Beeston AFC 5–3 Pendle Athletic: an eight goal blur

Beeston AFC beat Pendle Athletic 5-3 on Wednesday 12 August, a result that reads like a typo until you watch the footage. The scoreboard changed eight times and the final twenty minutes alone produced a match's worth of goals, dismissals and quietly terrible defending.

The opening exchanges suggested nothing of the sort. Costantini converted a fifth-minute penalty and things settled into the kind of deadlock two mid-table sides produce when neither trusts the other. Pendle responded through Otálora's spot kick at 25 minutes, then took the lead five minutes later when Acheraïou rose at the back post. The away side were deservedly on top.

Then Mizrahi saw red at 27. A 63-minute disadvantage, and quite the statement of intent from a team that usually draws more than it wins. Pendle kept their shape, kept their lead, and went in 2-1 up. In fairness, that period is the only bit of the match they'll want to keep.

Beeston's equaliser came at 66 through Costantini, his second of the night, open play this time. A man down after Driessen-Heij's 70th-minute red, the sensible move would have been to see it out. Instead, the volume went up. Goodall at 80, Bacigalupo's header at 82, Goodall again from a corner at 90. Four goals in ten minutes, two of them from a team with ten men. Pendle grabbed a third at 90 through Otálora, his second, a consolation with the quality to embarrass the four before it.

Costantini ends the night with two goals and the memory of his sending-off against Llandaff on 1 August, now safely buried. Otálora's output for the season is quietly impressive, even from a losing side.

Five goals against a team a man down flatters no one. But the points go in the same column as any other. Tomorrow is Matchday 19, and Pendle have little time to let a 5-3 taste sour. That might be the kindest thing anyone can say about the fixture list.