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Post by another_ruined_saturday on Feb 7, 2015 22:28:01 GMT
felt like captain oates coming upstairs for this: "i'm going to write a match report...i may be some time". spoke to my mum: "well that sounds an exciting match" my brother: "i've missed the game of the season then, have i?" no. and no. it seems churlish to dismiss a 4-3 win for the lack of entertainment, but that was awful, and only made ok by the fact that we snuck it in injury time. they were miles better than us early on and the ball seemed to be down at the railway end an awful lot (they made us shoot towards the cheadle end first half) we took the lead against the run of play when after a corner, glover lashed home on the volley via their player from close in. we immediately let them in for a soft equaliser, o'halloran looking at fault. both halves the game was spicy, including a lot of 'handbags', and their players seemed to get away with a lot worse stuff than ours did, although the ref having correctly waved play on as they had an advantage, should have gone back and booked moses for a lunge. churchman was getting a bit of a kicking and one of their players brought him down, then fell on him, and then pushed him in the face to keep him down, but didn't get booked. various county, including russell and baker went into the book, but more of theirs should have too. we were pretty disjointed and made almost nothing...and again it sounds daft to say it...apart from the FOUR goals. glover sidefooted home for his second of the day, but then we went badly wrong again, with staly notching another two. to be behind in a game which we'd led and needed to win was a blow, but we weren't looking likely to do that at that point. lewis king was also celebrating every staly goal like a romanian revolutionary on christmas day '89 - joy tinged with hatred at the overthrown enemy. baker had been subbed for sharp, and -inexplicably for me- wolfe on for churchman. wolfe had longer than usual - probably half an hour - but made his usual impact...none... kristian dennis, after being pretty anonymous, turned on the right hand side of the box and crashed a shot into the top corner at the near post in the one moment of quality of the game, but even while we were celebrating, we knew it wasn't enough and that we needed to win. we were one or two minutes into the four of injury time when someone (sharp?) went down the right hand side and cut in. dennis was near the penalty spot for a pull-back, and that looked the obvious ball to me. instead, the harder option was taken and it was played across the six yard box towards wolfe who was lurking near the back post. it reached him and he just had to finish - the 'keeper was there but it was almost a tap-in. and he put it wide. scratch that actually. cos you won't be able to tell from the highlights, but from our angle down towards the railway end of the main stand, it looked as though his 'tap-in' was actually off-target, until it hit lewis king and went in. a few of us were saying the same and it seemed fitting that a rubbish game was won by a rubbish effort from a poorly-performing player, bouncing in off comrade king, and ending that particular revolution. there was dennis' finish, taking three points and the fact that we had the character (luck) to do it the hard way; and that makes it alright. but really, it was rubbish. i'd rather see a county win though, however it comes, and have an extra 24 hours of cold, than have waited in for british gas and missed the game of the season.
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Post by another_ruined_saturday on Feb 7, 2015 22:30:16 GMT
cheshire sport and their effing cherry picker AKA Brian Kennedy no gazz - that would be their c*ck-knocker.
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Post by bigfudge on Feb 7, 2015 22:40:35 GMT
I think for unpredictability and goalscoring excitement in the last 15 minutes it was a good one.
I think it was Dennis who crossed in for Woolfe wasn't it? Perhaps not!
Either way with Hyde next and a win for the taking if we want it, this could give us a big boost going into the last push of the season!
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Post by another_ruined_saturday on Feb 7, 2015 22:47:36 GMT
I think for unpredictability and goalscoring excitement in the last 15 minutes it was a good one. I think it was Dennis who crossed in for Woolfe wasn't it? Perhaps not! it might have been sharp near the penalty spot then. i was trying to talk my brother through the match earlier and was pretty sketchy on the goals, particularly theirs! drove past you lot walking up from the crown, near the bus station at about half two. hope you had a good little soiree. and actually i agree, towards the end of the game it was completely ragged and both defences looked all over the place so it did get a bit more interesting. was just that the quality was poor.
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Post by jamesgill on Feb 7, 2015 22:47:46 GMT
It was Glover, Fudgey! But I agree with everything you said
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Post by Epworth Hatter on Feb 7, 2015 23:04:55 GMT
Really good summary of the game, ars. I thought we looked the better team early on and then scored from a corner. We should have pressed on, but we didn't and allowed staley back into it. Our full backs had a pretty torrid time: their No7 (probably MoM?) had Duxburry on toast. He wasn't helped by Woolfe being next to useless. Duxburry was on a yellow so couldn't dive in and Woolfe didn't help him at all. It cost us the third goal and Scot clearly had words with Woolfe after, but it didn't change anything. Jacobs has a pretty poor game, especially second half when he seemed pretty lazy at times in not busting a gut to get back and often caught out of position. He's defintely not the same player that left us. Our midfield was again our weak spot. I didn't understand Churchman going off, either. It left Moses and Russell in central midfield and it left our back four exposed time and again. We lost our shape badly in the second half, which led to a scrappy affair with staley looking the most dangerous. We were lucky that their strikers were pretty useless and ours somehow took the chances we made. Dennis' goal looked like a class finish - he wasn't in the game enough in the second half; not his fault, just no-one in midfield to pass to him. If I was staley I'd still be scratching my head as to how they lost the game. On a more positive note it was good to meet up with fellow Heaveners Sandy, Beefy, Fudge, Sirius and Sirius Jnr, Shrops, Lennie, Bradders and marketharborough (and harrogate, of course). Good to share a pint before the game and share a general sense of disbelief that we won after the game.
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Post by ceefer on Feb 7, 2015 23:19:16 GMT
Really happy we picked up the 3 points but the team really made it difficult for themselves and put the fans through it. Someone said Staley wanted it more than ius and for long periods of the game it looked that way. Okay credit that the team got the win and scored 4 but it was a close run thing which nearly ended up with us dropping 2 points. A word about fitness; both Duxberry and Jacobs were well off the pace and Jacobs had a really poor game..imho Belezika is way better; we could do with a swap. Kyle needs to get in the gym or something because several times he didn't track back when beaten up field as Eps pointed out and seemed all over the place; sorry to say it but I am not att all mpressed. We will welcome the return of Wilkinson Gregson and Ryan. Here's hoping we make life easy against Hyde and restore the goal difference and keep my blood pressure from boiling over. Last thoughts the ref awarding a corner on the left when it should have been on the right; truly bizarre... And Congratulations to Mr King for a truly inspiring performance scoring 2 own goals. I was willing someone to lob him and score as he was standing half way up to centre circle. 2 points off the playoffs 3200 plus attendance today ... Amazing
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Post by bigfudge on Feb 8, 2015 0:08:09 GMT
Ah fair enough, right you were ars!!
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Post by another_ruined_saturday on Feb 8, 2015 0:31:13 GMT
nope fudge - i thought it was sharp!
agree with both eps and ceefer about the full backs. i thought it would take duxbury a while to get back into it as he'd been out for some time. taking longer than i expected though, and generally he's not looked as good in his second season. once he'd got booked i was a bit worried because their wide attacker was looking to take him on at every opportunity.
again, with jacobs it was likely he'd need a couple of games to get match sharp, but at the moment he's going upfield with the ball which we need him to do, but looking like glenn johnson when palace ended liverpool's title hopes last season - ambling back without a care in the world. there was one where he got dispossessed on half way in the second half and barely reached jogging pace in getting back, even though they were right in on us.
they've both shown they're good players and could be big for us; but they're both miles off it at the moment. like ceefer, i think the misses of wilkinson, gregson and ryan hurt us today, and i would add spencer to that. like i've said, i think gregson allows us to change the formation and take one out of our weakest area. we missed ryan's bustle today, and i think spencer would have worked their defence hard. dennis and glover both work but are fairly reliant on service. spencer is a nuisance and the balls to him don't have to be particularly good.
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Post by jimboslovechild on Feb 8, 2015 9:27:07 GMT
lewis king was also celebrating every staly goal like a romanian revolutionary on christmas day '89 - joy tinged with hatred at the overthrown enemy. Lovely stuff.
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Post by dudleyhatter on Feb 8, 2015 9:28:13 GMT
Cheers for these anslyses fellas. Looked on the highlights like we were poor at fullback. You have confirmed this thanks as ever.
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Post by bigfudge on Feb 8, 2015 15:32:32 GMT
Defensively both sides were all over the show! Clearly we missed Gregson, Duxbury was uncharacteristically poor as well!
As for King, after the abuse he got from Yellowboard for some bizarre reason. I don't blame him one iota for his over-celebrating each goal!
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Post by harrogatehatter on Feb 8, 2015 21:57:01 GMT
Some good analysis of the match. I think we can agree that we certainly got away with one!
It is said that supporting County is like a bad marriage: they'll abuse you, make you cry, take your money but for some reason you can't walk away. Then they come up with a 94th minute winner and all is right with the world.
I'll just add that taking Churchman and Baker off to be replaces by Sharp and Woolfe was a bold step by AL. It left us with no protection in front of the back four and a central midfield pair of Moses and Russel. To my mind Moses is a poor player, he breaks up play and errrr that's all. No creativity. Russel I thought was very good to say it was his second game(?)
The gamble from AL was that we'd score goals with an attacking 4 of Dennis, Glover, Woolfe and Sharp. But equally we'd be very vulnerable at the back, and that proved to be the case. I don't think we'll get away with it too often. But we HAD to win this game. So fair play to AL he got the win and his tactics had to have contributed to that.
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Post by another_ruined_saturday on Feb 8, 2015 22:23:04 GMT
i maintain that woolfe for churchman was ridiculous at the time and that was borne out by his contribution until his mis-hit at the end. now if AL had brought him on in the 92nd minute and he'd done that, i'd have been acclaiming AL a genius! thought sharp for baker was fair enough as baker wasn't offering that much and had been booked, and while sharp isn't the most talented footballer, he works hard, closes down, wins flick ons and can be a bit of a pest. didn't see much quality from him but he still contributed.
it was russell's third league start (gainsborough and boston before yesterday), but yeah he was pretty useful given how recently he's broken into the team. moses has improved this season, though wasn't at his best yesterday. in the early part of the season i definitely wanted rid of him, but to be fair to him he has had a good few decent games. clearly not the long term answer though.
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Post by ceefer on Feb 13, 2015 16:23:25 GMT
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