Been out all evening at a superb Beer Festival at The Fort's Arms in Clayton le Moors, 'twas the centre of the whole Universe tonight!
Bitterly disappointed with our performance today against a very ordinary looking Cheltenham side!
I cannot understand why we started with three players wide on the right who are all of similar styles...O'Sullivan, Clarke and Boco could all play the same position but O'Sullivan did start wide on the right, with Boco on the left and Clarke buzzing around behind O'Sullivan! We didn't start with a single left sided player! Also Pearson was playing left back, (He is clearly right footed!) but did his job well as he always does!
The defence looked quite solid but we were sadly lacking in midfield. Seamus was coming back from injury but sadly rediscovered his early season mediocre form and contributed little. Scotty Brown buzzed about but lots of passes went astray and we always seemed to be beaten to the second ball in midfield today!
Up front Terry just does not do enough physically for me, although he took his header really well when he found himself unmarked!
After about twenty minutes I remarked that we were making a very ordinary Cheltenham team look good!
Free kicks for us ...OMG....two players running over the ball and the third kicking it way over the crossbar........must take a lot of practice to achieve that guys!
Refereering? ...pathetic! Although it was by no means a dirty match, Cheltenham could/should have had three players sent off! No 7 and No 28 both booked early on got away with a number of professional fouls later and should have both gone before the one sending off. Amazingly the Ref branded a second yellow for the professional foul on Terry when he was clean through on goal which did result in a red card but surely it should have been a straight red card anyway!
I took my youngest Grandson on for his first Stanley experience and after half time we moved from the Clayton End to the Whinney Hill 'Grandstand' to get a better view from four feet off the ground!. We sat about a third of the way down the pitch in the classic 'offside' zone behind the referee's assistant. I could not believe the lack of input from him at one incident where Beckles was going for a clearing header and got the right side of Cheltenham's centre forward to get his header in and had his shirt clearly pulled!. He still got his header away but as it happened I called for the foul to the liner shouting..."Liner, you must have seen the shirt pull because I saw it! You are supposed to 'Assist' the referee man! Do your job!"
Overall a fairly poor performance from us with an imbalanced side lacking in midfield and up front!
Must do better IMHO!
