There are bad performances, terrible performances, gut-wrenchingly awful performances, and then there are, once in an eternity, performances such as Witton’s yesterday.
It started with the surrealness of their first goal, where the goalscorer appeared almost embarrassed that he was left on his own, with Witton players queuing up saying “No, after you, Sir”, none of them wanting to get within five yards of him. Even when he put it in the net, with Kennedy standing watching it go past him, there was a pause before celebrations started, because no one could quite believe what had happened.
From that point onwards the atmosphere in the crowd was absolutely dire, because Witton didn’t even try to get back into the game. There was very quickly a feeling that the game was lost.
There are a few comments saying Fleetwood played well. To my mind, Fleetwood didn’t play well or play badly. They just turned up and waited for us to give them the ball. I don’t think we could tell anything about the quality of the Fleetwood side from that game. One thing’s for sure: Fleetwood won’t have had an easier game this season.
Did we throw the match? If we did, we did it badly and too obviously. You never know though, it might come out in a few years’ time.
Did Jim try one of his ‘tactical plans’ like he did at Gateshead? Trying to make sense of what happened, it seems to me that Jim probably told the players to play in a certain way like he did against Gateshead, but a different way, a way that they were not used to, and which none of them really understood, with the result being the disaster we witnessed. Every player in the Witton side seemed to want to hide and be carried by all the other players, because he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be doing.
To those who are saying this team is as good as the one in the early 90s, a comment I heard from another fan summed it up. “Would Andy Grimshaw and the rest of them in the 90s side have given up the fight as easily as that lot did out there yesterday?”, he asked. I think you’ll find the answer is no. There’s absolutely no comparison.
The team is going to have to work hard to make a convincing case that they don’t all get scared in big matches with big crowds. I remember a comment from a Telford fan in the playoff last year who said the Witton players training near them before the match started looked frightened to death in front of a large, aggressive, opposing crowd.
By the way, did anyone see a hard tackle from a Witton player yesterday?
