When key players get injured, other players have to rise to the occasion. We have a few players who have raised their profile in recent matches, but none as clearly as Andrea Milanti. Four goals in the last three matches is a statement that leaves little for explanation. Yesterday he scored the winning goal, and once again showed how much he loves playing in front of supporters. His run towards us with kisses blowing in the air was the best moment of the day.

Today’s away match at Urjala was always going to be one of the big ones for the supporters. Now that we are going there winless in our last two matches, it is even bigger than that as the team needs to return to winning ways after getting just one point from the last two matches. It is often said that promotions in the lower leagues are decided in the middle of the summer when teams have absences due to all kinds of summer activities. Right now seems to be our time to prove that we won’t fall victim to this.

Funny how it happens. We play against them twice, and both times two teams leave the field unhappy. Neither team wanted to tie this one, and both felt like they had the chances to run away with a win. Anybody who read my match preview knows I’m dissatisfied as well. Yes, we got a point that may prove very valuable – but I wanted to win FC Melody. The 2-2 (0-0) draw is just as unfulfilling as it was in the spring, even if this time we came back from a deficit twice.

I will say it like it is: I want to finally win a match against this lot. FC Melody had the better of us in the divisional title match at the end of last season, and at the beginning of this season the result was a dissatisfying 2-2 draw. You see, they are a team that does not do any training together, and overall you could say they do not take the whole being-a-footballer thing too seriously. As an example, their official Facebook account often talks about players missing matches or playing badly because they are drunk (I have witnessed the former first hand), and indeed they also said that they traveled to their last match in Sastamala by public long distance bus because nobody was sober to drive. Yet the quality of a bunch of their players is high enough that even with this approach they are sixth on the table only six points behind TamU-K.

I will just say it like it is: the first sixty minutes of Saturday’s match was some of the worst football I’ve seen TamU-K play, and certainly the most uninspired performance that we have had this season. I do not really have any desire to analyze it. Suffice to say, we got a gifted goal on the second minute of the match, and then nothing at all for the remainder of the first half. At the break we were down 1-3, all three goals scored on us during the last eight minutes of the half. Then the 1-4 was scored on the third minute of the second half, and everybody surely thought it was over.

As fun as it was to win three matches away, it is great to return home tomorrow. Our home matches at Pyynikki are the real deal. On those days you truly feel the might of our club and how everybody involved with it get to be a part of something bigger than you’d ever expect in the lower divisions in Finland. To condense it to just two words: home stadium. That is what Pyynikki is to us, and the buzz on match day confirms it.

Full disclosure first: I was worried. Very worried indeed. LeKi had had the better of us in the winter, and had looked quite dangerous against FC Melody early this spring, a match that they won 0-2 away at Kauppi. Additionally, the whole club seemed to be unusually quiet ahead of this match. The typical huzzle and buzzle that we typically have on the week of the match – or on match day at the very latest – seemed to be gone. But boy was I wrong: the team came onto the field ready to kill and the supporters showed up in large numbers.

During the last several weeks it has seemed almost as if all the other teams in Nelonen are in a collusion to get TamU-K promoted. Week after week we have looked at our rivals in the promotion race drop points in surprising ways, and as a result right now we are standing on the top of the table two points ahead of Ilves 2 and NePa, even though we have one game in hand with respect to the former and two in respect to the latter. Depending on the result of this afternoon’s UrPS – Ilves 2 match, we might be able to build a bit of a cushion this weekend. I dare to say that nobody expected this before the start of the season.

In the match preview I outlined three things that might work against us in the PP-70 match, and in retrospect it is easy to conclude that I was spot on with all of them. However, I would never have guessed we would put in the worst performance of the season and still win. We barely would have deserved the draw that we were going to get until the last play of the match. Then Risto Niskanen stepped up to put a free kick from some 20 meters out into the top corner of the net. Cool as you like. Sinikaarti erupted to celebrate with “Rippe” in a large ball by the sideline, and the final whistle blew before the match was restarted. Or maybe it was just after the restart. Frankly, amidst all of the celebration I would not even know.

Results around Nelonen have been extremely favorable for us lately. So much so in fact that you might think tomorrow’s match against the local Tampere rival PP-70 is not an important one. However, for me now is when we get our opportunity to build a bit of a gap to our nearest rivals in the promotion race. We are getting very close to the halfway point of the season, and if we do things right, we might have a five point cushion at the top of the table at that point – or even more. To achieve that, three points are definitely required tomorrow.