No Grounds For Complaint

The start of the confirmed JJ era, all of us desperate to continue the climb up the table towards those top six places. He took over with a tough away fixture and nobody expected anything less. Play as we have done recently against Sunderland, Rotherham, Plymouth before of course, and Ipswich and we’d be confident of taking something from the game; play as we did when a little jaded, as against Morcombe and Shrewsbury, and we’re in danger. It proved to be the latter and, while we were unfortunate to be behind at the break, we can have no complaints about the outcome as we were decidedly second-best through the second half and could easily have conceded more.

The obvious question is why? The principle factors would seem clear. First, losing Famewo, Washington and Davison to Covid will have disrupted preparations and left us weaker on the pitch and from the bench, especially given the form the first two have been in of late. Although Leko showed well in the first half, his is a different style to Washington and collectively it just didn’t run as smoothly, while moving Purrington to be the third centre-back saw Soare occupy the wing-back role on the left side and he struggled to influence the game. Second, we were up against determined opposition, eager to get a win under their belts for their new manager; and once they had something to hang on to they raised their game and fought tooth and nail, eclipsing our effective central midfield.

Third, simply too many of our players had a below-par game. Gilbey and Lee were less effective going forward than of late, while Jaiyesimi had a poor first half, when he either crossed badly, passed sloppily, or miscontrolled the ball. And it might have been worse. Gilbey saw yellow in the first half for a poor challenge which involved him off his feet and studs showing. It would have been very harsh but I was a little relieved the ref hadn’t interpreted it as a red. Then DJ went to sweep the ball clear and only succeeded in connecting with their advancing forward. At first sight it looked a penalty to me.

Fourth, just the ebb and flow of the game and the importance of scoring first. Nobody questions we had the better of the first 20 minutes or so, Plymouth looking very subdued. The Stockley free header from a free kick and another set-piece ball into him might have produced the opening goal and a different game. Instead, although Plymouth were coming more into the game towards half-time, they would have been content to reach the break with the game scoreless and instead found themselves ahead, curtesy of a good attack down our left and an astute pass forward which led to the shot well saved by MacGillivray, only for the rebound to fall to their guy who managed to bisect two defenders and the keeper and in off the far post. With hindsight that changed the game, although at the break I suspect we all felt ‘OK, it’s happened, now we need to up our game and go and win it’, which simply didn’t happen as we failed to muster an attempt on target.

Fifth, and this is the more worrying element, this is the third consecutive disappointing away performance and result. Against Morcombe we gave up a two-goal lead and we lost to that late foul at Shrewsbury. Fatigue was assumed to be a factor, this time around we had the break between games but were three down and the possibility that more players were under the weather. We will only find out in due course if we can realistically just write off the game as a reflection of that disadvantage and not indicative of a deeper problem in getting the balance right when playing away from The Valley.

We have to see how the whole football situation develops over the days/weeks ahead in light of Covid. But as things stand Wimbledon away on Boxing Day takes on huge significance. If we want to prove that we don’t have a problem playing away, that we still have a chance of the play-offs (and that on that basis there is justification for something extra from the transfer window), we need really a win.