Colchester second half - continued from last night

I really was not surprised that Colchester scored and it was even less surprise that Iwelumo got it. Parkinson is a canny manager, who would have worked out that a wide player putting over the right cross for Iwelumo would be their best chance of scoring. And so it proved. I couldn't fault the keeper, but it was at the other end and some have suggested that Colgan should have had it. I couldn't tell and it looked a good goal to me with Iwelumo climbing above Carbon.

From this point on I could see us losing by three or four, as we just weren't at the races. More later about the shortcomings of individual and collective performances.

About half way through the half, Ritchie changes things around in the hope of getting an equaliser. This meant the arrival of Conlon and then Shuker in quick succession.

The formation from that point on was 3-4-3:

Colgan
Reid Carbon Austin
Shuker Kay McPhail Burns
Hayes Conlon Nardiello

This actually wasn't a bad ploy as it still gave us width the defend against their wide players and gave a three-man attack. The three man defence was ok against the two strikers and looked sound.

In truth, we did start to exert pressure, but there was a woeful lack of any clear plan to our attacking and it was a case of hit, or miss and mainly miss. Conlon got a good reception from the Colchester fans when he came on. Obviously a cult hero. He did make an impact, but was fairly well hustled out of imposing himself too much, just as we should have done with Iwelumo. There was a better chance that Hayes/Nardiello could feed off his target-man role. The best chance fell to Hayes after a slip in the Colchester defence and he really should have done better, having the time to look up and then pick his spot with a right foot shot from the edge of the area. Unfortunately, his spot was about two yards wide of their left hand post. Nardiello had two good chances - one a glancing header which seemed certain to go in. Good skill involved in placing it, but just wide of the same left hand post. Another chance for Nardiello was a clear header which he should really have buried, but put wide.

I left early to miss the worst of the traffic, pretty certain that we wouldn't score and we didn't.

General analysis of collective and individual performances to come, probably after the cricket's finished.