Desperate derby week one to forget
LAST week was Cheshire derby week for County.
Near neighbours and long time adversaries, Crewe and Tranmere, always bring the passion out of supporters more than any game (at least those of us who’ve reached a certain age) but with County’s return to form and league position, there was always going to be added spice.
Before Crewe came to EP, there was a genuine feeling that a win would be another mark towards promotion.
The three points could have sent us 10 points clear of third and, with results going the right way, 14 points clear of forth, as it was, everything went against us.
We were poor, it has to be said, the only thing we got right was Tanto’s goal but that was it!
We found ourselves one down after just eight minutes, it could have been worse, we couldn’t deal with the visitor’s pressure and their front two could have had a hatful with better composure.
We equalised and I thought we’d push on and take control but it was the railway men who picked up the pressure and sure enough they got a second and a third after some woeful defending.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Mansfield put nine past Harrogate to go just a single point behind us.
I suspect there’ll be some soul searching going on at Carrington. We had the chance to make immediate amends with the trip to Prenton Park on Saturday but things just got a whole lot worse.
I thought that there’d be a reaction to the Crewe performance, I hoped we be full of determination and show some grit, as it turned out we played with a whimper, we lacked passion, skill and, as far as I could tell, no game plan.
Tranmere simply stood strong, attacked with purpose and took their chances when presented with them, if it hadn’t have been for Ben Hinchliffe they could have doubled the score line, he made several world class saves.
The problem was in front of him our defence were, at times clueless, our midfield were out fought while up front we didn’t create anything that could be call a goal scoring opportunity.
As far as I can remember the home keeper only had one save to make and that was from a Will Collar header in the second half.
We lost 4-0, which is the worst result under both Dave Challinor and Mark Stott’s tenure at the club.
There are so many questions that need answering after this week’s performances the biggest being “how are we still top of the division? ‘’