Old 'un

Anything yellow and blue
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Matt D
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Old 'un

Post by Matt D »

well nobody seems to have had much to say about saturday, and i'm not sure if i'm going tonight, so better late than never...

that was a strangely tempestuous game. I don't think of Us as a dirty team, but is that yellow-tinted spectacles? mark next to me thought we left elbows in on a number of occasions. my comment was that oldham's players didn't seem to be on the floor for extended periods quite so much after we equalised. rob hall was lucky to stay on the pitch after he reacted to being chopped down with a shove on his tackler. apples dismissed from the touchline in an unusual display of anger. i'm not quite sure where all that came from.

all in all I wasn't sure whether to be pleased or disappointed. at half time I said that appleton rarely allows his team to give a poor second half after a poor first half and I was confident we'd get back into the game, and that proved to be the case. the first half was strangely flat though, particularly when the popular analysis of our improved performances in recent weeks was that we'd made sure to start well. so i was pleased with our second half improvement, but I thought the winner was there for Us if we'd just pressed a bit harder. we didn't manage to do so, and the game drifted away.

I sort of feel that's starting to look like our season. we'll be an alright, mid-table side (and i'm happy with that in terms of what I wanted before the season started) but I also would be interested to see what would happen if we pushed a bit harder. I wonder if the talk about needing a bit more experience in the side is right. I feel the personnel is there to do better than we currently are doing. we just seem to be delivering to potential far too irregularly.

the one thing I will say is that I like appleton's ability to analyse and address situations. but I'm starting to think that like his first season, this might be a learning season.
Geoff
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Re: Old 'un

Post by Geoff »

Like you, I'm not surprised these days when a poor first half performance is followed by a much improved one after the break. Credit to Appleton. Although our good play often ended on the edge of their penalty area. Our possession warranted more attempts on goal. Having said that and possibly contradicting myself, several times Hemmings found good positions in the box only for others to shoot wide instead of passing. I didn't think we were particularly dirty and was very surprised by the number of 'head wounds' suffered by Oldham players.
Dr Bob
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Re: Old 'un

Post by Dr Bob »

I found the afternoon rather unpleasant and unedifying. How their manager was not sent off is a mystery. That said, for a referee who is in his first year on the Football League list, I thought he did as well as could reasonably be expected over the course of the match as a whole, under very trying circumstances. I did not see the late tackle on Maguire clearly enough to be able to say whether or not it should have been a penalty.

I very much agree with Geoff's comments about other players not passing to Hemmings. I thought he got a bad deal from the RadOx callers after the match. I was particularly frustrated by Johnson's decision-making in the second half, shooting from difficult angles and from quite a distance, when Hemmings had got himself into good positions in the box. OK so Hemmings missed one or two, but play the percentages.

When Appleton totally lost it, he was really having to be held back. Whatever he said on RadOx after the match, I suspect there was more to it than that. He looked like he wanted to do someone some serious damage.

When a football match did manage to break out, I thought from the off that we were going to struggle. Just like Macclesfield, they put five in midfield, which immediately seems to result in us playing hoofball. When they started playing a bit of football in the second half, so things got better.

Hey ho - another point, another game undefeated, and on to tonight. Cannot make midweek games, but good luck to those going.
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