Just got back - bizarre game!

The first half we were looking good, and should have gone in 1-0 up. Just before half time I thought we'd beat them fairly easily, but on 45 minutes Turnbull was lobbed for their opener - against the run of play. He may have been at fault with his positioning, not sure. Having said that, we could have led through Holgate whose header was tipped onto the bar, and a Hourihane free kick which we thought had gone in, but had hit the side netting. Lita had decent chances on two occasions from great passes from Hourihane, but failed to control well enough.

Lita and Waring had been pretty ineffective in the first half, and I wasn't surprised to see them both substituted early in the second half,
but I was pleased to see both Holgate and Smith playing well, supporting the attacks. I was disappointed to see Smith coming off and Nyatanga going to left back.

Second half they scored from a soft goal early on. With one of their goals I think Turnbull parried a shot and spilled it, which one of their forwards then banged in.

The fourth goal was a huge blunder by Nyatanga. Cranie was in the left back area, and hit a simple accurate pass to Nyatanga who amazingly mis-controlled it, and was robbed by an onrushing forward to bang it in.

For the fifth, Scowen made a big error. He was on the half way line and hit an inaccurate square pass which was easily intercepted, with their player running at our goal with Scowen in chase. There was no other defender there. Turnbull dived at their player's feet but it went luckily to their forward who banged it in.

In summary, a weird game, where we gifted them four goals in my view - I wasn't taking notes.

It wasn't a pleasant place to be late on, with "We want six!" and "Can we play you every week?" ringing in our ears.

Could have been so different had we made our pressure pay off first half.

 

And so it goes on: Fleetwood, MK Dons, Crawley, all new into the league and all beating us. Really looking forward to some more next season, maybe from Wycombe, Burton etc (that's if we stay up of course). All these teams were nowhere a few years ago. I think we might be heading there sometime soon.....

 

I don't think we'll go down, although some may think that way after this 5-1 result.

If there's no reaction from the players, and not getting three points in our next game, then I might be concerned.

 

I'm confused. It looks as if we made a lot of mistakes that cost us. From the stats. They didn't have a corner, we had 8. We had 55 percent of possession and 5/6 shots on target, yet according to most on here we were abysmal. There must be some good points.

 

You're right, it was mistakes which cost us dearly, the major ones from Nyatanga and Scowen.

Overheard a couple of their fans talking after the game, saying that we gave them three goals. I made it four!

Until they scored in 45th minute, it was very much on the cards that we'd come out winners, as we'd played some decent stuff, with Lalcovic and Smith effective down the left and Holgate pushing up very far on the right. We were much the better team first half, but that soft goal on 46 minutes did us no good.

Second half as I've written previously was down to bad errors.

 

Thanks for that. Football has always been a game of fine margins. Managers these days lose their jobs because a striker can miss an easy chance. Had Holgate's header gone in or Lita taken his chances, it would be different. It's not, but goes to show what a difference a goal can make. Instead you gift teams a goal, their confidence goes up, ours gets shattered and 5-1 later it's all very different.

A game of inches.

 

We certainly gave three to them.of we could only defend, maybe we could match these teams at the "soaking up & counter" game,. Lite looked lively but scared to shoot...

 

Nyatanga never deserved to be playing. personally would sell him on in the summer. worst defender we have.

 

Turnbull spilled it?? Shock!