Yes it is. One bad game doesn't make a player suddenly become useless. Though I do question whether his confidence can return after that when even the defenders refused to pass back to him at the end. Still, the late goal felt like a win in the end!
Before the match I was confidently predicting a 1 0 win for Blackpool, then Ricky scored, I thought Blackpool were very timid and giving us too much respect until they scored, I thought that it was off side, but not given so that gave them a boost, we were mixing it up nicely until Barts lousy clearance then the dangleberry that will feature on many blooper shows from now on. We were creating bags of chances and Referee was extremely myopic at times. Things weren't going for us, but at least we kept pegging away and got a justified equaliser in the extra time and could even have won it if De Ride hadn't chosen the wrong ball after splitting the 'pool defence, but that would have been a bit unfair on a decent Blackpool side. We are wobbling, but not dead yet. Hope we take out our frustration on the next team, whoever they might be. We had 20 attempts 9 on target with 54% of the play.
Back from the match. I am interested whether those who were watching on TV have any comments on the offside calls, both for their first and our equaliser. Both looked dubious and there was more than a suspicion of a shove in the area which could have been a penalty for us. Of course, it always look different on the replays, but the ref seemed to be blowing up for every contact between our players and theirs. Any comments?
Everyone just put benwall on their ignore list. They'll soon go away and bother someone else. As for the game, I thought we played well. Much, much better than against Hull and also seemingly than against Donny and Bristol City (I say "seemingly" on the basis that I wasn't at those two games). I thought Richardson and Guly in particular played well. Blackpool were good no question, but we were better. But we didn't win and, as slightly biased as the referee was towards them, there's only one man to blame for that.
Both goals onside, Blackpools may have been millimetres offside but you cant expect the assistant to give those. Credit to the assistant, he got both spot on
Thought the ref was absolute **** today. Gave so many nothing decisions to Blackpool. Extremely poor in my opinion. Thoughts?
Overshadowed by other talking points, but I thought Fox had a mare today. Couldn't get one pass right and was drifting out of position and not getting forward either. Strange, but despite two assists, thought Lallana was off the pace as well. Maybe harsh to say that, but he's not really been at the races since his injury. Really need Chaplow back to give some zip to the midfield.
Any idea who was keeping Basham onside for Blackpool's first? I was sitting behind it in the Chapel, and it looked comfortably offside to me. Heard people talking at HT that they'd found out from mates watching on Sky that it was onside, so I've got no idea who it was that was keeping him on.
He was crap. Typical sort of ref who has clearly never played football. Fell everytime for giving freekicks when Blackpool players went to ground and he generally wasn't up with play a lot of the time and was taking too long to sort out freekicks. I did give the linesmen running along the Kingsland/Itchen some grief, but having seen the first blackpool goal, he was level. Mind you, he got a few other decisions wrong and was almost expecting him to flag Lambo off for the equaliser.
Anyone think our bench looked a little threadbare and unbalanced today. You can see why we need another striker with Connolly and Barnard so injury prone.
BBC has the assists as Richardson and Cork. I wasn't sure who got them. Oh wait Lallana must have got the ball for the 1st goal in the tackle, I can see why you're giving him an assist there. We definitely need Chaplow back asap By the way early in the game Schniederlin almost broke away and there was a last ditch tackle. Crowd went mental. Was that a clean tackle? Looked like he got the ball to be fair
I don't know when Bart was told he was playing but he looked in a state of shock in the pre match kick about.
