Red Light!

When we came from behind to beat Portadown 9 nights ago I foolish thought we were building a home record, but alas we came up against the 'red light' that is Chickenville these days. I don't know why our defence is open to the long ball, but it most definitely is and unless our management can do something about it, we are going to concede a pile of goals from that very same play. Bruce Balmer asked the question in his match report, 'how did we leave our two central defenders isolated on two attackers so early on in the match'? It wasn't the case of last time when we played Chickenville at the Showgrounds, we weren't mesmerised by their football, it was a long clearance from their goalkeeper and we couldn't deal with it. But where was the cover from our midfield or our two fullbacks, non-existent if you ask me and it is something we need to sort out, sooner, rather than later.

There was some pleasing parts of our play after this silly goal, but we couldn't turn possession into goals or chances and we lost by this solitary goal, which should've been prevented. Admittedly we did have two 'gilt edged' chances in the 2nd half, but they fell to the wrong people and I for one can't understand Fergie's subs and positional changes, or was Gawley injured, even so the bringing on of Liggie and MM moving to the wing just didn't make sense and then MM went off and I for one thought our chance was gone with him. My one regret is I was right and we lost our sense of urgency after that and who replaced him, Alan D, a man who's completely off form and I think he was more of a hindrance than a help. With the stupid sending off of Archie, committing a tackle from behind just 10 mins after he got a yellow card, we were we up against it and Fergie brought on Duffin with 7 mins to go, but it was too little too late.

With a trip to Windsor Park this Saturday, Spike will have changes thrust upon him, with the unavailability of Archie, suspended, he will have to promote someone from his bench and hopefully a tackler and if Gawley is carrying an injury he may have to bring another attacker in. Is it too much to hope that Liggie is ready to step up to the plate? When he came on at the Crues and scored our winner and I foolishly thought that was his confidence booster, but two days later he was a virtual passenger in our match against First division side, Ballymoney United. He wasn't the only one who had a 'stinker' that night, but he was the only one with the skill to turn the game, but alas he wasn't up for it. He'll need to be up for it on Saturday and in fact, the whole United team need to up for it, for the Linfield Blues have got a couple of wins under their belt and they'll want to make it three in a row but we have to stop them.

I feel I must say a word about the bloody mess that the IFA have got themselves into. Any readers of my column will know my feelings about them, I think they're a bunch incompetent twats and I don't think they could run a two-man business, let alone a football association. They appointed a new company, NIFL, to run the day to day business of the league, but compromised the grant to develop Windsor Park (which I still think is a white elephant), by appointing a director who the government have said that he's to have no part of the IFA set-up and they made him deputy President. I'm beginning to think that they have come around to my way of thinking and are only going through the motions and looking for somebody to blame. Why on earth would you go down that road knowing that you be running the risk of jeopardising the funding, unless they wanted the funding to fail, answers on a postcard, to: Ballygobackwards!