The game started brightly for us, I felt, with a lot of possession, sustained pressure and very impressive off the ball running and movement. Worryingly, actual chances seemed to be lacking and there was little for the Oldham keeper to actually do, despite a string of corners and free kicks around the box.

Oldham weathered the storm though, and slowly began to show themselves as an attacking force with occasional forays forward, which were largely dealt with by our defence at that stage of the game. Up front though, things were getting steadily worse. The tireless aggressive running which had marked the opening 20 minutes seemed to be fading and the Kop were beginning to show signs of restlessness towards new signing, Enoch Showumni, who seemed determined to get through his first 90 minutes at Elland Road without actually jumping for the ball. There were comparisons being made to Kandol throughout the half which were perhaps a little unfair – Enoch was certainly putting a lot more running into his game than Tres usually did and appeared to have good feet – unlike Tresor who never ceased to amaze me with his uncanny ability to control a ball further than most blokes can actually kick it.

Of most disappointment to me though was winger Andy Robinson, who did not seem to put nearly as much effort into the game as his teammates – though some of his touches were quite impressive. As the half drew to a close though, Oldham were looking the better team and we had to hope that the lads would come out second half like they did against Scunthorpe last week.

As the second half began though, it was clear that we were not going to achieve the same level of improvement. Within 5 minutes of the restart we were a goal down, when ex-convict Lee Hughes beat Caspar to a bouncing ball and headed against the bar, only for the rebound to be netted by Taylor. I have to say I feel Casp was at fault here – he is a good few inches taller than Hughes and is allowed to use his hands, thus I think he will be disappointed that Hughes got the better of him – though perhaps Caspar was too busy watching out for knives or broken bottles. A couple of minutes later, Oldham had the ball in the net again, only for it to be ruled (thankfully) offside.

For a while it was all Oldham, but around the hour mark we started to lift ourselves again and began pressing forward. No sooner had we begun to find our confidence again than Oldham killed us off with another goal from Taylor. This time he cut in from the left across the edge of the box and curled one round Caspar into the far corner. While it looked a good goal, I would again question the big Dane. As Taylor came across it was blindingly obvious where he was going to put it – all other routes were blocked by defenders – yet Casp stood rooted to the centre of his goal. A couple of steps to his left and he would have had a comfortable diving save.

From then on it was pretty much game over. We tried to press, but lacked any penetration whatsoever. Snodgrass – who had been impressively tenacious in the first half hour – had a few runs. Robinson tried a little, but I have to say (amid predictable screams about pots and kettles) that the lad looks more than just a little bit overweight. I shall write a letter to the club, offering to eat half his meals for him – but it will no doubt be ignored as my repeated similar offers to the likes of Thomas Brolin, Sean Gregan, Paul Butler and Tresor Kandol were. In fact the only response I ever got to my generous offers was from Michael Rickett’s solicitor, but the less said about that the better.

The game petered out with a comfortable and organised Oldham side barely breaking sweat while we huffed and puffed and generally failed to string two passes together. Overall, a thoroughly disjointed and disappointing display against a side who, as I stated in the article I wrote for the site earlier this week, have traditionally been a bogey team to us. Unfortunately you will not have actually read that article the Unofficial LUFC failed to publish it on the site which I admit I was rather annoyed about – though I would grudgingly concede that there is a partial defence in that I wrote it whilst drunk and completely forgot to either send it or even let them know I was writing it.

As a final analysis, there is an old adage in football that the foundation stone of every good performance is the ability to do the simple things properly. Although that rather contrived sentence is probably just an over-elaborate euphemism for “don’t be sh-it” I think it had great pertinence this afternoon. Too often we failed to make simple passes and our off the ball running rarely found space. Some of the blame has to be laid at Macca’s feet in my opinion – he has a system where he tries to bamboozle the opposition by having his wingers move inside and sometimes swap position; he has a complex system of runs and counter-runs in constant operation….. when it works, it looks fantastic… but when it doesn’t, players are left constantly out of position, passes go endlessly astray as players persistently fail to predict where their teammates are running and where a team as ordinary as Oldham can win comfortably, simply through good, solid organisation. I couldn’t help thinking today, that we were significantly better man for man than Oldham – why not just put the wide players out wide, the central midfielders in the middle, the defenders in defence and the strikers in attack. Just play football and drop the over-elaborate chess-like approach. It’s just my view – but a good honest hard working performance would have been all it needed today.


Player Ratings (6=Average)

Casp – at fault for both goals – 4
Frazer – did not inspire as a captain, was poor coming forward, ok defensively – 5
Sheehan – solid performance – my man of match almost by default – 6.5
Rui – reasonable – 5
Hunty – likewise – 5
Snodgrass – started well, but drifted out of the game. Shows promise though – 5.5
Howson – ineffectual game, other than a few moments in first 20 mins – 5
Prutton – slightly better than Howson, but not much – 5.5
Robinson – showed some good touches, but generally fat and lazy – 4
Beckford – ineffective, but lacked supply – 5
Showumni – similar to Beckford – 5

Subs

Delph & Beccio – injected some energy and lifted us a little – 6 each.

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