Tranmere Rovers v Bristol Rovers FA Cup run thread

no it dosnt,i should have said "were you at the game as a lot of people said we played well" sorry

when we win 1-0 ugly people say yes but the performance was poor!  when we play well but lose they say its not about the performance its the result that counts???

I have written this match report without looking what anyone else has thought so it will be interesting to see whether I saw things differently to people or not especially as this was the first game I have been to all season.

1.    Getting there.  Well this was an adventure.  Birkenhead is a bloody confusing place and despite having been to Tranmere twice before I got completely and totally lost on my walk from the train station to the ground and ended up having to ask the lady behind the counter in a Co-Op god knows where if she could ring me a taxi and I missed the first 5 minutes of the game! I also managed to get lost getting back to the train station afterwards.  It seems that Birkenhead does not really believe in things like signposts or putting it's public transport stops anywhere where they might be useful such as you know the football ground, town centres or ferry stops etc.  Bizarre place.  I like Prenton Park though - it's a really tidy ground though I've now been there 3 times and the home support never seems to muster up any noise at all which seems a bit of a shame.

2. First Half.  Assuming that nothing spectacularly out of the ordinary happened in the 1st 5 minutes of the game I thought we were really good.  We were way better than they were (I thought they looked a poor side throughout really).  Mansell and Sinclair seemed to dominate the midfield battle and starve them of the ball, we looked very well organised at the back and played some very nice stuff in midfield.  But what I really liked was our general energy; we were pressing up, giving them no time on the ball and generally looked really difficult to play against.  We just seemed to be getting our foot to the ball ahead of them nearly every time.  I also liked our general pattern of play which seemed to emphasise getting it into the wide areas as often as we could.  The only time I felt we looked under threat was when we were architects of our own downfall by giving the ball away in silly areas or the odd slip.  Other than that we seemed to keep them very quiet and they were reduced to taking pot shots from 25-30 yards when they ran out of ideas.  To me we were the team on top throughout the first half but, and I'm guessing this has been the issue all season, all that energy decent play and general edge seemed to vanish when we reached the final 3rd. In every other area of the pitch we looked organised, quick of thought and decisive.  When we got into the last 3rd all of that seemed to breakdown; we looked slow, lacking in decision making, lacking in ideas and making a series of pretty poor attacking decisions.  It wasn't one player either it was the whole team - we looked like a team in every other bit of the park but in the final 3rd we looked like strangers.  No one was linking with anyone else.  It was very frustrating because I felt like we dominated the game, dictated terms to them but then couldn't turn that into genuine opportunities.  Whereas they looked poor but were capable of generating chances on the break and Mildenhall was the only goalie who had to really make saves - so even though we were the better team we were a bit lucky to go into the break level which is a weird feeling.

3. Second Half.  I thought this was an odd half of football.  I couldn't put my finger on it but I think Mickey Adams must have adjusted something tactically at half time because they started to get a lot more ball in the middle of the park than they did in the 1st and assert themselves a bit more on the game - although we still looked pretty comfortable and their attacks weren't coming to anything.  Maybe we just used up a lot of legs playing the high press in the first half and you can't keep that up for 90 - I thought Sinclair particularly tired quickly.  But it was only when Parkes made a mistake by pushing up too far and was caught on a breakaway which led to a fine Mildenhall save that they created anything (again more our individual mistakes than being generally outplayed - we were matching them at the time) and then a silly handball from the corner from Mchrystal gave them the penalty - I don't really know what he was doing the corner looked like it had been overhit.  After that we seemed to lose our pattern of play a bit and struggled to assert ourselves as the game became very scrappy.  Then we got given a lifeline by the ridiculous sending off - I don't know what he was doing, there was no needle in the match and they were 1-0 up why kick out like that? Utterly stupid rush of blood.  That was the only point at which I was genuinely dissapointed with us I think.  They were down to 10, clearly nervous for their 1st win in a while and you could feel the tension around the ground but we didn't play with enough composure.  There was a lot of belief but the tactics were wrong for me.  I don't know why Clarke bought Ellis on and sent him up front.  I know that he sees him as a striker but the situation was crying out for a speedy player to hug the touchline - if Ellis had played outwide we'd have been able to work him onto the ball in space and he could have caused havoc.  Instead he sent him on with Cunnington and it seemed to me as if Cunnington, Brunt, Harrison and Taylor were all trying to play in he same 2 square yards of pitch! Instead of making it difficult for Tranmere by holding onto the ball and sending it wide, we made it easy for them by going down the middle (not all long ball some of it was into feet but it was still very narrow) and I don't know why we did it that way.  More often than not they all got in each others way.  I mean hats off for throwing the kitchen sink at it and I really loved the team spirit at the end.  These guys were clearly desperate to win and the body language was positive and that was great to see after the last few years.  Mildenhall running up and down the pitch like a mad man and there was a real determination to get the leveller - and we deserved one for effort but I think we would have done it if we'd have just shown some degree of composure and patience.  To me it was summed up by Lee Brown trying to score a wonder goal 30 yard drive when we had 4 big guys lined up in the box.  Decision making just wasn't there and that was the difference really between 2 not very good teams.  We outworked them and outplayed them for much of the match but their forward players looked way more likely to hurt us than ours did them.

4. So in general I'm quite optimistic because I think I saw a really committed team performance where players were really working for each other - unlike the last couple of years this seemed like an easy group of players to warm to.  On the other hand the problem seemed pretty obvious to me - it's not so much that we lack a striker necessarily (though obviously that would help it's that we seem to lack an understanding of how we are going to hurt teams in the last 3rd.  I couldn't see any 2 players that linked up in a meaningful way up front - not between the strikers, not between the wingers and the strikers, not between strikers and late arriving midfield players.  I just couldn't see how we were going to provide a consistent threat as a team and none of them are good enough to provide the threat on their own.  So to me it's not just about finding a guy who can bang in 15-20 goals though clearly that would help get others space, it's also about developing better link play between our attacking players because they just looked like strangers which is odd because in the rest of the pitch I thought our teamwork was as good as any Rovers team I've seen in years.

5.  Ratings
Mildenhall 8 - Probably our man of the match which gives the impression we were under the Kosh but we weren't.  He just made a series of excellent stops to cover the blushes of mistakes made higher up the pitch which led to clinical counter attacking opportunities.
Brown 6 - The more I see of Brown the less I'm impressed by him.  I used to think he had huge potential, now I worry that he is a pace too slow to deal with sharp forwards and his attacking decision making was poor but he was solid enough and he makes good defensive decisions. 
Lockyer 7 - His versatility is worth it's weight in gold to us but I wonder if it might ultimately stunt his development a bit.  He obviously has potential to play at a much higher level but I wonder if he'd be better served becoming a master of a particular position rather than a jack of all trades.  Played very well as usual.
Parkes 7 - I thought Parkes played well though his vulnerabilities are still there.  I liked that he seemed more aggressive than last time I saw him and I wonder if that comes with confidence.  I felt he was being used as a stopper when I saw him last season whereas I always thought he'd be better off as the aggressive centre back going out to meet the ball with someone dropping in behind like Steve Elliot used to.  He seemed to do that a lot more - coming out to meet the attackers rather than being on the back foot and it suits him far better.  He was also stronger in the air than I've seen him before.
Mcchrystal 7 - Would have been my man of the match if not for the silly penalty he gave away.  Other than that he looked assured and calm and organised the defence very well too.
Martin 5 - Honestly barely noticed him.  Just didn't seem to impact the game very much. When the ball went wide left it seemed more likely to end up with one of the forwards or central midfield players.  Just didn't catch the eye at all.
Gosling 6 - Kind of the opposite to Martin.  Hugged the touchline and did a good job of making himself available and creating an outlet that spread the play.  Unfortunately despite a lot of excellent play in the build up I'll mainly remember his performance for a series of terrible decisions.  Choosing to shoot from a poor angle at 25 yards with runners going either side, choosing to hit the back post when both of our strikers were attacking the front and a series of lesser errors of that nature.  He just seemed to be the A1 example of wasteful decision making in the 2nd half.
Sinclair 7 - I really liked Sinclair.  He's obviously limited but I liked his terrier like quality in the opposition half.  I reckon he'd be a real nightmare to play against, he was chasing everything down and never gave them a second of comfort on the ball.  When he was on the ball he had limited ability to impact the game but I felt he played within himself and generally tried to play the simple ball and offload.  A real sparkplug of energy and kind of fun to watch.  However, maybe due to playing like that it was pretty clear he was gassed out at 60 minutes and I think he probably should have been subbed.  Also, was far better in the opposition half - in ours he looked strangely nervous and panicked often when in defensive positions.
Mansell 7 - Again I really liked Mansell.  Sort of the opposite of Sinclair - was extremely good in our own half mopping things up covering and making good decisions.  There were shade of Stuart Campbell in that respect although he seemed to sit quite deep in general and not impact the game going forward all that much which was fine while Sinclair was but left a bit of a gap to the strikers once Sinclair's legs seemed to go.
Taylor 6 - What a funny player he seemed to be.  I was struck by the idea of the anti-Darryl Duffy (due to similarities in build).  Outside the box he looked like a sparky intelligent player.  He linked really nicely with the wingers and played them down the line very well several times.  He also worked very hard and seemed to read the game very well as he found space a lot of the time and covered a lot of the ground.  Inside the box he looked completely and utterly static and clueless.  There was none of the movement that he had in other areas of the pitch and he just never seemed to make the kind of runs to create chances.  He also didn't work with Brunt in the targetman role because he was too deep most of the time so there was no one to connect with flick ons and layoffs.  Yet I really liked a lot of the work he did in the build up.  It's like someone was designing a striker and built in all the nice features that you'd ideally have but left out the essentials.
Brunt 5 - I'm still worried about Brunt.  To me he didn't look much more than a body in that game.  He could hold the ball up OK and win headers but I thought he looked 5 yards slower than I last saw him and most worrying for me is that he didn't seem able to turn on the ball anymore.  That's what impressed me when he first signed - he could get it and turn and cause chaos because of his power - now he just doesn't seem to be able to do that.  He looked ungainly and awkward and just not much of a threat.  He worked hard enough and did the basics of a targetman but that was about it.

The subs were all 5.