Tue Jan 16, 2007 9:43 am
Very good and professional performance all round. Don't want to get too carried away because I think Grimsby were grim, they were a very poor side.
They carried very little goal threat. The threat they did carry was coped with ease by Dann and Ropes, and their defending was very poor, especially for the first goal, it could even be described as comical. First, their left back had an air shot and missed his clearance, Sam [playing a better right wing role than Wright] stole in, he had another swipe, put a cross in to the danger zone, their defender slipped leaving butler with an unchallenged header.
We played very well and we look lively against a very poor side - it could have been 5 or 6 nil in the end, the real test however is at Mansfield in 4 days time.
To add to the discussion above, Wrighty had one of his typical games. Does a couple of good things, but mostly poor. I think he put 4 crosses in all night. Two looped up making it hard for the attacker to attack, a third hit the first man and deflected out for a corner and a fourth was a superb wipped cross, the kind he should be producing like a robot time and time again, not once in a game.
Im not being overly critical of him, just pointing out what he should be doing. He also got the ball stuck under his feet a lot, didn't beat his man once, but because the team played so well as a unit, it carried him. I mean do people forget the first 30 mins when he failed to do anything decent and there were groans from the crowd? He improved as the game wore on though.
As for Dobson, he had a poor patch, where 5 or 6 consecutive passes didnt find their man. Pead was excellent from start to finish, gave us plenty of energy and running from the middle of the park.
6 points clear now, and without wanting to use too many silly cliches like "games like this win titles", we've just got to keep plodding away now until the end of the season. 19 games left, we're in a superb position, we just need to keep doing what we've done all season - not lose games - keep steady and we'll get there and triumph.
Just a mention for Dicky, he's got a very young squad, the team last night had an average outfield age of 26, a very good balance.
I thought the attendance was poor, even tho it was on sky, hopefully as the end of the season draws closer more attention will fall on us and awake the sleeping supporters!
PS the pitch looks awful. I was saying to mark at half time that the sand-drilling-draining thing they've done looks to make it worse. It looks to have dried the pitch out to such an extent that its begun dieing and chopping up even worse.
