Bernie wrote:I agree with Cannock. I think that many posters allow themselves to be totally influenced by the result when they discuss our performance. We lost today, which was sickening, but I thought that we played better football and had more promise then when we beat Scunthorpe a few weeks ago.
There is no doubt that Roberts was taken off because of his injury problems. It may have been that Roberts started having trouble with his calf, but I suspect that Mullen thought that it would be safe to take him off for the last 20 minutes, and better to do that than to risk asking too much from Roberts as he gets back to full fitness. After all Manny Smith did OK in the second half last week, better in fact that Roberts had in the first half against Southend. If it was a gamble (rather than a forced substitution) then it did not work out, but nobody gets every decision right.
I have to disagree on two vital points:
1 We didn't create anything and never looked like creating anything. Even when Iberhe had one of his good runs, we never had anyone else in the box at all. Hughes and Taundry just failed completely to get up in time and both wingers were too deep, leaving Ishy as the only support.
2 We were making the same defensive mistake in the first half as resulted in the third goal - I mentioned it at half time, so it wasn't hindsight. The whole defense on more than one occasion got pulled over to the right hand side, Roberts towards Palmer, Gerrard towards Roberts, leaving Boertien to cover the entire left flank. Once their spare midfielder or the right back made a run, Reich wasn't covering, so Boertien had to take the inside man and Mulligan was left with the freedom of the Banks's to roam about in. Fortunately, they failed to exploit it before the second goal, but they should have.
I'm afraid Mullen should have reacted to both issues and, in fact, reacted to neither.