Folkestone head to Leyton at full strength

Folkestone Invicta manager Neil Cugley looks forward to the Ryman Premier League clash with Leyton this Saturday afternoon with a full squad of players, writes Andy Bown & Tom Marchant.

“Paul Lamb is pretty much fully fit now and James Everitt hasn’t had any reoccurrence from his head problems so we’ve got a fully fit squad which will provide a bit of competition for places,” Cugley told www.folkestoneinvicta.co.uk.

“I can tell you that Adam Flanagan will definitely start on Saturday. We were planning on holding him back to get him fully fit and Roy Guiver isn’t available Saturday or Monday so it’s the right time to bring him back.

“He’s raring to go now, he’s training hard and he will be at the heart of defence with Kola and possibly someone else.”

Reports have also been very positive surrounding the operation promising young striker Rob Knott recently had on a persistent knee problem.

“It went ever so well and we’re all really pleased for him because things were going nowhere with the injury and it needed urgently doing because he wouldn’t have played next season if he hadn’t had it done.

“Hopefully he’ll start light training the week after next and then it is a case of seeing how his knee goes from there.”

Leyton defeated Folkestone 3-1 back in September but since then the east London based outfit have had a mixture of results.

The 2007 form of Saturday’s hosts has seen them win four, lose two and draw three.

Leyton lost 2-1 away at Horsham on Saturday and saw their away match at Margate last night postponed due to a waterlogged pitch.

Cugley remarked: “They are a strange team really; on their day they can beat anybody but on other days they aren’t so good and you can see that from some of their results this season.

“They have always had decent forwards though and they score a lot of goals and it’ll be a good test for our defence because they have done well recently.

“We weren’t at our best when we played them at home and it was a very poor performance when we were going through a sticky patch and I believe we’re a lot stronger now and it’ll be a good measure to see how far we’ve come”.

The Seasiders will look to get back to winning ways this Saturday after a relatively poor performance at home to Slough Town last Saturday.

”Obviously it was very disappointing because we had done a lot of hard work up until that game and we wanted to get three points especially being at home and being on a good run, which we wanted to carry on,” said Cugley.

“You’ve got to give them some credit as they made it difficult; they hassled us and we never got our passing game going but we didn’t perform very well we didn’t look like hurting them in the first half and it was very disappointing.

“The pitch didn’t help matters though as it was hard to generate good passing on it like we’ve done in the last two away games and it just made for a poor spectacle.

“At half time I still believed we would go on and get the goal we needed to win it and in the second half we did create a lot more chances and to be fair to our defenders they kept the clean sheet and did their job and it was the strikers who didn’t stick the ball in the net and win us the game because it would’ve only needed one goal.

“It was frustrating but that’s football sometimes. Ellis was on the end of all of them and it wasn’t his day but in the last game he’s whacked in a wonder goal so it goes in see saws sometimes and we just have to move on from it.”

The main incident of the match was the sending off of former Gillingham professional Mark Saunders who was shown the red card after 73 minutes when he was considered to be the last man when he brought down Symon James.

Cugley gave his opinion on the decision, adding: “It was very poor as their player was wide on the left with our defenders covering him and the referee gets on his high horse and makes an illogical decision.

“The idea of that rule was for a player who is running through on goal with a goal scoring opportunity and I don’t think that was the case at all; he wasn’t through on goal and we had defenders covering Mark.

“Mark was very disappointed. It was the first sending off we have had all season and to get one like that was hard to take for everybody concerned and Mark’s disappointed he’s going to be missing for one game”.

Saturday saw Tottenham based defender Samuel Kola Okikiolu awarded with the man of the match award, after another typically strong performance at the heart of the Invicta backline.

“He did really well,” praised Cugley. “He’s getting better and fitter with every game and he’s such as asset to have. Once him and Flan come back into the centre of the defence it’ll prove such a strong unit and it’ll give us a good basis for this season and next.”

Looking towards next season the Folkestone boss remarked, “Yes obviously certain areas need strengthening if the money is available in the summer but our little run at the moment shows we’re not far off that.

“We’ve picked up some decent wins away from home and we just need to get that little bit more consistency”.

However, before preparations for next season commence, the priority for Cugley is to ensure Invicta remain in the Ryman Premier next season.

“We’re not far short of staying up but we still need a few more results and as I’ve said for months we want to reach safety as soon as possible and that was the disappointment of Slough that we didn’t pick up three points at home.

“But we’re training hard; we trained hard last night and we’re training hard tomorrow night and all the players are fully focussed on winning games and staying up and they know how important it is to their careers and to the Football Club”.

Invicta make their second trip into London next Monday evening when they travel to Claremont Road to play Hendon before welcoming promotion candidates Chelmsford City to the Buzzlines Stadium, Cheriton Road on Saturday, 17^th March.

Leyton v Folkestone Invicta
Ryman Premier League
Saturday 10^th March 2007
Kick Off 3:00pm
At Leyton Stadium, 282 Lea Bridge Road, Leyton, London, E10 7LD