When I saw the line-up ahead of the game yesterday, I tweeted that we wouldn't be scoring again. Macauley Bonne a lone striker with no Fraser or Blackett-Taylor. Fraser has been poor in the last couple of games so probably deserves to be dropped but the replacements were Kilkenney and Payne, two triers who are average mid-table League One players at best. Not scoring was hardly a gamble as we hadn't managed in the previous four matches.
What really hurts, wasn't not scoring, but once again not managing an effort on target in 90 minutes. It's become a feature of our play and it alludes to a side so desperately short of attacking ability. As one of the supposedly bigger clubs in this division with one of the better playing budgets, it really is an indictment and should be a clarion call for everyone involved.
Dean Holden has to bear some responsibility for this. It was glaringly obvious that the best we could hope for in the first-half was to get in at 0-0. Bonne does very little and is offside more-often-than-not when the ball does reach him. Kilkenny was busy but once again lightweight and ultimately unproductive. He doesn't have the pace or attacking threat that Blackett-Taylor carries when he wants to know. On the other side, Rak-Sakyi was our best hope but he is usually double-marked now and his threat curtailed.
Behind them we looked ok in the first-half with Ness, Inniss and Hector standing up to the rampaging Hardie but 9 seconds into the second-half we folded. The previously faultless Ness saw an upfield ball charged down by Hardie who was moving at twice the pace of any of our defenders and who simply ran past Ryan Inniss to lift the ball over the advancing Maynard-Brewer. It was an embarrassing team goal to conceded from kick-off.
On 65 minutes Holden made the changes he should have started with and we managed to breakout of our half and force a couple of corners which came to nothing. Leaburn and Kanu showed much more interest in getting forward than we had seen from Bonne, Payne or Kilkenny but it was still well short of a goal.
We have a couple of lower table sides next up, with Accrington Stanley and Morecambe, and we really need to beat them both to avoid turning this season into a full-scale embarrassment which would not reflect well on Dean Holden who has been making a fist of it thus far.
Thomas Sandgaard remains tight-lipped and probably disinterested, although he has dismissed the claims of Charlie Methven and I suspect he is talking from a position of legal strength. We really need to hope a Spiegel-lead takeover goes through and Sandgaard finally leaves the stage. I have concerns, like everyone else, over how Spiegel will fund the club and his ultimate intentions but in the absence of a seriously wealthy and ambitious owner, I think we have to take a deep breath and hope for the best because we are heading into League Two under Thomas Sandgaard if he can't find a buyer.
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