A hugely frustrating game on Saturday. The manner of defeat certainly ruined my Saturday evening. Sadly, veteran Wimbledon watchers would have found the last few minutes all too predictable – failure to capitalise on the few chances we created, followed by a defensive loss of concentration at the death.
Shrewsbury were woeful, robust in defence but very limited in attack. These are the sides we need to be beating if we are not going to endure another relegation battle this season.
Glyn’s post match interview summed the match up, we had some good pressure, but the final ball was either poor (I give you Luke O’Neill whose delivery was woeful) or too conservative to unlock a well organised defence. For all the pressure during the 90 minutes, the experimental361 website gave us an expected goals value of 0.8 – simply not good enough against limited opposition.
On the plus side, defensively we were solid for the first 89 minutes. Our three CBs were largely untroubled and were superbly screened by Woodyard and Oksanen in midfield. Both wingbacks worked hard and didn’t allow the opposition to get behind them.
Negatives were our lack of creativity, failure to take risks in the attacking third and our inability to change things when they weren’t working. Also, once again there was a collective failure at a corner which threw away a hard earned point – McLoughlin misjudged the flight of the corner and instead of clearing (under no pressure) produced a perfect offensive flick on which left Pigott, Thomas and Trueman flat footed. Add to that no one had picked up Clarke, the Shrewsbury striker at the far post and he headed in unopposed from two yards out!
Poor…
We have a set of tough fixtures coming up and a set of Tuesday/Saturday matches culminating in the return to Plough Lane on 3rd November. We have a ‘thin’ squad and desperately need Palmer and Rudoni fit for 90 minutes action. Longman, Chislett and Oksanen are all new to this level and we can’t expect them to play 180 minutes a week.
Tomorrow is going to be a tough test for us, but we need to start picking up points again otherwise come our first match at Plough Lane we will be in a familiar position.
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