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Reaction to the Scunthorpe game
By Nathan Jackson August 23 2006
It's our usual round up and this time, it's for the laughable "performance" against Scunthorpe United in the Carling Cup. Despite scoring 3 times, City were pretty bad throughout the game and several players were not only off key, but were just plain and simply awful.

On Saturday, John Schofield’s substitutions cost us the game and funnily enough, tonight his lack fo substitutions costs us this and potentially the next game. For a team who usually look tired after 60 minutes, to play a full 120 minutes without anyone else coming on wil now mean that virtually our entire first team will be knackered by the time they take to the pitch at Mansfield and given that Mansfield have some fast players, it doesn’t fill you with confidence.

Tonight’s performance, if you can call it that, was atrocious to say the least and but for the last 20odd minutes and first 5 of extra time, the players looked like they simply couldn’t be bothered, there was no chasing down, didn’t look up when passing the ball and often the defenders just hoofed it up the pitch to no-one rather than trying to pass the ball out of the danger they weren’t even in.

Despite a spirited 25 minute spell, there are very few players who played well at all tonight and some weren’t even conference standard, it was dire on occasions and not once up until we scored did you believe that this squad had gone unbeaten up until tonight. Even during our good spell, there were certain players who still didn’t even appear to try and help City’s cause and had it not been for our goal which was heavily against the run of play, then we would have lost by more than the 2 goal lead that Scunthorpe had at the time.

 

Rayner - 5 - Couldn’t do anything for 2 of the goals, his positioning for the free kick could have been better and the less said about the final goal, the better but he made some good saves throughout the night, saves I doubt Marriott would have made.

Paul Mayo - 1 - I don’t even know where to start with Mayo, I really don’t....so I won’t....yes, he was that bad.

Lee Beevers - 4 - Was crap until we started our good spell and improved after that and was arguably our best player after Scunny scored their winner.

Paul Morgan - 5 - Some good interceptions made by Morgan but his marking for the first goal was a joke and left Rayner no chance.

Adie Moses - 5 - Marking could have been better for some of the goals but overall, he didn’t do a badish job.

Jeff Hughes - 3 - Any chance of you looking up before passing the ball? Even just passing the ball to the right player would be an improvement.

Scott Kerr - 5 - Despite setting up one of the goals, he was pretty much anonymous for the whole game and never really got a look in.

Ryan Amoo - 6 - Arguably our man of the match but that’s hardly saying much. He played quite well, creating few chances but didn’t seem to work hard enough off the ball.

Lee Frecklington - 5 - Despite scoring a good goal, he was one of the guilty ones for passing the ball straight to the opposition on several occasions. Not bad but not good either.

Jamie Forrester - 3 - Is there any point in you actually being on the pitch. Reminds me of Marcus Richardson, comes on loan, plays for a contract, gets it and suddenly stops playing well.

Mark Stallard - 4 - Very quiet and despite scoring, I’m still not convinced that he’ll score a lot of goals. He and Forrester definitely don’t work together.

 

"When we were good we were very good when we were bad we were awful, but good entertainment. They have not learnt from Saturday as we sat to deep when defending the lead, I did not notice that we made any changes throughout the match the starting 11 finished the game, I will probably be corrected on that though but in the end we did not deserve to win on the performance of the first 70 minutes." oldman

"After 60 minutes we gave it a right good go, even though we didn't create an age of chances we upped our game. We were in awe first half, there lads in midfield were simply to powerful for Kerr and Freck (a Nat Brown was needed). The we pushed Hughes on more and started to create good wide openings. Felt our best chance was to win in 90 minutes after the second goal went in. However, the first half of extra time was convincing but you always feared we would throw it away again.
Today showed what we can hopefully achieve. Scunthorpe gave us a lesson in good football, but also showed us how to stick the boot in when needed. Something we lacked tonight - we have the basis just need a touch more physical presence to go that stage higher imo." jimmy blee

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