By Nathan Jackson
November 18 2006

There was never a doubt about which team deserved to win the game today after Darlo battered a very poor City. Although a 3-1 scoreline looks like a relatively close, just over 5,200 fans will be able to tell you that there was nothing close at all about this game.

For once, I am at a complete loss for words, I simply can’t understand how the hell we can be that bad after starting the season so well. To have fans leaving with 20 minutes to go says it all about how badly we played and although I’d love to find something to praise, I simply can’t find anything to be optimistic about by today’s performance. I would put it down to just being a bad day at the office but it’s been the same now since the Rochdale game and it’s starting to become a very worrying trend.

The main talking point amongst fans recently has been our lack of depth and today proved that case immensely. We only had 2 regular first teamers out (Hughes and Kerr) and we fall apart and the players that have come in (Brown and Mettam) simply aren’t good enough. The only decent back up players we have are either injured or on loan at other clubs, the rest don’t even make an impact. Luke Foster for example, granted not the best player in the world but he is excellent back up, yet he’s been sent on loan to York.

These young players that have come in this season haven’t been good enough and it appears that Lee Frecklington was the only decent player in that youth side because everyone else has been the equivalent of Ollie Ryan. I’ve seen the likes of Lenell John-Lewis and Owain Warlow in the reserves and during pre-season and not once have I been impressed by them and yet somehow, they are on the bench every week and maybe that’s Schofield’s weakness, he doesn’t seem to care if his youngsters aren’t good enough, if you played in his youth team then you seem guaranteed to get at least a handful of appearances during the season.

As for the players who were on the pitch, well what can you say? I think it says it all that our best player only the pitch (in my opinion) scored the goal. Mayo was one of the few players this afternoon that I think deserves credit as he, Beevers and Forrester, without trying to sound disrespectful to the other players, were the only players who you felt confident about when they got the ball. Those 3 were the only 3 who I felt could change the game, it’s just a pity that their efforts were let down by players like Stallard who just seemed to run around and do nothing all game.

Paul Morgan had an absolute stinker of a game, why he kept on fouling players when the ball was about to go out of play, I’ll never know. His constant passing back to Marriott not only wasted time for City but also put Marriott under pressure and I can’t recall him kicking the ball forward once during the match. As for Marriott, the fact he only made his first save when we were already 3-0 down says it all.

However, let’s not take anything away from Darlington, they were the best team we’ve played this season by an absolute mile. They seemed to be doing exactly what we were doing earlier in the season and running rings around teams and winning comfortably and it was as close to a complete team performance that we’re likely to see from the opposition this season. If Darlington have scored 7 or 8 against us then we couldn’t have complained because let’s face it, a 3-1 scoreline flattered us.

Overall, there is one thing to be hopefully about.....we can’t play this badly again.....can we?