After the highs and lows of last week I’m hoping for a solid result tonight and I think we should get at least a draw. Despite being on the fringes of the promotion race, Wednesday have drawn their last five league games and have only managed an average of about a goal a game. Of course they’ll have enjoyed watching reruns of Rotherham turning our defence inside out on Saturday and will be hoping to do the same this evening so I wonder what LJ will do to stop a repeat. I feel okay about Wright coming on near the end of a game but he always gives me the jitters if he’s there from the start. It was a bad day all round on Saturday so we need to up our game in every department. McGeady came in for a lot of criticism then and he won’t be available tonight anyway so we’ll see a change there but no doubt there’ll be others. I’ll be watching the match at home and having passed a very large black cat sitting on a wall near my home earlier I of course took it as a good omen and my match prediction is an ugly 2-1 win for us.
When I got the team-news, not much seemed to have changed surprisingly. Dajaku was relegated to the bench while O’Brien and Gooch were starting. I was very pleased to see Broadhead back on the bench as he’s a matchwinner.
I got the game onscreen and heard that we had four thousand fans in the stadium, which is remarkable after the crap our fans witnessed three days ago. Gooch started on the right and O’Brien on the opposite flank and we had the better of the opening ten minutes with Gooch creating two scoring chances. The first was a cross from the right but nobody was there to get a head on it and then he set up an opportunity for O’Nien to try a shot from twenty-five yards that didn’t go too far wide. In the eleventh minute, though, Wednesday took the lead with their first real attack. A long ball from the right wasn’t dealt with by our defence, especially Gooch, and when the ball came to Corbeanu, he hit a low curling shot that eluded the diving Hoff to put them 1-0 ahead. Wednesday continued to press and we were looking wobbly again. We weathered that storm and pressed forward more but Wednesday were playing it rough with Gregory stomping Evans and getting away with it. Soon afterwards Gooch was fouled by Johnson and he also escaped a yellow. Just before the half-hour mark a low Cirkin pass into the box from the left came to Stewart but he couldn’t get a shot off and O’Brien’s effort was blocked. I thought similar balls would serve us a lot better than high ones against the big Sheffield defence. We were enjoying a lot of possession and next thing Neil lashed the ball into the net but the assistant linesman flagged for offside. We took heart from it anyway and for the first time had Sheffield rattled but five minutes from the break we were 2-0 down. Corbeanu was again involved when his cross from the left was turned in from close range at the second attempt by Kamberi. Neil had a good shot on target but it was straight at Peacock-Farrell in goal. There were three minutes added on, mainly for an injury to Palmer, and from our first corner Flanagan had a great shot but Peacock-Farrell saved well. It remained 2-0 as the whistle went.
We needed a goal back fast and I wanted to see Broadhead on to give us more creativity. I could also see one of Cirkin’s incisive passes creating a goal but unfortunately I could also see Sheffield getting another one or two. There were no changes as we kicked off again and we won an early corner but O’Nien’s kick went straight to the goalie. Doyle battled through to win our second corner six minutes in but when it came across Evans wellied it well over the top. Two minutes later we were 3-0 down and that was it. It started from a throw-in from the left and after a series of passes Gregory shot home from close range despite having three of our defenders in close attendance, They didn’t look three goals better than us but our defence had let us down again. Johnson received the first yellow of the evening, eventually, for a bad foul on O’Nien. We were looking flat and were resorting to long balls going nowhere while fresh faces didn’t seem to be ready to come in yet. We finally replaced Neil with Pritchard with about twenty-five minutes to go. Bannon went off injured shortly afterwards to be replaced by Dele-Bashiru and with eighteen minutes left we brought on Embleton for Gooch. Embo created our best chance all half with ten minutes left but his cross from the right wasn’t turned in by several of our players who had a peck at it. They looked like they’d lost their confidence. Broadhead eventually came on, for O’Brien, but time was whizzing way even for us to get a consolation. I dreaded to think what our goal-difference was looking like and decided it could wait till the morning. Most of our fans were still there in the dying minutes. There were four minutes of stoppage-time but I was ready for it to stop anyway. It ended 3-0.
With poor defending, not much to offer upfront and lots of individual mistakes (Cirkin whom I’d earlier praised wasn’t at the races in the second-half) this was another grim performance. With eight goals conceded in two games Alves must be wondering what he has to do to start a game.
