The second half was different; Burton got in much better positions and got three shots on target. We had one. It wasn’t for a lack of trying – we showed some good attacking intent but didn’t trouble their keeper at all. I wouldn’t say it was dour, or particularly bad, it was just one of those evenings. Firstly, Duffy came off for Mandroiu, and given that one is new to the squad and the other is coming back from a slight injury, it made sense. I’d perhaps have liked to see another 15 minutes of Duffy, he looks so good on the ball and adventurous in a positive way, not a ‘run down alleys’ way we saw from some players before Christmas, but with a strong bench, the switch made sense.
The problem was we got sucked into the type of game we didn’t want. We went long a bit too much, and one or two players made decisions, at the moment, that weren’t quite right. The first chances went to House and Shodipo, five minutes in, but neither we able to make anything serious happen in that small spell. Also, I felt we began to get roughed up a little bit, and we didn’t deal with it well. I thought I saw House get stamped on, his reaction suggested he’d perhaps been trodden on, more than stamped, but it was a moment that seemed to turn the game – after that, I think we had one proper effort until they scored.
The referee, Paul Howard, was excellent in my eyes. He let little things go, not really bad tackles, but certainly tetchy stuff others might have pulled the game up for. It meant it wasn’t as broken as it could be, because when a player went down screaming he let things progress, and usually within seconds they were on their feet. I had one criticism of him all evening, blowing for a foul when we could have played on. A ref will always draw criticism for something he does because football is subjective. When 50% of the decisions go against you and your team, you’ll disagree with at least one. The fact I can only recall one minor little thing tells you how good the official was, or how fair the match was. In fact, the biggest one he got wrong was not awarding a foul against Adam Jackson for a wrestling move. Fair play Mr Howard; you seem like one of the good ones.
Burton had more chances than us (seven compared to five) and more on target (three compared to none), and on reflection, 1-0 in the second half was a fair outcome. It should have been 1-0 to us, perhaps on the first half showing, making a draw a fair outcome, and xG suggests 0-0 would have been about right. Johnny Smith, another tidy little player in their ranks, hit the bar with a teasing effort, before turning Boyes inside out and supplying a cross for a header on target which was as vicious as a kitten eating candyfloss.
We had a couple of chances before they scored. The first, a slip from their defender released Sorensen one-on-one, but he tried to clip it the wrong side of the keeper, and it went out for a goal kick. The second was a clever pass from Mandroiu, finding Shodipo, who lifted a ball across the goal. I thought he’d gone for a shot, but the stats say not. Instead, it bounced across the six-yard box, with Sorensen arriving just a fraction too late. Those two efforts, by the way, don’t appear on the xG charts nor counted in the shots counts, yet were perhaps our best chances of the game.
At the other end, Smith (again) drew a save from Rushworth after an uncharacteristic poor header from Erhahon presented him with an opportunity. I thought Erhahon was close to being our Man of the Match, so he can be excused that one slip. Sadly, it was the one slip that, indirectly, cost us. Rushworth’s save gave them a corner, and from that corner, they scored. Mark Kennedy was not happy with someone’s contribution, and having watched it back, I’m not sure if it might be Luke Plange. It’s the sub who gets it, Ahadme. He was on Norwich’s books as a youngster, and Danny Cowley signed him at Pompey. He came on late, the sort of striker who is going to just cause a nuisance in the dying stages. That’s what we’d hoped to see from Plange, but it really hasn’t happened for the Palace youngster. He seems to be marking Ahadme when the ball comes in, but he moves away, as if he’s going to run our of the box, and it’s gobbled up by the striker. All of the players begin to look around, but Plange doesn’t. I might be wrong.
I feel for Plange, because it hasn’t worked out here for him at all. It’s funny, isn’t it? We said a striker was imperative for the run-in, a desperate need if we were to stay up. Instead, Plange has merely been filler for when House is injured or tired, and, bar perhaps one game, he’s been no more than adequate. He did have a great chance to score late on; Mandroiu’s teasing cross really should have been stabbed home. It would have been a fair result had we scored, especially as they shut down after their goal. It’s understandable; they wanted the win, and become only the second team to do so at the Bank in the league this season.
I still didn’t feel too despondent. I hate Lincoln losing, so don’t get me wrong, I was a bit angry, and as I started the evening really angry (another story altogether), I was predisposed to feeling hacked off, but I shouldn’t have been. The quality we’re showing is still there, but no matter how good you are, it doesn’t always go for you. There are still so many positives, from individual players to the quality of some of our football. For instance, we delivered 17 crosses into the box. Okay, only five were successful, some down to blocks and interceptions, others because players arrived late, but many of them were good quality. One, which was blocked, came from Mandroiu with the outside of his boot. Everyone raved about Joe Willock doing it at the weekend and had Mandroiu’s not been hacked clear, we’d be dribbling over his contribution now. Because it was blocked, nobody remembers it.
Actually, Mandroiu was excellent when he came on, although he got some stick around me. There was one beautiful moment in the half where he made the body shape as if he was going to knock a pass backward, and as the ball arrived, he did completely the opposite and took a yellow shirt out of the game. It was quality (even though the actual pass wasn’t read, and we gave the ball away), and after a full summer with us, he’s going to cause all kinds of hell for League One. I know it.
Still, it wasn’t to be, no matter how good I felt he was, or how poor Plange turned out to be. I don’t like to pile on players, but at one stage, one of the guys behind me said, ‘he’s got to come good eventually’, to which I replied, ‘it needs to be soon; he’s only got ten days’. Of course, he meant that Plange is a decent player who will have a future in the game, but like many before him, it hasn’t worked here. Liam Cullen is scoring for Swansea in the division above, but couldn’t do it here. Plange, I suspect, will do the same. Sadly, he’ll be chalked up as a disappointment here, and it’s only the success of other January signings which have meant we can comment on it without worrying about his (lack of) impact.
There’s not a lot more to say. We lost, it’s not something we do often at home, and it felt a bit weird. I’ve enjoyed the last few weeks, but there’s nothing at stake, and that’s not how football should be. I shouldn’t walk away angry because of a family issue and not the defeat, but I guess that’s what I did. Last night wasn’t a harbinger of doom for the future. It was just the penultimate home game of a good, solid season in League One.
It was the final knocking of winter, a winter that at times felt like it might hang around for longer but one that ultimately is behind us now. We’re in the spring of a new era, developing and budding into something. Last night just reminded us that a frost is always possible. Nothing more, nothing less.