On leaving the car, a supporter said to me that nothing had spoiled their Christmas and with a hint of sarcasm I suggested that maybe he shouldn't enter the ground but even SJNR was positive before the game. Just one win I thought to kick start the season and hopefully move towards safety.
The game started with Mossley looking rather upbeat and the ball was being knocked down the flanks and David Eyres sitting in central midfield providing an excellent anchor role and his passing looked like opening up the Ashton defence. The match got off to a wonderful start when a foul wide on the right gave Mossley a freekick. Eyres swung the ball in and nobody seemed capable of either clearing or scoring and the ball crept into the far corner of Lee Bracey's net.
This was just what the Lilywhites needed and maybe the flowing football could see a comfortable 3 or 4 goal home win to show that Mossley do belong in the Unibond Premier. Get out those smelling salts and stop being stupid!!
After about 10 minutes of excellent flowing football somebody decided to change everything. Whether this came from the bench or the players no-one knows, but suddenly Mossley resorted to the old hoof ball game plan and this was despite Ashton's bizarre game plan of playing Kharas on his own against the Mossley back four. However before criticising this plan the Ashton front man was giving the whole back four the run around. With Furnival suspended there seemed no leadership amongst the back line and Danny Trueman was having a nightmare and looked like he had a new pair of gloves that had been used for basting the turkey or something the day before. In fairness, coupled in with this he did pull off a couple of oustanding saves just before the break to keep Mossley ahead. One started to wonder if Mossley would hang on for a nervy 1-0 win but there was still an awfully long way to go.
The writing was on the wall as soon as the second half started as the team came out looking unhappy and the body language as they emerged from the tunnel didn't look promising. Ashton took the game to Mossley and the home side continued their strange route one attack to two small strikers. Another bizarre decision was when Melford Knight came on as a substitute at the beginning of the second half wearing the armband. I know he is the official club captain (and that could be a blog entry by itself) but surely Eyres should have kept the armband for the whole match unless he was substituted. The rumour doing the rounds after was that Eyres had played his last match for the Lilywhites and one wondered if this decision had any bearing on his state of mind. It came as no surprise when Ashton levelled the score from the penalty spot. Some may have debated the decision but when a defender lunges in the penalty area the result is often going to be a spot kick. Baker slotted the ball past Trueman and in reality one felt that there was only going to be one result and ten minutes or so later it arrived.
In fairness, it was a great goal as former Latics player Danny Forde drove a great shot from the edge of the area although one felt the lack of tackles made his job easier. The rest of the game saw a similar game plan as Ashton tried to finish the game off and Mossley just lumped it. The team look devoid of ideas and at the moment the big R words is more than being on the horizon. Mention must be made of the effort from young Steve Burke who chased everything from the first minute to the last and some players need to look at this. It's all very well chasing for the first 10-15 minutes when things are looking rosy but if we are to get out of this mess we need players who will roll up their sleeves and Burke is certainly one of these.
Where do we go from here? In honesty it's Division One as a 10 point gap is probably a bridge too far. To escape we need a return to the flowing football from early last season and that won't be easy as we play on heavy pitches over the next few weeks. We also need Championship winning form and by that I don't mean the form that won us the league last season, as that won't do it. We could start praying regularly but I don't even think that will suffice. It sounds very negative but if I think like this anything else will be a bonus.
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