A difficult pitch on which to try and play a passing style of play due to dodgy sprinklers! Yes, The Stags were a big set of lads. They were all 'big uns' except their full backs who were "normal" size!
I thought that we were the better team in the first half but that we were quite poor in the second half. Once again we conceded centre midfield by letting them come at us. This was classically illustrated in their disallowed goal where Peter Murphy backtracked some twenty plus yards into our own penatly box and then still failed to get a tackle in! Simple pass across and goal!
...luckily disallowed for off side!
Apart from his cracking left foot shot I though Peter was poor throughout the match and I would have liked Pierro to have come on for him sooner. Koyode won lots of headers and although I am not a fan of 'route one' stuff he was doing what was asked of him all the match. I was really biting my nails as we entered 'added on' time but I was really impressed with Cal's coolness and confidence for the penalty. The ref took ages to sort out the players on the edge of the "D" during which one of The Stags subs was trying to bait Cal but he just kept playing 'keepie uppie' and kept his cool!
He despatched the penalty with aplomb! The crowd went bonkers as if we had won!
Praise to the team for keeping it up for the whole 96 minutes once again on a difficult pitch, against a big difficult team.
ON STANLEY ON