THEPRESSBOX Ugly, untidy, soul destroying, wretched City
TIGERS A MILE OFF WHERE THEY NEED TO BE AS BOTTOM SIDE BREWERS SNATCH LATE VICTORY
miss out on promotion, this could well be the performance and result we all look back on as the crucial blow.
City are in League One because they were not good enough to be in the Championship, that much is glaringly obvious, and if this performance is replicated again over the next 20 games then promotion will be a distant pipe dream.
That’s how flaky this team can be, brilliant one minute, horrific the next. There seems to be little of the middle ground.
At 0-0, Grant Mccann’s men had been rubbish - quite frankly, that’s the most polite way of putting it, but at least they were getting a point, at the very least, a point and a lucky escape.
It would have been a poor point in the context of the season and when you consider the form of the opposition, let alone when you consider half the Brewers’ outfield team was made up of players that had barely been in the club a few days.
However, it would have been a point, it would have kept the total ticking over.
Unfortunately, City’s own ineptitude showed no bounds when they conceded on the cusp of stoppage time to a goal which was of their own doing.
A crucial miss earlier in the half served only as a warning, as did a free-kick which caused a degree of alarm for George Long and his crossbar.
When Jonny Smith capitalised on an error and a sloppy piece of defending from Callum Elder to slot in, you could feel the collective slump of shoulders from City fans the world over.
Let’s make no mistake about it, the Tigers got exactly what they deserved in a game in which they can best be described as abject.
Yes, Keane Lewis-potter should have headed on target early in the first half, and yes, Greg Docherty - City’s best player by the way - crashed an effort off the bar, but that was it.
Against a team heading for League Two without something special, City did not have