I got pulled up by a Posh fan last night who asked me how I knew that the crude foul on Michael O’Connor had changed the game. I didn’t respond on Twitter, I didn’t want to get drawn into some sort of slanging match, but possessing a pair of eyes and watching the first half and the second was the method I used to make my decision. O’Connor had been my Man of the Match up until that moment, as he had been against Sunderland in the first half too. His experience, his calmness on the ball and his snap in the tackle has clearly impressed the new manager and he added some real value to our first XI yesterday.
That’s why it’s really galling to see how he had to be withdrawn from proceedings. Immediately after the restart Toney chases the ball, avoids one of our players and when O’Connor’s back is turned he smashes a forearm into his upper back. In my opinion, it’s not an accidental collision, it’s a premeditated foul. I’m sure there are plenty of Posh fans who will disagree or start with something like ‘yeah, but your player did this…’ to defend Toney’s actions, but my gut feeling is he took out one of our players with a crude challenge intent on limiting O’Connor’s influence in the game. In the blink of an eye it looked like an innocuous collision, but when watching it back, it’s not.
I defended Matt Rhead in the EFL Trophy Final for a similar collision with Dean Henderson. What I would say is that incident saw two players running towards each other, momentum carrying them as much as anything. Only one player had momentum yesterday and he increases that in the split second before he caught O’Connor, almost leaping into him. It’s snide, it’s cunning and it was missed by the officials. It was the first moment of two that changed the game.
Before he went off, Bruno lashed a volley wide and we seemed to still have a foothold in the game. O’Connor was replaced by Pett and that surprised me a lot. Surely, despite the negative perception of him, Connolly would have been a better choice? I’m an armchair manager, perhaps one of the worst for thinking I know best when I know little outside of a matchday, but Callum Connolly is match fit and eager to get some game time. My only thought is perhaps Michael Appleton hoped to add experience alongside Ellis, rather than have two young players together. That would make sense, but for me, Pett’s introduction didn’t seem the right one.
From there Posh began to get back into it, Maddison had another effort go wide and although he wasn’t on his game, I thought you could still see his quality. Inch by inch, he improved as did his team and it’s fair to say we were under the cosh from that point on. They weren’t getting clear-cut chances, but they saw much more of the play than they did in the second half. Jason Shackell had to stifle two or three good efforts and Ellis worked incredibly hard trying to provide the link between defence and midfield. I thought Ellis had the best game I’ve seen him have in a Lincoln shirt, getting back into defence but also moving forward with a defence-splitting pass. Midfield is one area we have some real quality, but perhaps lack a little experience.
The second game-changing moment came when Mo Eisa went off for Dembele. I know a lot of Grimsby fans would get angry at seeing his name, he got the reputation of being a show pony up there, capable of real magic but never one to put in a full shift. The minute he got on the field yesterday he changed Posh’s attacking play and asked us another question that we just couldn’t answer.
Still, we defended stoically but you could see what was coming in fairness to the home side. We were gripping on to the game as best we could, but with that sort of pace and flair from the bench, we had a big task on our hands. Tom Pett played a really loose square ball across the park, Dembele picked it up and roasted both Pett and Neal Eardley before getting a weak effort away. It was enough to cause panic though and when Louis Reed hit the ball as it rolled out of the area, the game ended.
It was an unstoppable shot and I’ve seen some comments that he wasn’t closed down quick enough. My retort is this; Ellis has got back into the area looking to stop the cross and one thing our players do not do is rush out to the ball when we’ve got our backs against the wall. In my opinion, if Michael O’Connor is still on the pitch then one of those two players closes down and the other waits in the area. Pett, ring rusty no doubt, has chased the ball on a fool’s errand allowing Dembele to take two of our players out of the game as opposed to one. The goal, sadly, is down to the returning midfielder’s mistake, even if we did have a couple of chances to stop the goal after that.
I’m not going for a scapegoat or apportioning blame here by the way, I’m just telling it how I see it.
After that, we chased the game, our defence pushed up looking for the goal. That’s a bad look because the pace of Ivan Toney outstripped us from a huge punt upfield and he finished with the sort of quality that proved why Posh had to field £4m bids for his services. It was exquisite, the sort of deft touch that you see from the very best footballers in the country. There’s no getting away from it, whoever might have been at fault, whatever might have contributed to the defeat, both goals were absolutely belters.
I know we didn’t give up, a late header brought another save from Pym but the truth is we were second best in the second half. I felt their red card might have been a bit harsh, that second challenge didn’t look like a yellow to me. It was also a big shame to hear Alex Woodyard get booed when he came on; I guess some sections of our support have short memories when it comes to our recent success.
Posh got their win, they’ll be looking onwards and upwards and rightly so; they’ve got a quality squad with depth and plenty of cover. In the first half, we were on our game and they weren’t, perhaps down to their performance, perhaps down to us doing the things we needed to do to stop them performing. In the second period, once Michael O’Connor had been strategically removed from the game, they were the better side and had the capability on the bench to change the game.
They’re the side we aspire to be in two or three seasons time; perhaps not spending £1.5m on a player and certainly not turning down £4m, but in terms of the squad and their attributes, they’ve got to be the aspiration, like it or not. Okay, if we had a 15,000 capacity stadium we might get closer to 12,000 fans for a game like this, but points are not won and lost for how many fans you have, no whether they only really start singing on 80 minutes, but we’ll take that as a small victory and just move on.
You could look at our position and say we’ve lost more games than Bolton and Tranmere who are in the bottom three. You could look at the table and say we’ve won as many as Blackpool who are in the top six. I guess good teams draw matches they should lose and that’s the difference between last season and this; last season we were a good team for the level we played in and right now, we’re a decent team but not one that can be described as good. However, to start looking backwards and counting wins, defeats and the like is folly; for me it started when Michael Appleton came through the door and once we got ten games under him we can look at runs, not going back over spells bidging managers or even seasons; if you’re doing that then I’m afraid you’re looking to make things much worse than they actually are. Only results from now until Christmas will do that and, as I alluded to on the pod, we’ve got a run of games I feel we could pick up a few points from.
Yesterday, we got beat by a team that won’t lose ten matches this season and who will be in the top six. That’s not where we are at the minute and we have to make our peace with that and keep doing the things we’re doing without self-imploding as a fanbase although to be fair, aside from one or two very misery-inducing tweets, the reaction to the game has been fairly sensible.
On the one hand you claim to try and put a neutral perspective on things. Then you attempt to defend Rhead at Wembley. Unbelievable.
Paperclip Imp in anti-Rhead post shocker.
Be quiet you rusty piece of wire….what a moron!!!!
Staying out of comparisons with the Rhead incident I tend to agree with your view about the intent of Toneys challenge. I think they’d earmarked O’Connor as a pivotal player for us and wanted to ‘put one on him’ either to take him out of the game or at least to unsettle him.
I also share your dismay about the treatment of Woodyard by a section of our support. He was also subject to a crude chant which to his credit he took as a joke. Our support for the team overall is outstanding but this behaviour detracts from it.
Gary I hope you make that point to the 617 rep in the supporters group meeting?
Having now seen the footage , Toney clearly goes out of his way avoiding Bruno to enable him to ‘ Put One On Mickey ‘ It was truly awful ! Clearly it was premeditated and was part of the half time team talk.
Toney off = 10 men = Mickey still on orchestrating things for the Imps. = No Toney Goal = better chances of an Imps win.
What I really didn’t like was Toney rushing in on Jake Hesketh when their guy got his second yellow and then acting as the peacemaker marching his team mate off.
Strange behaviour indeed maybe he thinks he is something he is clearly not anyway the possibility of a retrospective ban awaits him.
I and another 8000 Imps will be sure to make our feelings known to him at the Bank on 1/1/2020.
Finally I know it was a defeat but I am quietly positive about the future under MA .