[choirboy]

Originally Posted by Lord Didsbury

Thought the ref was very good tonight. Let play flow and nurtured a good tempered game.

Sorry to disagree Lord D but IMHO he should have booked a couple of Wycombe players, (and possibly one of ours), in the first half in order to stop the constant pushing in the back of our lads. On the way home I called in to The Albion pub in Clayton to meet friends and in my brief report to them I commented about the number of fouls that I observed by Wycombe but also those that were not given. Quick as a flash one of my friends was on the BBC Sport website and quoted 15 fouls by Wycombe to only 8 by us. I reckon that you could have added another 15 to the Wycombe statistic. Also in the 89th minute on the half way line in front of the Cow Shed one of their lads should have been Red carded for a clear use of the elbow in the face of one of our players in a heading duel. No Red, not even a Yellow and not even a talking to! Unbelievable!
I can understand the desire for a continuous flowing game but surely the referee's job IMHO is to ensure a fair match by applying the laws and for the safety of the players. He failed on both counts as he allowed Wycombe to constantly cheat with their persistant 'niggly' pushes from behind and he also missed the Red card!
Having said all that, in the first half Matty Pearson seemed to have been assigned to employ Wycombe like tactics and to man mark Akinfenwa and he did so by reciprocating with similar 'pushing' tactics to Wycombe's! In the second half we went to sleep for two minutes and BANG, BANG we were behind! We battled on though and dug out a point.
I remember watching Wycombe's manager Gareth Ainsworth for many years as a skilful and cultured goal scoring forward who was still playing up to the age of about 39 and I used to wish that he could have played for us. I cannot believe that as a manager he uses such 'Ugly' football tactics as we saw last night. The constant hoofing of the ball up into the air was awful to watch and is not the way I would want my team to play. Coley said the same in his post match video on the fishy site. Some people would say that is effective and all that really matters is getting three points at the end of the match! I can understand that being the view of a manager and players who get paid by results but it is not what I want to watch as a paying customer.

Buzza and his helpers did a super job in getting the pitch fit in spite of the rain and the 'disappearing grass' which is beginning to look a bit thin! I think we have had the pitch relaid and reseeded three summers in succession now and I reckon that it should be left to grow thicker this summer and only have minimal remedial work done on it to repair and reseed the worst areas. The roots need to be allowed to thicken up into the sub soil and to build a thicker and stronger weave that will stand up to the winter weather better next season.

We should have won and earned three points last night.......
but we were not allowed to by poor refereeing and by awful tactics employed by last nights opponents.

We must ....
KEEP THE FAITH
Trust in Coley and Jimmy's belief that 'Football' will win through...
ON STANLEY ON