i thought cheltenham worked extremely hard, were very organised (parachute them from a plane blindfold and I reckon they'd land and form a rigid 4-4-2 formation...
, had a couple of reasonable finishers in their team, but most of all kept going as a squad. so fair play, no complaints about the result.
that said, we should have had more than enough to deal with them as we showed in the first half. cheltenham's set pieces were always dangerous, but having gone behind we were 3-1 up by half time without playing particularly well or noticeably shifting gear. a soft penalty to concede, a mistake well-capitalised on, and a wonderful pass from ruffels for xemi to finish was all it took.
did we decide the game was won and that we should try a few people out/rest others? I was most annoyed at conceding the second goal. we needed to take the pace out of the game, it was end-to-end at that point. I think a foot on the ball, putting the ball out, slowing things down, and we would've approached the last five minutes with a two goal cushion. game management of course. instead we faced the last five minutes with the robins giving it a real go to secure an equaliser, and getting their (just) reward. awful to throw away a two goal lead against an effective side, but one that we should be (and were) able to unpick.
we really missed obika when he went off. I thought he was solid, not spectacular, but enables us to vary our play. once he went off we were continually playing from the back, and cheltenham pressed hard and we kept misplacing passes. I was disappointed payne and henry didn't have more of an impact when they came on, particularly after hearing what those who were at the oldham game had to say.
otherwise: martin gave the ball away too much under little pressure, ribiero had a disappointing night in terms of defensive positioning and poor passing, johnson wasn't as effective or dangerous as we saw him be last season, xemi scored a good goal but otherwise seemed caught out by the action and physicality of the game. ledson had a solid game I thought, nelson played well, eastwood was as per last season, and ruffels has really become a very good player.
early days as others say and I guess I'm just disappointed that the only game i'll see over a few weeks was a poor performance after saturday's plaudits. but work to be done I guess and this result only says as much about how we'll do as saturday's.