Lichties beaten heavily by French side.

On a sunny afternoon at Gayfield Arbroath entertained their first, and probably last, foreign opposition. Arbroath lined up with Neil Inglis in goal, Euan Donaldson at left back, Steven Rennie and a Ian Browne (trialist) in the centre, and Kevin McMullen at right back. In midfield we had Gavin Beith on the left, Greg Henslee and Stuart MacDonald (trialist) in the middle and Greg Millar on the right. Starting up front were Duncan McLean and Alan Brazil who was recently signed on a 6 month loan deal from Aston Villa. The bench included another trialist, Steven Cook, and Gavin Swankie. The Angers SCO line-up was Lucas, Kipre, Kerhuiel, Dussart, Cygan, Emerson, Obbadi, Ait Kahma, Norbert, Dia, Sonnerat. Subs- Lachuer (GK), Djellabi, Zairi, Brisset.

Arbroath starting off brightly with a lot of possession in the first 5-10mins and some decent play down the flanks but the final ball was pretty poor. Brazil looked lively, chasing everything and looked up for it. After a good 10-15mins we seemed to fade away a bit and on 22 minutes Angers scored there 1^st goal. After some scrappy play about the box an Angers forward (I didn’t catch his name!!) smashed the ball home under Inglis body. Two minutes after Angers scored their 1^st goal Euan Donaldson was challenged awfully by an Angers attacker and fell in a heap. Seconds later the physio was called on and Donaldson was stretchered off. Ten minutes later he was taken to hospital in the back of an ambulance, apparently with a broken shoulder or collarbone. Gavin Swankie then came on to replace Donaldson. Around the 35 minute mark Angers scored their 2^nd. Another scrappy goal with could probably have been prevented if the ball had been cleared properly. Arbroath came back into it slightly with a couple of attacks at the end of the 1^st half but they led to nothing.

The 2^nd half started with Timmy Woodcock in goal. Five minutes into the half a cross from the right hand side was put into the back post and Gavin Swankie (or Spankie as our PA guy pronounced it when he read out the starting line ups!) stuck the ball home from 5 yards. After this Arbroath really got back into it and built up some good passing moves down the left hand side through Gavin Swankie and Gavin Beith. In the 58 minute Angers SCO scored their 3^rd and stopped any chance of a comeback. The ball was crossed in from the left hand side and finished neatly at the back post with what can only be described as the Angers SCO strikers “upper groin”. A few minutes later Angers got a 4^th with a well driven shot under young Timmy Woodcock’s body. After this goal a double substitution was made by Kirk with Steven Cook brought into the right of midfield and Duncan McLean replaced by a Steven McGowan (trialist). Shortly after this was followed with Alan Brazil being replaced by James Collier. Arbroath matched Angers for the last 20 minutes or so but it was too late to make any sort of a comeback. Steven Cook got some good balls into the middle and McGowan was running around everywhere putting 110% into it. Sadly though none of this lead to a goal.

In our 1^st game back in pre-season Arbroath played some good football at times. We lacked the midfield presence of John McGlashan and John Cusick though. Some of the new players looked very good with Alan Brazil, Steven Cook and Gavin Beith being the most impressive. One thing that did look good was the fitness of the players, everyone looked far fitter than this time last season. Hopefully Donaldson will be back soon as he looked good in the time that he was on the park.