Paddy plays second fiddle as Jack stars
PRIOR to the Barnet match, all the talk was of Paddy Madden but the star of Tuesday night’s game was Jack Stretton.
Paddy arrived from Fleetwood with a huge reputation as a goal scorer and his record whilst playing in front of the Cod Army is bordering on the phenomenal, his signing for me is a real show of intent from Mark Stott and the fact that he signed a three-year deal just goes to show what the aim is for our club.
Paddy took the field after Harry Cardwell was injured on the half hour mark to a ripple of applause.
It’s a real shame because if EP had been filled to capacity the roof would have come off, the anticipation was so immense.
He didn’t score but the potential threat was there for all to see.
He was, though, out done as Jack Stretton scored his second goal in as many games to win the game.
Wayne Rooney (brother of John) thinks this young man will be a Premiership player within the next three years and from what we’ve seen of him I don’t doubt it.
Of course the Bees are rock bottom, in confidence as much as league position and we should be beating them I hear you cry and you’d be right, but at times we did make hard work of it.
Liam Hogan gave us an early lead tapping in after his initial header had been well saved.
They equalised in the second half after some pressure but Jack destroyed any hopes they might have had with his late stunner.
A much harder task awaited on Saturday when we travelled to Ganders Green Lane and surprise league leaders Sutton United.
For me Sutton deserve their top of the league status, at EP they did a real job on us, nullifying our strengths and playing on the break, even though we conceded an own goal and played for the large part after Liam Hogan was incorrectly red carded.
We’re a much changed side now but for a huge part of the game it looked a case of two steps forward (Solihull and Barnet), one step back. We struggled to make any commanding impression on the game even though Paddy Madden hit the woodwork and had another cleared off the line.
The home side pounced on any mistake and let’s be honest; there were more than a few.
In the end, after so much pressure and loads of time wasting from Sutton, James Jennings scored our first ever goal against them to rescue a point.
We’ll need to do better over the next week with both Eastleigh and Hartlepool visiting EP!