Argyle 1 Blackpool 2
By: Jim | November 29th, 2008Perhaps I was being a tad over-optimistic, predicting as I did a 5-0 Argyle victory on the bus out. We haven’t scored 5 goals in a competitive fixture since March 2005. But coming on the back of encouraging performances last week against Cardiff and Saints, we really should have put a very moderate Blackpool side to bed, especially considering they were coming off the back of four straight defeats. And, despite a lack-lustre first half performance, we’d taken the lead with a quarter of the match remaining through a superb Paul Gallagher strike, created for him out of nothing by MacLean, who’d replaced a well below-par Fallon.
Instead, we contrive to miss three or four golden opportunities (Gallagher; Summerfield; MacLean) to bury the match and stand and watch first as Rachubka’s hopeful wallop downfield is knocked down by Burgess for Dickinson; and then, three minutes later, as Kyel Reid goes past Doumbe as if he’s standing still and sticks on on a plate for Dickinson to win it. It was a head-holdingly poor performance against a side I still believe will be playing League 1 football in August.
The difference between top six sides and the rest is consistency. Anyone can beat anyone on their day, we all know that. The trick lies in having as few off days as possible and Argyle simply have too many to be considered as realistic play-off challengers. There are also some structural problems. Time and again, we are closed down and overrun in midfield (today was a prime example) and when that happens, we resort to the lump it and hope method beloved of Sunday fat boys everywhere. It’s tempting to blame the midfield for that, for allowing themselves to be out-fought: tempting, but wrong. Argyle’s main problem currently lies not in midfield, but at full-back, where both Barker and Doumbe are falling short. In the modern game, it’s not enough to have a bank of four in midfield: the game nowadays demands that full-backs as a matter of course overlap beyond their wide midfield colleagues and offer additional options to the midfield when going forward. Doumbe and Barker simply do not do this with any regularity – I think Barker got beyond Gallagher once today and Doumbe once beyond Clark. Moreover, on the rare occasions they do overlap, the final ball into the box always lacks precision and is easily dealt with. What happens instead is that the movement in midfield becomes cramped and static and we have to resort to Summerfield either attempting a wonder pass, which may or may not come off, or he lays it back to Seip/Cathcart who launch it. Blackpool learnt the lesson today, which Cardiff manifestly failed to learn last week, that the way to beat us is to crowd the midfield, give us no time on the ball and force us into errors. They also did what we failed to do, which was address their shortcomings in the loan market – their new players Reid and Dickinson won them the game today.
December could be an interesting month – Donny away on Saturday will scrap for every point; then Birmingham come here, closely followed by QPR, before we go to Barnsley and Cardiff, with a Boxing Day home game against Southampton sandwiched in between. Six games – would you take eight points from them if offered now? I certainly would.
Category: Team News
Subscribe
|
Print
|
Share
      |
Comments are closed
Home 
