After last week's fine away win against Heerenveen for the cup, today was the 4th league match. Opponent: Roda JC from Kerkrade. A team that, in baseball terms, was "full house". In other words: 1 win, 1 draw and 1 loss. Even their goal difference was completely balanced with 5 for and 5 against....
For the first few minutes, the game lumbered along without really creating any big chances or opportunities. PSV had the ball more often, but there was too little consultation in the team and the real sharpness was not (yet) there. Nevertheless, PSV put the opening goal on the fictitious scoreboard early in the match. Striker Matthias Verreth powerfully passed a couple of opponents on the right side and in time laid the ball wide to the accompanying midfielder Jaëll Hattu, who simply fired in the 1-0. Not much later, goalkeeper Aaron van Engelen saved the game when a Limburg player found himself alone in front of him after a short ball back. Six minutes before time, the guests scored. Not good defending led to the 1-1 draw. Still before half time PSV put things in order when (again) Jaëll Hattu scored. He himself set up the one-two with Karim Bannini and scored the 2-1 from the back line from an almost impossible angle. Apart from a shot outside the post by Lennerd Daneels and the loss of striker Matthias (knee in his back), there were no highlights.
When the 2nd half began, the heavens opened up: a heavy downpour poured down. The players did not seem to be out of sorts. For immediately after the kickoff, Jaëll Hattu took advantage. An attack initially seemed to run aground on the rebound of substitute Cody Gakpo, but Jaëll put pressure on the Limburg goalkeeper, who shot against the PSV player. The ball went straight up and Jaëll then very coolly tapped it over the bewildered keeper before heading the ball into the empty goal: 3-1. And already his 6th league goal of the season!
PSV now had a 2 goal lead and that benefited the game. There was a little more calmness in the game, and more duels were won. PSV were more likely to extend their lead than Roda to score the tying goal. But as they say so nicely in rugby: "the ball is round" and you never know....
It was indeed PSV who found the net first again. This time it was Danté Rigo who made it 4-1 in the 51st minute when he shot a free kick from about 20 meters into the bottom right corner. As you can see, practice makes perfect" because last week Danté had trained a lot on taking free kicks. Chapeau that it immediately pays off! PSV missed some opportunities in the second half. Cody was unfortunate twice in his attempts to score and Ertem Bölükbas was also close to a goal. In the end it was still 5-1 when Lennerd went off on the right once again and put the ball at the 2nd post where the fully released Karim could easily score.
A well deserved victory today with nothing to complain about. Next week at home to Sparta we'll try to continue the trend.

Aaron van Engelen; Jordan Teze (44' Ymanuel Hurkmans),Tom Scheepers ©, Lassane Faye, Ties van den Eijnde (44' Kaan Tanriver); Danté Rigo, Roel van Linschoten (54' Ertem Bölükbas), Jaëll Hattu; Lennerd Daneels, Matthias Verreth (34' Cody Gakpo), Karim Bannani.

Yellow card: Danté Rigo and a player from Roda JC