The Crown Inn vs Gresley Rovers
The Crown 5 - 1 Gresley Rovers
Scorer: Luke Taylor
Team: Ian Parker, Joe Tomlin, Rich Foster, Dave Hatfield (c), Jack Moylan, Luke Taylor, Josh Gregory, Danny Gee, Sam Worth, Paul Morton, Mark Shorthouse
Subs: Chris Smith, Andy Lyons, Craig Harrison
We were away today to The Crown, who were promoted last season after finishing runners up, and we went into the game with a strong squad. Their pitch is very short (nearly as wide as it is long) but the surface was good, and with a strong gusting wind, we needed to get it down and play.
As the game got underway, we never really got into our stride; we seemed to be lacking confidence and desire. Within 4 minutes Gregory took a hefty knock from behind from a clumsy challenge, and although he got up, he was
struggling. It was a fairly even affair early on, but The Crown had the better of chances, luckily for us their finishing was poor. Taylor opened the scoring on 15 minutes, when he hit a shot from way out with such accuracy, their keeper never even moved as the ball hit the bottom inside of the post and in. It was a quality finish, but being honest, our opponents must have felt "hard done by" because we didn't deserve the lead.
With only 20 minutes gone we were forced to make our first change, Gregory's injury had taken its toll so we swapped him for Smith (dropping Shorthouse into midfield). Smith found space on the left touchline, beat his man and put
in a great cross finding Gee unmarked at the back post, and he rushed his effort over the bar with the keeper beaten. We had started to make a few chances though, so improvements were coming, but we were still "way off our
best". We gave their players way too much time on the ball, and this led to them equalising on 25 minutes. Just before half time they added another to take us in at the break 2-1 down.
Half time I spoke of the fact that the effort was lacking along with the quality, I felt that if we got it down and raised things we could still beat them.
Second half started in much the same vein, we looked a shadow of our best, and it was quite painful to watch. We looked a little brighter but we gave the ball away so cheaply at times, that we made things easy for them. We had a
decent claim for a penalty denied, and a few questionable off side decisions but we needed to control our own destiny by upping our game.
This we never did, and credit to The Crown, they took full advantage of our
lacklustre performance adding another three goals. If I'm being totally honest they could and should of scored more, so we made our last two substitutions replacing both Gee and Tomlin for Lyons and Harrison with 16 minutes to go. As the game ran it's course we seemed to give up, and I'm sure that I'm not the only one that found the final whistle a great relief.
So again we've shown our" Jekyll and Hyde" styles, from last week to this week it's difficult to believe it's the same team. If we can find some consistency on our better performances, then we could be a real force in the league, but on the "flip side" if we consistently play as poor as today then we could be serious relegation fodder. No doubt that being forced into an early change (with Gregory's injury) did affect us, but we need to be able to cope with such changes as the squad does have "strength in depth". I also understand certain players frustrations (which we've spoke about on numerous occasions) but today neither had an effect on the result that lies with ourselves. We need to pick ourselves up, and show what we are capable of on a
week in week out basis. Let's look to start this on Saturday when we're at home to Red Lion Res, because if we don't our 3rd place will look very vulnerable and it'll be a shame to let things slip after ALL THE HARD WORK WE'VE PUT IN ALREADY THIS SEASON.
Mom: Luke Taylor, his goal being of such quality on what was a poor team performance, well done Luke keep banging them in mate!!
