’t defend and I’m afraid Gordon or Barnes will have a field day if Danny boy has to mark them! But do I really care? Not really. This is going to be one helluva day out - even for a grumpy oldie like me!