Great entertainment to go with the result

When I saw the teamsheet yesterday at 2pm I thought that the best we would get would be a 0-0 as it looked to be lined up with that in mind and to be honest with our record at Shrewsbury I would have taken that at the start but had the game finished 3-3 I would have been far more disappointed as a deserved victory had seemingly been stolen from us. The best thing about this game was not only the result but also the performance which has not been the case in the majority of games under Graham Coughlan but that said he does not deserve the criticism he receives based on the results he has obtained as football is a results based business and also on his signings he has made. IMO we are only three players away from having a PlayOff chasing team and I would not bank against GC sorting this out in the January window. With the players we have what he has achieved is little short of a miracle.

Jaakkola 6 Not sure if any of the goals were actually his fault as there were so many players in the area,definitely the first was nearly a magnificent save and unlucky after two defensive errors. Overall he looked pretty good and all three goals were probably more down to moments of poor defending. 


Little 6 Mixed game ,good going forward and created Ollie Clarks goal and made a few enterprising  runs but was at fault on the first Shrews goal and visibly was tiring and struggling when replaced by Rodman..

Leahy 6.5 Feel he is improving with each game and the better option over Kelly. Did a reasonable job both defensively and attacking and overall provided good cover for Kilgour most of the time..

Craig 7 Scored the first goal with a great downward and powerful back post header and defended solidly throughout giving great leadership to his two young colleagues. His experience is essential to bringing on young players who will learn all the tricks of the trade from him..

Menayese 7.5 Played his part in this win. Won a lot of the ball in the air and brought the ball out confidently. It just shows that if they are given a chance these youngsters can be useful players. Ok he made a few reckless challenges including giving a way the free kick that gave Shrewsbury a lifeline but his good play and involvement far exceeded the bad moments.
Kilgour 6 Having seen his "goal" again I can't see anything at all wrong with it and another poor piece of work by the Linesman as there were several defenders on the line so couldn't have been offside and I couldn't see any other foul play.. He was badly caught out for pace on a couple of occasions including the penalty incident. That said I am still very impressed with him overall and to be fair to him and the rest of the defenders we restricted Shrewsbury to just 6 shots and it was unfortunate that pretty well every mistake was seized upon..



Sercombe 8 His best game of the season and worked really hard throughout and had a couple of other chances to get shots away before the tremendous 35 yard chip after the error by the keeper. Our midfield as a unit was much better today and battled for everything with Sercs giving it that extra bit of skill and creativity with the ability to keep hold of the ball.

Clarke 8.5 MOM Great to see him coming into form and scored his first goal of the season. Worked hard and my challenge to him now is to start producing performances like this week in week out or at least 4 out of every five games instead of 1 good performance and three or four bad. Took his goal well to deflect Littles shot skilfully into the net and was  the driving force we have missed much of this season.
Ogogo 7 Battled hard in typical Ogogo fashion against his previous employers and won most of the battles and then there was the superb cool finish at the end which gave us what we deserved and sent the nearly 900 away fans home happy. To his credit he did not over celebrate his goal.
Upson 6.5 Strong first half including the strike that brought a great save from the keeper. Not so strong in the second half and gave possession away slackly near the end of the game but still overall a good performance. He brings a certain reliability to the midfield which we lacked against Bromley with both his positioning and general use of the ball..

Victor 6 Ran his socks off and gave the Shrewsbury central defenders a tough time without ever really looking like scoring and gave way to Smith after 73 minutes when he like Little was visibly tiring.
Subs
Smith 6.5 If he had started the game and played like he did in his 20 odd minutes it would undoubtedly have been an 8.5 and Man of the Match because he ran the tiring defenders ragged with his pace and clever ball control and played a pivotal part in the winning goal.
THD NOLE

Rodman 5.5 Did more in his 11 minutes on the pitch than he did the whole match when we last played him against his previous clubs. Shame his final ball did not match his running but he sealed up the right side.


Ref 4 Got the penalty decision right IMO because the players only intention was to go down on the slightest of touches but his overall handling of the game was poor as he caused 6 minutes of holdup on that incident to sort it out and generally missed a lot including a foul BEFORE the free kick that led to the lifeline that ex Gas Norburns free kick gave them. How on earth he got 6 minutes injury time in the second half is beyond me! Linesmen overall were poor and of little help to the referee and the decision to disallow Kilgours goal looked a poor mistake.
Shrewsbury 4 One defeat in the last ten shows that Shrewsbury cannot be as bad as we made them look for long periods of this game with their defence looking shaky anytime we had the ball in their half. In the end they got what they deserved- nothing and our 13 shots to their 6 confirms this. 1-0 wins over both Peterborough and Sunderland in their last six games shows just how well we played yesterday which for me indicates that it was us playing well rather than them performing poorly
.
Crowd 9 Good banter and tremendous support from the just under 900 away fans which proved just how much singing support is better than a bloody drum!
GC- 10 deserves credit for both performance and result.

So we move on to two cup matches against League 2 clubs starting with next Sundays match against Plymouth. I very much hope that we can perform like yesterday and beat them out of site because I dislike their Manager Lowe about as much as their previous Manager. Realistically it will be a tough game but if both teams play at their best then we should win. UTG