Do the Stanley (L2)

Hello everyone. In a desperate attempt to keep you all reading to the end, this month there's a quiz. Which 70's band had a song with the same title as this aticle? The answer will be at the end, but no cheating by scrolling down!

Anyway - my first home match for a month as I missed the Burton game. So in the search for new experiences, I decided to try a new route to the stadium from my North Beds home. I decided to go via Cardiff. And since my satnav was feeling playful, it sent me via Birmingham and Ross-On- Wye. An interesting route, if perhaps a bit longer than my usual one! Actually there was method in my madness. My daughter is at uni in Cardiff and needed all her stuff taking down. So rather than go to footy today and drive down to Cardiff tomorrow (when one possible route would take me past the stadium on the way there and back) I combined both trips, thus saving three hours worth of driving and quite a lot of petrol. So, an early start, down to Cardiff and back to the stadium. A good trip - in fact I managed to get back to the stadium by 1 pm. Normally that would have meant a long wait until the match, but OxVox were having a question and answer session with Kelvin before kickoff - starting at about 1pm (good timing).

It was an interesting session with Kelvin, and I'm sure the meeting notes will be released soon, so I won't bother with any half baked efforts here. Suffice to say that Kelvin was his normal self and dealt with all the questions put to him. Including those put by 'Ken'. Those of you who listen to Radio Oxford will doubtless be familiar with Ken's contributions to football phone ins. His 'contribution' to the meeting was in much the same vein. Enough said.

If you want to hear from the owner of the club, apparently he is going to do a similar Q&A session sometime - you might want to join OxVox if you aren't a member already. It's cheap and gives the fans some sort of voice with the club.

Kelvin had let us know that there were injury problems with Ryan James (which we knew about) and Harry Worley (which we didn't) - so it wasn't a real surprise that Whing was filling in for the suspended Wright as Duberry's partner in the middle of defence. So it was Clarke - Davis Whing Duberry Batt - McLaren Leven Heslop - Hall (R) Constable Potter.

We started off in our favoured way - playing towards the fence end. Now Accrington haven't been pulling up trees this season, so it was rather a surprise how good they were. Or maybe how good we made them look. A lack of challenging in midfield let a Stanley player just wander down the middle of the pitch and (as the reorganised central defence looked at each other) have a free shot. Luckily he missed. It looked as if that had been put to rights a couple of minutes later as another Stanley attacker was given the freedom of the penalty area. He smacked the ball against the post and a couple of red-shirted attackers were there for the rebound - one of whom put the ball in the net past Clarke. The lino had other ideas, awarding offside. Now I can't be sure, but since nobody touched the ball since the original shot (and I don't think anyone was offside when the original shot was hit) I very much suspect that we got away with one there. Four minutes gone and we could very easily have been two down. I know we are slow starters but this was ridiculous.

Peter Leven whacked a shot at the Stanley goal since the strikers weren't going to. The goalie held it. Then Clarke made two fine saves in a minute. First he managed to get fingertips to a shot that was going in the top corner, and then he somehow managed to get a header away at his far post from the ensuing quadrant kick (I didn't want to say corner again in the same sentence. But it was a corner). Two excellent saves. The first one especially was the equivalent of a striker scoring a great goal. Sometimes I think it is hard on goalkeepers, as their mistakes or failures to save are noted on the score sheet. A striker doesn't get noticed in quite the same way. About 20 minutes gone, and we could well have been three down.

If you want to know what the rest of our team were doing during this time, the answer is 'not much'. The whole team was completely disjointed - which couldn't be explained just by a change of centreback. It was all much too slow, Constable was on his own centrally in attack and was being marked out of the game. The midfield had given up tackling, and running into space had obviously not been on this week's training schedule. Potter refused to stay wide and drifted all over the place - often meaning that there was no outlet up the line for the defence to try and relieve the pressure. Davis was making some decent runs up the left hand side, but quite often there was only the double-marked Constable in the middle to try and cross to. Heslop put one well over the bar from distance but that was about the extent of our attacking threat.

Then after about half an hour, we somehow took the lead. McLaren took a pot at goal from a free kick. It was going well, well wide. Then a Stanley defender got in the way, it deflected wickedly and looped into the middle of the goal. Blimey. That was no shots on target, one goal. Would it be our day?

Constable decided that if he couldn't do much up front, he might as well make a difference elsewhere on the pitch and was helping out at the back, in midfield and anywhere else the ball was. It's something I like about his play, but when he is the lone central striker, he shouldn't really have to be doing it! He did have one excellent shot blocked by the goalies legs, but the offside flag was already waving. Something else that was waving was the referees arm, mostly with his hand holding a yellow card in the direction of a Stanley player. However it was a feature of the ref's play that he was quite happy to make decisions in the middle area of the pitch, but was obviously reluctant to give either team much in a very dangerous position. He wasn't very good.

Half time came. Somehow we were in the lead. How Accrington weren't level or even well ahead must have baffled them as they sat in the changing rooms sucking their half-time orange quarters. Do they still do that or is it all isotonic drinks etc? I think I know the answer really.

As was mentioned to me by an astute observer at half time, it's a bit odd that the subs spend all half time warming up. If they aren't going to come on imminently then it's a bit of a waste of time, if they are going to come on then surely they should be in the changing-room listening to the managers pearls of wisdom? They can always do that running up and down the touchline thing can't they. Substitutes (all one of them) used to sit in the dugouts smoking a fag or two and drinking beer before they came on, didn't they?

So - no changes at half time. Let's hope that the second half performance would be the good half (since we only seem to get half a match of decent stuff at home). Not much happened for the first seven or eight minutes. Good - surely that's what we wanted. Stanley were looking like less of an attacking threat, and we were starting (just starting, mind you) to look a bit more comfortable in posession. Then for some reason, CW decided to make a double substitution. I don't hold with this unless things are going patently belly-up, and especially to do what was done in this case: replacing two players in midfield at the same time. Off came McLaren and Heslop, on came Haworth and Payne. Oh lord. McLaren is the shield that protects the back four, especially the centre backs, especially a new and slightly uncertain centre back pairing. Payne doesn't do that, being a more 'flair' player. Heslop at least challenges for the ball centrally. Haworth is a wide player.

So now we had three wide players on the pitch (Hall, Haworth and Potter), one central striker, Leven and Payne in central midfield. Now it's fairly well proven this season that with McLaren on the pitch we let in a lot less goals than when he isn't there. But he is always being subbed. To old, too unfit? Apparently not according to his post match interview, he wants to (and can) play the full 90 minutes. So why oh why is he being constantly subbed?

Constable was quick to latch onto a centrally lofted free kick (Leven I think) but could only hit it staright at the close and getting rapidly closer keeper. But it was Stanley who looked more likely to score next, and despite another classy save from Clarke, they did so on about the hour mark. A bad clearance (straight to a red shirt, not for the first or last time) was whacked straight past Clarke to level the scores. No more than Stanley deserved. They had actually outclassed the home team for long periods of the game without any rewards.

The wind was now in Stanley's sails you'd have thought, but they actually started to play for the draw now. The Us attack didn't look likely to change the outcome of the game until the last five minutes or so, when the prospect of being bollocked by the manager after yet another home draw seemed to get them going. Hall was taken off and replaced by Smalley, to no great effect. A spell of sustained pressure lead to a Doobs header clipping off the top of the crossbar, but that was about it.

Man of the Match - Clarke by a country mile.

I'm not sure the team deserved the chorus of boos that greeted them at the final whistle, really. It had indeed been a very poor performance, but I'd have thought there was some credit in the bank from the last two away trips. I suspect the people booing don't bother with away trips in the main though.

Glass half full - undefeated at home, only a couple of points off the playoffs.
Glass half empty - seven points at home out of a possible 15 is midtable form at best.

Since ten have gone, I'll make my prediction for the season. We will either make the final play off spot, or miss it by one place. So 7th or 8th.

Next match is away at Hereford. I've had enough of driving Walesward and Hereford is a three hour drive for me, I'll probably give it a miss.

Oh - Stackridge!