Bloody Hell that was cold

I submit my first proper match report of the season. Caveat 1 - this is only the 3rd time I've seen us play this year.  Caveat 2 - For a decent portion of the first half I had my eyes closed to protect from the sleet coming straight at me.

Overall Impression - I still haven't had a good away experience at Accrington.  First time I've ever driven there and managed to get lost in the Rossendale Valley which to be fair is a pretty nice place to get lost although not on dodgy small roads on an icy afternoon in January.  Still the delay probably saved me getting frostbite from going into early and spending too much time on the freezing cold terrace. It was a very impressive away turnout from assorted Gasheads.  They took pity on us and let us use the bus shelter that masquerades as a stand down one of the sides if we wanted.  Jolly decent of them.  However, I don't hold with all that stuff and so froze to death anyway on the open terrace.  I'll say this - at least there wasn't a park football match going on behind the back of the stand for me to be distracted by this time.  Strange atmosphere though - even though there were a decent amount of us we never seemed to really get going.  Maybe it was because our support was split into 2 clumps or maybe it was just cos everyone's jaws had frozen solid.  Stanley fans gave it plenty though - albeit with the aid of a hated drum.  I left with the feeling I tend to when going away from the Crown Ground (Now gloriously renamed Wham Stadium with accompanying 'Wake me up....' theme music) - they seem an entirely likeable bunch who have somehow taken a Conference North style set up and made it a just about viable League  club.  Very friendly and lots of local pride.  I even like the town.  Very very hard to dislike any of it........but yet I do very, very deeply.  I bloody hate Accrington Stanley.

Basically my take on the game is that we had a job done on us.  They knew exactly how to play on their ground in very testing conditions and while we tried very hard to compete we just couldn't match that in the end.  If this had been played 2/3 years ago we'd have lost 4/5-0.  It's testament to a fighting spirit in the side that they kept battling and weren't miles off getting something out of it.  Having said that we were comfortably second best and beaten by a decent side who maximised their home advantage.  I clocked right at the start that the teams switched ends at the coin toss (I assume that was their decision - didn't actually notice who kicked off).  That might have been the most important moment in the game.  So we ended up shooting towards the away end first half which is where the wind blowing was towards (but not consistently - we'd get short bursts and then it would ease off- this benefitted them because the wind stayed up for most of the 2nd half).  We played well for the first 20 minutes.  Lawrence particularly looked like the skilled ball player we need to switch the angles of attack and link consistently with the strikers.  He did some good work with Taylor and Gaffney but the best moves came from Lawrence, Brown and Taylor interacting together down the left.  We were consistently threatening and it looked like only a matter of time before we started carving out proper chances but they never came.  Instead from about 20 mins onwards Stanley came more and more into it to the extent that it was definitely a half of two halfs.  Come the end of the half we were probably happy that we could get in and regroup because they were definitely getting the better of it.  Having said that neither team had created very much, there was good defending at both ends and 0-0 was absolutely a fair reflection.  Although I thought it was actually a decent game with 2 sides keeping it on the floor and playing a similar style of up tempo football but neither had the final ball.

At half-time I thought about how strange the opening of the game had seemed and I realised why.  This is a massive game for Stanley really and I was surprised they came out so passive - they didn't press, they let us have the ball, they didn't really dive into tackles.  They were solid enough but they didn't make much effort to drive the game forward.  It was only later on in the half where it became a bit ragged and our midfield dropped deeper and deeper that they came into the game.  I honestly think this was deliberate - they wanted to conserve energy because they knew that if it was 0-0 at HT they could have us into the wind into the second half, which is what happened (not hindsight by the way and I have a halftime text message to prove it!).  What happened in the 2nd half is that they kept trying for these halfway house balls that made it difficult for our defenders to read and turned them around quite a lot.  With the wind this made things difficult and also forced our midfield permanently deep.  Then they pressed remorselessly and playing against the wind that made it very difficult for us to get out.  The pressure was on our short passing game - it wasn't really possible to accurately hit direct balls to the flanks and the gap between the midfield and the strikers just got bigger and bigger.  So we were never in the game 2nd half really - not until they dropped off in the last 5-10 mins and even then not really.  They did a proper job on us.  They missed 2 gilt edged chances before they eventually scored - one an excellent save from Mildenhall (but the guy shouldn't have given him any chance) and a terrible miss from 6 yards out.  The goal itself was wind assisted I think - one of those nasty curling crosses to the back post that go in and make goalie and defenders look bad but to be honest I think they were largely faultless.  The pressure had just told.  A triple substitution (not sure I've ever seen that before) from Clarke didn't really change much because they were all attacking players and the issue wasn't with our attackers really it was with our capacity to get the ball to our attacking players.  All in all - hats off to Accrington, their 2nd half game plan was perfect and I don't think we actually had the capacity to nullify it.  What we desperately needed was an extra bit of midfield nastiness to impose ourselves on the game and put us on the front foot and that's not a player we had.  Ho-hum, sometimes it is destined to not be your day.  I don't think we played that badly really the odds were just against us.

Mildenhall - 8.  Probably our MOM.  Made several key saves and generally looked confident with the conditions that were extremely testing for a goalie.  I don't put him at much fault for the goal, I'm sure others will.  Harsh in my view.

Clarke - 6.  Defensively he was fine but in retrospect we should have pushed him further up in the 1st half to support Bodin who was isolated and peripheral as a result.  Strikes me as a stay at home right back.  I think Leadbetter may have made a difference today because we didn't really have anyone who could carry the ball out from the back which with windy conditions is important.  Lewis Haldane would have been perfect for a day like this - you need those blunt instruments sometimes.

Parkes - 8.  I was massively impressed with Parkes.  Last time I saw him play in conditions like that it was at Chesterfield 2 years ago and he flailed around like fish out of water.  This was a really composed performance with several key interceptions and he read the game very well in difficult circumstances.

Lockyer - 8.  Also excellent.  They played very well as a unit particularly under immense pressure in the 2nd half.  Along with Mildenhall they basically kept us in the game. Put Kenneth - MCchrystal (no comment on him but that was a terrible partnership) back there and this would have been a cricket score.

Brown - 6.  Good in the first half.  Really interacted well to get us in strong positions.  Overlapped - partnership with Lawrence looked very promising.  Final ball wasn't quite there but it was good.  Second half; like Clarke had a bit of torrid time because they were targeting dinked balls in the channels.  Dealt with it about as well as could be expected especially as Lawrence was clearly flagging badly and struggling to contribute defensively.

Bodin - 4.  Billy had a bad day but it wasn't really his fault.  In the first half he was the odd man out in our attacking quartet - he was isolated on the right with no one to link with.  Second half we just never managed to get him the ball.  If I was him I'd feel frustrated - he just never had the opportunity to impact the game and struggled at times with the defensive workload.

Lawrence - 5.  For the first 20 minutes he looked absolutely the player we've been missing.  After that they got on the front foot and his influence waned.  Second half he looked puffed - defensively he was chasing shadows and on the floor far too much.  May have been trying too hard to impress to be fair.  Lost his rag a bit too when we were struggling to get the ball to him.  I definitely like the look of him but we should not be expecting Liam Lawrence circa 2005.  This Liam Lawrence has quality on the ball but the pace seems to have largely gone.  There was some brilliant interaction but others will do the running - a bit like when we had Wally.  Not convinced he's match fit at all either.

Mansell - 6.  Played OK but was overmatched in the centre of midfield.  If we were going to have a chance today we needed a big performance from someone in the centre of midfield not an average one.

Sinclair - 6. Ditto.  I'm sure there are some people that will give Sinclar MOM for his performance today but, sorry, for me that was the game you look at for him to be the player who puts us on the front foot consistently.  Yes he battled, yes he worked his arse off but he didn't change the momentum of the game in our favour and I think he was the one who had the best chance of doing that.

Gaffney - 6.  Very hard with the strikers because they had so little to work with.  I'm sure there are people who will come on here and have a go at our attacking players for not doing enough.  Those people are wrong in my eyes - apart from the 1st 20 mins I don't think any of our attacking players had the ball in a promising position or the support with which to create a promising position.  The gap between midfield and attack was enormous. Gaffney worked hard and looked a threat at times in the 1st half when we were giving him the ball.  Apart from that he had a thankless task.

Taylor - 7.  Ditto for Taylor but he gets the extra mark for busting his ass right to the end in a futile effort and because when he did get the ball in the 2nd half he looked the only person likely to create anything - not much but enough to bump him up 1.

Substitutes - did nothing really.  Fallon and Montano had a half shot each.  As I said above - my take is that they didn't have a much of a chance to influence the game because that wasn't where we were struggling necessarily.  On another day bringing on 3 quality attacking players at that point in the game could make all the difference - it wasn't going to today because were incapable of getting them the ball.

Disapointing but Stanley looked the real deal to me which makes this one of our toughest away fixtures of the year.  We battled very hard but ultimately we couldn't adapt to the conditions or their tactics.  Enough there to suggest plenty of promise though when the dice aren't loaded against us quite as much.