Beaten by the Fowls again!

Three games against the Fowls and we’ve only managed to avoid defeat in one of them. Let’s keep it brief shall we?

We started well and should have been two up within half an hour. Tango man Pressman twice foiled us, first when he tipped Neil’s rising drive over the bar, and then when he parried Nardiello’s shot from close-range. The loose ball fell to Betsy who criminally lashed the ball over the bar.

To rub salt into to the wounds, Wednesday then pinched the lead after the kind of long-throw situation that the Barnsley players had allegedly been working on in training. The entire defence seemed to be so intent on winning the first ball that, when Brondby’s long throw was flicked goalwards, Ndumbu was left with acres of space to volley the loose ball home.

One goal down and heads were dropping but, with that first half performance in mind, Reds fans had every reason to feel confident when the second period got underway. From the off, however, Barnsley were on the back foot. Wednesday created and missed a number of chances so the Reds back four, in that sporting manner of theirs, conspired to gift them a second goal.

Debutant David Murphy, on loan from Middlesborough, was ultimately responsible but he was ably assisted by his team-mates. In the first instance, Beresford chose to throw the ball short to Anthony Kay when the Reds midfielder was being tightly marked. Having done well to hold off his marker and maintain possession, Kay then opted to pass the ball back, rather than forward, thus putting the defence under unnecessary pressure. That said, the recipient of Kay’s pass, Premiership defender Mr Murphy, had enough time to produce a brief thesis on the Lord of the Rings Trilogy before clearing the ball. Agonisingly, Murphy dithered, paused, dithered, had a look around, dithered, had one last look up and, finally, dithered on the ball a bit more before being robbed off it by the alert Ndumbu who calmly slotted the ball past Beresford.

At two down it looked like the game was up. A better team than Wednesday would have killed the game off, with Ndumbu in particular guilty of missing a gilt-edge opportunity for a hat-trick. And then…we were back in it. Robbie Williams (no, not that one) calmly tucked away a penalty after Kay’s head had collided with a stray Wednesday elbow in the penalty area. Reds fans braced themselves for a big push for an equaliser…but it never came. The big push that is. Or the equaliser. Pressman had nothing to do but sit on his ample behind, even in the dying minutes.

So, post-match verdicts: a nightmare for Murphy obviously, but he did okay in the 89 minutes when he wasn''t giving goals away. Nardiello and Boulding did well in patches, and could argue that they did not get the service they needed(especially in the second half) but they did lack strength in holding onto the ball.

Not sure about the diamond formation in midfield; it certainly was a problem in the second half when Wednesday were all over us. Despite the fact that he tends to disappoint more than he delivers, I would still like to see Lumsdon starting, proably in the front of the midfield role that Alex Neil now takes up.

Paul Hart? Far too early to say, but at least he’s got us trying to play some decent football. You need quality players to be successful with his 'pass and move' style of play and its obviously going to take time for all of Hart's ideas to bed in.

One win in the last 15 matches leaves us in 11th place in the table and I for one think that the play-offs are out of reach now. If that means that we can experiment with players, formations and tactics between now and the end of the season and then spend the summer putting together the 'right' squad so that we can make a strong push for automatic promotion in 2004/5, then that may be no bad thing. But that would involve Barnsley employing a manager for more than six months, which I'm not sure 'Pistol' Pete Ridsdale would be entirely comfortable with...