Grasping at signs of side improving
WHEN you’re on a bad run of form, as County so obviously are at the moment, supporters will cling to anything that resembles something positive, no matter how slim.
Travelling home from the Sutton game we’d just seen a team that may – I say may – have turned a corner.
I’m not saying everything is back on track, far from it but at Ganders Green Lane, for lengthy periods of the game we looked to be in control and for the want of a strong referee we could very possibly left with all three points.
It would be easy to say that the return of Ash Palmer made us whole again, we’re not but the man with the magic hat certainly provided something more solid at the back which in turn freed up the midfield and allowed them to push forward more which then allowed us plenty of opportunities to at least shoot at goal.
The problem on Saturday was that up front we were largely ineffectual.
In the first half Frank ran about a bit but never managed to get a grip of the game, after the first 15 minutes of getting nowhere it looked like he’d given up to be honest.
The only real chance we created came from Adam Thomas who just needed some power on the ball to send us in at the break one up, instead his toe poke took an age to roll into the net and was subsequently cleared.
The second half was more end to end, Sutton had chances but hit everything high and wide that meant Ben Hinchliffe had one of the quietest afternoons he could ever hope for.
For County, Adam Hammill showed plenty of tricks and on another day, with a decent striker, would have laid on a couple of goals at the very least.
Nyal Bell came on for Frank and the tempo of the game went up.
We started to threaten for long periods which resulted in the home defence clearly handling the ball in the box, penalty claimed the County players, penalty cried the travelling faithful, so obvious was the penalty that even the passengers on the plane coming in to land at Heathrow called for it. The substitute referee waved it away with a theatrical gesture of comic proportions.
Such are the things that define a season, we played better than we have done over previous five games but there’s still a huge amount to do to get us back in the frame.