Fan’s View

Article by Paul Beasley Sunday, January 27th, 2013  

WINTER BREAK

After a fortnight with no game I was mad for it. I need Oxford United. We’d been on a great run and with Beano having only one game of his scandalously unjust suspension to serve it should have been optimism all the way.

GOAL DOWN BROWN

But it wasn’t. There was a massive nagging doubt in my mind. The goal-keeping situation. I just don’t get it. I’m rarely of the view that throwing money at a problem is the answer but in this instance, even if we’ve already gone over budget, which we have, I think we should have paid whatever was necessary to get a replacement for Clarkey; someone who can live up to our number one’s good name for a few months.

By not doing so I think we could be throwing away all the good work that has been done in recent weeks and with it our season.

Wayne Brown has played three games this season.

After Rotherham I wrote – “Brown never looked confident and seemed way out of his depth. He should have comfortably caught the ball before Damien Batt gifted them the penalty. He allowed the ball to squirm away from him to give away another present for number three. To be fair to him though, he admitted he was rubbish”.

After Wimbledon I wrote – “I didn’t think Brown commanded his six yard box, let alone the entire penalty area”.

The Bradford game is too fresh in the memory to need a repeat here.

I just can’t get this centuries old proverb out of my mind.

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the message was lost.

For want of a message the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Anyway, on to Fleetwood and whatever I’ve written here, on the Friday night, I’ll be supporting all eleven players representing my football club come the morrow.

FLEETWOOD

On hearing that Lewis Montrose was out my mood darkened. Without such a midfield battler we’re weak. Without such a player alongside him Peter Leven is only half the player we know he can be. Fleetwood were physical and at times we were pretty wimpy by comparison.

Of our probable best starting eleven we’re now without Liam Davis, injured yet again. What is it with us? His attacking prowess was glaringly missed and in his place Tony Capaldi again had one of those games where it did appear that he was going through the motions at times. Isn’t he supposed to have some pedigree? The number of times he made a pass without looking was infuriating and in one particular instance he looked pretty feeble in the tackle. Justin Richards put in a reasonable shift in a thankless role up top but we could obviously have done with a battling Beano out there. An on form Tommy Craddock has to start but with three centre halves being needed to protect our goal, something has to be sacrificed further forward I suppose. And what a pity one of those centre halves hadn’t shown sensible decision making in the ninth minute. This did not help my mood.

The game had hardly started before a simple shot had almost squirmed through Brown and when he came out to try and punch the ball on the edge of his box, got lost, cocked up and managed to get in the way of the clearance. My dark mood darkened further.

I don’t think we managed a shot on target all match. The pitch was so sodden that the ball sounded flat. In these conditions our passing football had no chance and made our wide men pretty ineffective except for a brief spell in the second half when Alfie got going a bit.

This game was reminiscent of performances we’d produced during that diabolical run earlier in the season.

Was this a one off blip in our otherwise upward trajectory or are we about to slump into our September form? If it’s the latter it does not bear thinking about.

On the bright side though Beano will be back (if picked) and Montrose could well be available too, as his hamstring had merely tightened, as we take on two teams in the play-off places in the next seven days. These games will show what we’re really made of.

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