Fancy being sent to Coventry at Christmas. Of all the matches we have had lately this is one I genuinly think we have a realistic chance of winning. Lets face it we have to start somewhere. In the great sphere of things in football managing you would have to ask who the great unwashed would consider the worst manager of the two from Rooney and Lampard. My money is on Lampard and I think Coventry have made a big mistake in chancing it with him. COYG
Were it not for the injuries, I’d feel optimistic, perhaps verging on confident. We’ve been much better since that run of games ending with the horror show against Swansea. I guess it’ll be Mumba at RB and Ogbeta at LB. Let’s hope that works. Reasons to be cheerful include speed-merchant Issaka on the left and Andre Gray through the middle. The latter is in contract negotiations, he wants to play in England and he has the pop-star wife at home who didn’t go into the desert with him. He has the incentive and he’s a stone-cold-killer if we can get the ball to him close in. Bundu ran amok against Middlesbrough so let’s hope he can keep it up. He’s a big object moving at speed and you wouldn’t want to get in his way. My prayers are for Ibrahim Cissoko though. What a Christmas present it would be to see him on the bench.
Talk of Cissoko not being available till February....if so it seems as if he has had a relapse in his recovery......just our luck if true.
Well the expectation was originally “sometime in January” so perhaps we’re just back where we started.
Grimshaw, Mumba, Szucs, Bundu, Gibson, Gyabi, Gray, Randell, Galloway, Al Hajj, Finn. Subs Hazard, Ogbeta, Houghton, Pleguezuelo, Wright, Forshaw, Sorinola, Issaka, Palsson. Finn starts.....Galloway fit as well.
4-0.....H/T Sakamoto...5mins. Eccles...20mins...45mins. Mason-Clark...39mins. This ain't going well. Mustapha Bundu off injured
4-0.....F/T Argyle dominated and down to 10 men......Coventry coasting through the second half Rooney is turning into a bad luck charm for Argyle....I think he needs to admit he ain't a manager and needs to resign. Argyle now minus 27 goals that is embarrassing........one shot on target the whole game.
Absolutely abysmal performance in the first half, somewhat better in the second but I suspect that was due to Coventry taking their foot off the gas rather than anything else. It could have been worse: Tegan Finn having failed to pick up Sakamoto for the first should surely have conceded a penalty soon afterwards which the referee inexplicably missed. Grimshaw gave a suicide pass to Randell on the edge of the box to concede the fourth. Much of the damage was done down our right. For the upteemth time, you cannot play Bali Mumba as a full back in a four. You may get away with it in a five but not a four. Bundu off injured and Gray off at half time probably because he just doesn’t have the physicality to do anything with little or no support from the other 10. Wright correctly sent off late on to leave the roster even more threadbare. It’s hard to be sure how much of this is due to Rooney. By the time the transfer window is over and injured players are back, it may well be too late. This was certainly yet another disjointed, dispiriting performance.
It seems that the green army last night had one hope....that the mist would turn into a thick fog and the game wouild be abandoned......that is what desperation does at futile times such as away games are now for Argyle.....only 2pts away all season and a goal difference of 3 for and 33 against.......we have now given away 49 goals in 22 matches.....the equivalent of 102.5 goals over a season.
Just picked up courage to look at the Coventry video....crouching behind the settee with a tin helmet on. One word to describe what I witnessed........overrun.....comes to mind.
I just listened to Wayne Rooney's post-Coventry interview. He's asked about taking Andre Gray off - was it to save his legs? Rooney replies that if he could, he'd have taken them all off bar Tegan Finn. I appreciate that's straight from the heart 15 minutes after the final whistle but it's not very diplomatic. Some fans perhaps like that kind of honesty but if you are going to say it all, face to face is the way to do it. There was no "player reaction" interview after the game, which there usually would be, and as yet (11am on match day), there are neither player or manager previews for the Oxford game. Perhaps it's just because it's Christmas and there are two away games in three days.
We all sat down to watch it live. Fire lit.. drinks... Xmas choccies etc.... and 1-0 down after 5 minutes and hardly a meaningful kick of the ball.
I was spared. The family were watching West Ham. I got told it was 1 - 0 about 10 mins after kick off then 2- 0 and just before half time 4 - 0. I stopped asking. I see Stoke have sacked the manager again. I still blame them.
Ironic isn't it that we were doing OK under Schumacher, although he'd have had to deal with the loss of Azaz, but here both clubs are in the bottom quarter of the table, both having sacked managers in the intervening period,
