On the back of a humiliating defeat and more manadarinal miscarriages of justice, Logica may have been excused for some trepidation at the prospect of facing high-flying and unbeaten Wanderers Utd, especially given the absence of their inspirational and a plethora of injured players. As it turned out, Logica once again gave as good as they got for the most part, but curiously a red card for the Wanderers keeper seemed to inspire the opponents and lethargise Logica in equal measure.

Missing the likes of , , , , , , and the Marsh brothers, the States-bound gaffer authorised the emergency activation of the Lag Network. With the guarantee of quality if not youth, this well of ageing talent once again came up trumps as was manning the helpdesk when the call for support game through. Although somewhat contradicting the stated desire for a fresh-legged forward line threatening unlimited pace, the pairing of and did collectively boast over 250 club goals, nearly 80 years invaluable experience, and two fully functioning lower limbs between them. There was further good news with the return of the skilful from injury to form a creative central midfield pairing with .

After a warm-up routine that Billy Smart would have been proud of, Logica surprised a packed Don-o-Drome crowd by starting the match with some purpose. and were picking up the scraps in the middle of the park, was immediately back in the groove as if he’d never been away, and ’s pace down the left looked a dangerous weapon. The Wanderers were clearly an able side, but Logica matched them attack for attack in the first period.

Whilst the home side were firing a couple of half-chances wide, Logica created some chances of their own. turned to send a perfectly weighted pass beyond the United back-line and exploit ’s pace. Despite starting five yards behind his marker, the left-winger got to the ball first and advanced into the box, only to see his effort blocked. From the resulting corner, was unlucky to see his near-post header deflected just wide.

And it was again exploiting his aerial dominance [Eh? Ed] minutes later to leap high and flick on a long goal-kick straight into the path of an anticipating . As the unmarked Scotsman flicked the ball past the out-rushing keeper, the badly positioned referee blew for offside even though his linesman had not raised a flag. This would be the first of a number of quirky decisions by an over-officious official that would play a significant part in the morning’s proceedings.

With the game fairly evenly balanced, the Logica faithful again experienced that sinking feeling when Wanderers took the lead in disappointing fashion. From a throw-in, unnecessarily climbed on his man, and the home side had a free kick on the left-wing, inches outside the box. Ironically, was pulled off the back stick just before the dead-ball was expertly curled over and into the top corner [0-1], leaving Logica to lamely appeal that the free-kick should have been indirect.

But as the pundits began to ferret in their press-packs for the complimentary abacus, Logica surprised the skeptics by equalising within five minutes. Their goal also originated from a throw-in, and it was who was the architect. A bouncing ball was just flicked on by to the Scotsman with his back to goal. Shielding the ball adroitly, then bamboozled his marker by turning and flicking the ball in the reverse direction over the defender’s head. Ever aware, and rather than shoot from an acute angle, the original King of the Assist spied his Lag colleague unmarked eight yards out, and squared a volleyed pass. gave no thought to his fragile hamstring as he swivelled to fire the bouncing ball into the top left-hand corner to register his first goal of the season. [1-1]

The Logica players were visibly boosted by achieving parity, and took the game to the second placed side with some gusto before another unfortunate goal handed the advantage back to the home team. The Logica back-line cleared and were pushing up when the ball was hopefully lofted back into the mix. A galloping leapt to clear but the ball was just too high, and his glancing header fell straight to a Wanderers striker well beyond the last man, who had the easy job of poking home past the helpless [1-2]. The Logica players couldn’t even summon up the legal expertise to cite the case of vs Olympia as precedence for a ruling of offside following a deflected header off a defender.

Going behind for a second time suddenly looked a body blow for a Logica side lacking confidence after their losing start to the season. But they battled to stay in contention, and tried to carve out some more chances before the break. One such seemed to have passed when a diagonal cross from was comfortably collected by the Wanderers keeper. seemed to have other ideas, and arriving significantly later than the restoration of Arsene Wenger’s eyesight, he clattered into the United keeper and sent him sprawling. In truth, it was a terrible challenge, and somewhat predictably the Wanderers keeper reacted by kicking and slapping as he lay apologetically on the ground. The referee employed the letter of the law, plumping to show just yellow to whilst the gloveman saw red in more ways than one.

Logica were quick to take advantage of the extra man, and in the minutes left before the break created two good chances. First latched onto a bouncing through-ball, but it would just not quite come down quickly enough, the split-second delay sufficient to enable the Scotsman’s shot from ten yards to be blocked by a lunging defender. Then a delicately chipped pass from played in his midfield partner , who sped into the box only to poke his shot wide as the stand-in keeper slid out nervously.

After such an eventful, entertaining and balanced first half, the second was strangely muted, especially from Logica’s point of view. The majority of the Wanderers players showed a mature response to their keepers expulsion and seemed to be able to channel any perceived injustice into a greater post-interval effort to protect their lead. In contrast, Logica almost seemed the team more destabilised by the incident, and hardly put together a single move of note. The introduction of fresh legs belonging to both and could not even galvanise the numerically advantaged visitors.

Thus the few chances of an insipid forty five minutes were created by the ten Wanderers. At least goalkeeper was on the top of his game, as he pulled off a number of brilliant saves. The pick were two spectacular full-length finger-tipped saves in quick succession. First he was just able to palm over a seemingly perfect lob into the top corner, and then somehow managed to beat away a bullet header from the resultant corner.

As the game approached its seemingly inevitable conclusion, a tired Logica side conceded another hotly disputed goal. There was no argument as a neat Wanderers moved carved open a sluggish visiting back line. And as their striker cut back inside , a goal seemed inevitable. The Logica defender had made the slightest of contact with the attacker as he passed, but this had no impact at all on the player as he went on to line up his shot. Incredibly he fired wide, and seemed as surprised as everyone else as he finally raised his head from his hands to see the referee pointing to the spot. Just to rub salt into the wound, it was the stand-in keeper who stepped up to send the wrong way [1-3].

And so Logica fell to their fifth consecutive defeat, and once again a period of impressive play could not be sustained for the full ninety minutes. Clearly there is both the time and the talent to recover from this situation, as hinted at by the Wanderers stand-in keeper who after the game expressed his surprise that Logica could be bottom of the table based on this showing. But it is down to the players to quickly extend a few promising passages of play into the more tangible form of points on the board.