FL2: Torquay v Accrington Stanley 27th Feb 2010

I heard Smith was still not 100% after a recent nasty virus, but was on the bench since if we had used either Thomson or O'Kane, we'd have had four wingers there!

Hi mates - well Buckles boys came up trumps today. More points on the scoreboard. We are climbing up the league faster than Jm gull scuttling out the ground with his old man for a smoke break and missing the winner.
Blow me down old jm talks some shite though. That leroy Turner-Rowe bloke should have had his marching orders alright. Blimey Jm ought to borrow his old mans glasses (and they look like a couple jam jars and no mistake).
Nearly cut their winger in half he did. If he'd been the other side of the touchline he would have been done for Gbh.
nearly cut the poor sod in half.

You could have made up the difference on 50:50 tickets, Dave. I know other season ticket holders have, safe in the knowledge they were helping out close season when revenue streams are traditionally much tighter for Clubs. Just a thought. A lot of Clubs have tried different measures this last season to encourage more through the gates and I doubt that trend will cease next season. It's probably too short a notice to reduce prices and market for the Daggers match - as Grimsby et al have also trialled this season -, but it would be nice to have as many as possible at Plainmoor on Tuesday on the back of a win today.

I digress. Three points. How good that feels.

I can't agree with the first sentence but the rest of this is spot on.

The manager seems to believe in a policy whereby players who have recently been absent through injury or illness never come straight back into the starting team, even when they are clearly better than their interim replacements.

Smith and Carlisle should have been in the team from the start today, based on their earlier performances. Jake Thomson may not set the world alight with his desire to "track back", to coin a modern phrase, but he is a very dangerous player when given a free rein and has been marginalised very unfairly in my view.

At least we now have outstanding players in Ellis and Carlisle back in the side, but there are still glaring weaknesses in some positions. As Andy Charles has said much more eloquently than I coukl in his first post about today's game, we are still papering over obvious cracks by not playing our strongest team.

A rare missed home game for me and ironically the Hereford match was the previous one.

However, in a relegation scrap points are king and and after an incredibly frustrating season lady luck has finally smiled on us to give us five points from the last three as opposed to one! In fact, four points from the last two games keeps us on target for twelve points in a crucial six game period to end up towards the forty point mark where hopefully thoughts can slowly turn towards building for next season.

We have the best goal difference of the bottom six teams and as a very rough measure extrapolating the average points per game over the entire season and rounding up the decimal point would give.

Team Played Current Points Projected points

Darlington 29 15 24

Grimsby 33 24 34

Cheltenham 32 31 45

Macclesfield 31 32 48

Torquay 33 32 45

Lincoln 32 33 48

3 points is 3 points doesnt matter how you get them.....

Man U next for us

Well, my first game of the season. Hard to get to Plainmoor from Tokyo regularly. Some points that crossed my mind below. No particular order so sorry if disjointed.

My main impressions of the team were Branston and Ellis work well together. We miss Hargreaves in midfield. We are very lightweight in attack with Barnes rather a girls blouse, and that Rowe-Turner is not ready for professional football.

Plenty has been said about Rowe-Turner and I will add! He looked as if he didn't know where he was. Almost in an alternate reality from the look on his face. No communication from him to other players. Often out of position and committing himself when he had no chance of getting the ball, thus leaving acres of space behind him. Those that comment that he has only had two games and should be given a chance are living in a dream world I'm afraid. Yes, I'm all for giving players a chance, but not at the risk of being relegated. This player is currently an obvious liability, and I join the opinion that I was hoping for a red card, as Stanley looked the more likley to score, especially coming down the right wing, and I do not trust Buckle not to pick him again. I mentioned to my friend at the match in arund the first 3 minutes that he didn't seem to be at the game. It was that obvious.

Their manager obviously noted this, hence sending on the pacey winger to attack him. It worries me that Buckle did not notice this and do something about it. I'm not sure how getting ripped to shreds will help his confidence for future games should Buckle make the mistake of playing him.

Zebs should have been played up front from the start. Barnes just doesn't get hold of the ball and falls over too easily. Benyon actually does better than Barnes with the highballs. Seems he tries to knock centre backs off balance by sticking his arse in the back of their knees! Anyhow, any balls sentt forward come staright back and we end up under pressure. Zebs has way more guile and needs to be centre forward as we have noone else that can do it.

Carlise looked a class above the rest of our players. An intelligent player. His through ball to Benyon led to our opening goal. It would have put Benyon in a great position for a shot had Benyon not miscontrolled it. Credit to Benyon that he chased down his miscontrol and reached it at the same time as their defender, resulting in a ricochet out to Mansell who had intelligently run into the space left behind Benyon, and Mansell planting the ball in the bottom corner.

Both Zebs and Carlisle missed absolute sitters. Barnes and Benyon missed a couple of decent chances. We made more clear chances than Stanley and they looked pretty poor until we scored and they sent on the winger to attck our left back. Certainly they looked more likely to win the game after their equaliser.

God knows what the offside rule is these days but Barnes was certainly well offside and was muscling their defenders away from the ball when the OG was scored, so was obviously interfering with play. Some bloke behind me says that if the ball insn't touched by the player in an offside position then it isn't offside. Doesn't sound right to me, but...

Overall a disjointed performance where we made enough chances to win it, but the overall performance was poor and I came away feeling we were very lucky to win.