For some reason we cannot beat these lot... only just been able to think about it today again! In a game where Wadds barely had a save to make and we looked completely comfortable we manage to lose 4-1!
Start slowly but more than matched them then dominated for 25 minutes either side of half time, having a number of clear cut chances including hitting the bar twice, post once, a shot cleared off the line and umpteen shots straight at the keeper and other opportunities wasted. The clear annoyance, frustration and disappointment at the end of the game showed how much you wanted it. Fair play to Woody and Flem for playing out of position for the team too.
Mistakes at the back happen as occurred for the first two goals, we move on from those and we lost our shape a bit chasing the game and was the reason for conceding the last two (plus wadds done his knee and couldn’t come off his line). Mistakes happen, both lads who made them were excellent as theyve been all season. if we take our chances and convert our dominance to more goals then as a team we are not under as much pressure and less mistakes will happen.
As we said against Heaton when we drop our standards it’s hard to pick back up immediately. We need to keep our standards up regardless of who is playing and who we are playing. I think that a little more grittiness is needed when times are tough, when teams allow us to play our way we totally boss them but if people get in our faces we don’t fight fire with fire. We are not a shouty shouty team and it’s not like everyone isn’t putting a lot into games because you all are and but I think we can play with a little more determination as a team and winning our individual battles when things are not going quite in our favour. I said on the sidleines if it goes to 1-1 they'll win, i know some of you said that on the pitch too - thats something we can fix by digging in and playing our way.
When we are being pressed, as we were for the first 20 or so, we need to have quick movement of the ball with movement off the ball. Be brave and play a pass to someone who maybe marked rather than pinging it long. Trust yourself to hit the pass accurately and trust the lad you are passing it to control it and beat his man. You are all good enough to a man, no team has the fitness or the quality at this level to do that all game so space will show up (as it did) once you have them flagging.
Time to up our game again, we’ve been excellent since the first game of the season and were excellent for most of the game Sunday, time to kick on or we'll be out of two cups!
Time for the management team to up our game too, we made some mistakes over the last game or so in a number of different areas, we'll have this corrected moving forward.
Howaytheheed - onto Stamfordham!
match ratings done by one of the lads who wished to remain nameless!
