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Difficult To Tell Who Was Looking At Europe And Who Was Eyeing The Conference

11 years ago
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I sat down to write a review of the midweek cup match but once the cogs started turning I realised there were other things much more important that needed to be addressed, so here goes.

For those of you who watched the game I’m pretty sure we can all agree that it was hardly awe inspiring, for most of the 90 plus minutes it was difficult to tell which team was talking about Europe and which was looking at the Conference.

In a nutshell we were lucky to come away with the result. The home team were all over us in the first half and could have gone in 2 or 3 up at the break.

Were it not for Dan Gosling’s goal line heroics and a couple of superb saves from Elliot we could have been remembering Morecambe in the haze as Hereford.

We have therefore before us a bit of a dichotomy.

On the one hand we have Kinnear and Pardew trying to convince us that our squad is currently strong enough and deep enough to finish top 10 in the EPL, while on the other we clearly struggled against a side sitting in 19th place in the old 4th Division.

Some might argue that we did put out the ‘boys’ team, making 8 changes from the team that showed so badly against West Ham, but let us not forget that these ‘boys’ are the squad players upon which we will be so dependant come January when the injuries start to kick in.

And regardless of the stories of fitness gurus, dance instructors, Ballerinas  or whatever else we have working behind the scenes, the injuries will come.

One game in and we already had Jonas out with a hamstring and Tiote feeling his groin, so the likes of Dummett, Good, Bigi, Vuckic and Sammyobi will be all be getting a game come Christmas, and the sad thing is that we will struggle and blame the kids for it.

So based on the wretched performance at the Globe Arena how can Pards and JFK even pretend that our squad is good enough to cope with Man U, Chelsea and Man City, when realistically we can’t even put lowly Morecambe back in their box?

Don’t get me wrong, there were a couple of good performances out there but we were playing a 4th Division team. Kinda takes the shine off the win a little.

As we kicked off the season I was waiting for some comedian to chip in with a comment about Shola’s pre-season form and how he could come good this season, at which point I was ready to wade in pointing out that he’s still a Championship striker and has only been scoring against lower league opposition.

I have seen Shola score with the back of his head, with his shoulder, with his arse and any number of other less conventional body parts but last night’s off target deflection was as good as any of them, and thank goodness we had a Championship striker playing for us because it seemed as if we had little else.

The question must surely be though, what on earth was Pardew thinking putting almost a full team of youngsters out there, with limited experience alongside to hold the whole thing together?

He can hardly blame the youngsters for not performing when they look around and see only other inexperienced kids in the black and white.

This was not the Europa Cup where we fancied our chances of doing an Arsenal with the under 17s, this was a real competition and with a first team full of players who look like they need match practice Pardew dropped the ball, or maybe that should be the soap.

Can’t help thinking that if our manager had been on the ball he’d have brought a few of the Morecambe players back with him. After all, they’d certainly make better squad players than some of our lot.

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