Well, that was… a bit rubbish, wasn’t it?
Ben dialled up his DAZN stream and took in the Glovers’ 2-1 defeat to Aldershot. Here are his five conclusions.
A result that undid all the good work vs Rochdale.
Actually a performance that undid all the good work vs Rochdale
The harsh truth is that Aldershot wanted it more, the Aldershot players also played with 10 men on Saturday (for longer than we did) but they came with a plan to come out of the boxes quickly, stun us and then just never relented.
The honest thought is that, instead of fighting fire with fire, we went into damage limitation mode and couldnt get a foot into the game at all. And if I had a quid for every time we gave the ball away, by yearly DAZN subscription would have been covered twice over.
That’s about Aldershot deciding to live and die by their positive actions and they well and truly deserved every bit of it.
Pic c/o Gary Brown
For the love of Phil Jevons will someone find a striker.
Twice in the game, we had set pieces in attacking areas which Jake Wannell won in the air, twice the ball fell into the six yard box and twice, not a soul in green and white was to be seen.
Wannell’s arms went up in exasperation twice. Where is the striker who snaffles five or six a season by sticking their foot through one from 4 yards, who wants to be in the mix, where push comes to shove, where youve got to get a kick, where you’ve got to do anything and everything to get that ball over the line? Aldershot had someone like that. He won them the game.
Pic c/o Gary Brown
Ward and Works worth their weight.
We’ve said it a million times, here’s 1,000,001. Without Jed Ward we’d be well and truly stuffed wouldn’t we?
By his standards, he actually had a below par game, some sloppy distribution and a couple of little fumbles. But we were in the game because of him, he’s saved us so many points this season.
And a word for Works, who is diminutive in stature, but when he flashes into gear, my word there’s a player there. The sort of player we’ll see doing great things in the future and we’ll say “remember that belter he scored vs Aldershot that time?”.
Worried without Wannell
Jake Wannell’s tenth yellow of the season means he’ll miss the next two (vs Carlisle and Sutton)
Our defence has chopped and changed a fair bit this season, but we’re going to have FCD and two relative newbies against Carlisle and that’s got me a little nervous.
But, it does offer a chance for FCD, or perhaps Kyle Ferguson to hear the call for leadership from the gaffer and really step up. Just like they did vs Rochdale.
We’re still paying the price for early season chaos.
Its mid February and we’re having to manage the minutes of players who have come in after time out of other sides and we’re still asking a lot of a young side, packed full of exciting, but raw talent.
Four managers, four ideas, four plans, four plan As, four plan Bs and its clear we didnt start the season fit enough – I’d love to compare Aldershot’s heat maps and distance covered – and with games coming thick and fast it isn’t getting any easier. But the Rowley era has, overall, been a positive one, we’re still on a road to Wembley, we’re still closer to 11th (4pts) than we are to 21st (5pts).
It’s a massive summer ahead, get there unscathed in the league (and maybe a Trophy in the back pocket) and this defeat will be long forgotten.
Pic c/o Gary Brown