THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

I really think people should stop making excuses about the pitch. I admit I wasn't at the match but I very much doubt that the surface was worse than those which clubs regularly played on in the 1950s when I first started going to matches as a little boy. I've mentioned in another thread how my proudest moment came when I saw my then club, Bristol Rovers, hammer Man U (the pre Munich Busby Babes) in a league title year 4-0 in the FA cup on a muddy pitch. The Rovers' pitch was frequently muddy and bumpy and they actually were very good under such conditions as they had plenty of practice, whereas Man U, brilliant though they were really didn't know how to cope with them. It's perfectly possible to play effective attacking football on such a surface if a team knows what it's doing. Of course, if you are only prepared to play one way and refuse to adapt to the conditions you must expect to get into trouble. It's part of a manager's job to take these things into account and to do something about them! It really won't wash.

As was said earlier, it's ridiculous to expect flowing passing football on a muddy surface. And the silliness of such an expectation applies to a manager as much as anybody else. He knew what the conditions were like. He should have worked out how to deal with them!

Every match we keep our energetic forward looking player that runs at defences on the bench in Nesbit. I would still like to see him McGrandles and Pawlett across the middle. At least we would go forward with a bit of a chance. Cisse is completely ineffective so far up the pitch.

Tuesday night vs. Oldham was indeed worse than how bad we were away at Northampton, which rightly got Neilson sacked for the similarly bad performance in a similar 6 pointer away at a relegation rival.

Neither side deserved to score, and the goal we conceded was helped by an attacker pushing Nicholls, from where I was sitting.
From 20 mins to the end of the game though, we had just one shot, which was worth less than 0.1 of a goal, i.e we'd likely need 15 more shots like that before one of those went in...


At least at Northampton away, both teams deserved their goals, and despite almost an hour without a shot, we created three more chances at the death which were all marginally more dangerous than our solitary ineffective shot in 70 mins away at Oldham...

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P46_ _W _D _L PTS
07/08 29 10 _7 97 PI 1st
14/15 27 10 _9 91 KR 2nd
21/22 26 11 _9 89 LM 3rd
05/06 12 14 20 50 DW 22nd R
22/23 11 12 23 45 lm/MJ 21st R
17/18 11 12 23 45 rn/DM 23rd R
15/16 _9 12 25 39 KR 23rd R
LS: A rocky start, that's all it is.