A Wasted Opportunity!

The winning streak of one win from one game came to an abrupt end last night.

Like most, I view the EFL trophy as a pointless tournament. Nonetheless, we have to participate and we might as well use it to our best advantage. Without a game this Saturday, I'd have thought it was a good opportunity to get all the new players some game time as well as trying to sort our defensive woes.

Overall it was a poor display and the defeat does nothing to help with confidence or our general play. What we saw was another different set of players across the pitch.

Quite why Kanu didn't start I've no idea. What has he done to be left out of 2 successive starting elevens? Since coming into the side he's done well but has been left out of the last couple.

I felt we should have gone with two up front. It gave us our chance and also, May will be suspended soon so why not look at how we will adjust to that when needed?

We were devoid of our most potent attacking threat as May ( I agreed with this ) left out. Thus, we didn't have the benefit of his long throw tactic that has served us so well!

I really can't see Kirk starting a league game anytime soon and his inclusion, other than to give him a run out, is mystifying. As it was he had a poor game where his delivery and decision making against a weakened mid-table League 2 team simply wasn't good enough.

You can't say we're not consistent whatever team we put out. The set pieces were truly dreadful! Corners float across with too much or simply lacking in direction.

I really don't get what happens at goal kicks and this has been a trend in recent games. A defender passes the ball to keeper who launches it downfield. Why? It's harder to kick a moving ball but this is what is rehearsed and executed! It's utter madness!

All of the 4 goals that Crawley scored were poor. We sat back or failed to pick up players or both. That's when were weren't giving them the ball of course!

No team should be scoring three goals, take the lead twice and go on to lose. Especially against lower league opposition.

You'd struggle to take any positive from last night's game and the only I can find is that several players proved they just aren't good enough and/or don't care if that's the effort they're going to put in.

I was pretty optimistic prior to kick off and still so even after seeing the starting eleven. You have to feel for all those fans who made the trip probably with the same hope and expectation that I had. 

Good luck to the new manager, whoever they may be. There's so much work to do and if they watched it last night the magnitude of what's needed will be even more clear!