Tranmere 1 Peterborough 0

[DIW]

In a recent post I stated (and I stand by it) that I had seen very little this season to encourage me that we had any chance to stay up this year. Well today changed that. I heard Les talking to Pat Nevin on Five Live on the way up to the game and talked about getting in young players that were 'hungry' for the game, and today was the first time I saw that.

Right from the first whistle there was a hunger, commitment, togetherness and willingness to fight for the cause that was just absent from the previous two home league games.

The new players made a difference. Mendy and Grandison are obviously big strong lads with a bit of presence, Blanchard had a great attitude getting stuck in at every opportunity. Fraughan - was that his first start in the league? had a good game and looked capable of creating chances. Up front McGurk made a solid start (looks far better than Terry Gornell already), and the whole atmosphere of the match was suddenly positive, credit to some great home support as well I thought. dare I say that we did not miss Mclaren in the slightest.

Darville, bar a couple of errors had his best game to date, Cresswell played well, Goodison as usual held it together. Enoch had a decent game as well - was a bit surprised to see him as captain though, but it seemed to rally him somewhat. Peterborough are a decent side, they had a few chance and I would be the first to admit we got them on a bit of an off day, but this could be crucial for Rovers as it will have done wonders for confidence.

Not perfect of course, I'm not suggesting we are getting promotion, but that sort of display makes me think that staying up is more than possible. I still have concerns over young Collister, just doesn't look quite ready to me, he didn't do too badly in terms of his handling and shot stopping today but is very nervous coming off his line, and it is a worry that Mendy and Grandison are on one month loan deals - we could do with keeping them for longer. For now though there are the first signs that this season may not be the nightmare it was looking like being.

Only signs though and more performances are needed like that. I'm happy for now, today couldn't have gone better, but we must not get carried away.

Oh, and some weird referring decisions as well. :?

 

[Rob]

Very pleased with the match and the new additions appeared to actually want to play for us.

Finally a few people manned up and got stuck in and this made the huge difference for us today.

Only criticisms were the distribution of Darville again and Kayleden Brown who appears to either be a) crippled or b) absolutely useless.

Pleased to see ITM back on the pitch and hope the team stays the same for the next match irrespective of the fitness of Welsh/McLaren/Labadie.

 

[Boz]

Just as we shouldn't have written the side off after the poor start to the season, so one good result doesn't turn us into promotion hopefuls. I thoroughly enjoyed today's match and hope it augurs well for the future.

Defence: Generally solid, Joe made a couple of great saves first half and the one time he made a mistake just after our goal, Goodi cleared off the line. Our Jamaican talisman was impressive today, came close to scoring and was giving help/advice to the younger players. I thought Darville played well today, great saving tackle in the penalty area and one decent cross having beaten his man and got to the byline.

Midfield: Mendy was very good, got himself into the right place for the goal and finished well. Blanchard was the opposite of McLaren, nearly always trying to get the ball forward. Fraughan battled well in midfield and a great ball for the goal.

Attack: ITM was a bit off the pace at first, but came more into the game and probably should have earned a penalty after his fierce shot was intercepted by an outstretched Peterborough arm. McGurk started brightly, with a couple of decent early efforts and works well in a front three, hope his injury isn't going to keep him out for long. Showumni worked hard, tiring a bit towards the end. I'm afraid Brown isn't a wide player, but nonetheless did some tracking back after coming on as substitute.

While Peterborough had the bulk of the possession; 63% on the BBC stats, they only had 3 decent attempts on goal and I was expecting more. Wholly unimpressed with Mackail-Smith's cheating, which on the whole the ref didn't fall for.

The crowd was about 200 down against that for Bournemouth, probably a few more home fans had stayed away. However unlike that game, the home crowd got totally behind the team, which,imo, contributed to the victory.

 

[bigmart]

A fantastic performance and win for me against one of the top teams from our league.

The team battled from the start got stuck into them and deserved the win.

Craig Mackail-Smith you are a bad diver and got what you deserved nothing

 

[Rockford's Love Child]

Agree with most of the comments already made, a terrific team performance full of tenacity and no little skill today. Mendy, Grandison and Blanchard made a difference just through sheer physical presence and the workrate of the midfield was fantastic, with challenges flying in left, right and centre: Boyd, McClean and Mackail Smith had off days because we simply did not give them the time and space to play.

There were some lovely touches from McGurk and Fraughan which gave us an extra edge in the attacking third, while all of the back four were immense.

As has been said, one good perfomance doesn't make us a good side, but to be fair, we were also excellent at Walsall, Huddersfield and in the last half an hour at Dagenham, and it just happens that in the two previous home league games we turned in shocking performances.

We are now up to fifteenth in the table, which I believe is our highest position since Ronnie's departure. Hopefully mid-table security is a realistic ambition now.

 

[Ian]

Came away from that game a lot happier. For all the injuries we've got, it was almost a blessing in disguise as the players Les picked all had an excellent game.

Grandison was superb at the back alongside Goodison. And Mendy played a good game in midfield. Like the above poster says, there was an extra edge going forward today. Defence were solid, midfield effective in breaking Posh down and the forwards lively. Showunmi continues to impress with his performances and McGurk has potential if he keeps himself injury free.

Nice to see Fraughan on from the start too. Someone mentioned Collister early in this thread. Good shot stopper, but he does sometimes drift off during the game. He needs to work on his concentration.

Not much to moan about on Whinge Review today! :-D
Well played lads [-o<

 

[SonkORLY?]

Looks like I picked the wrong game to miss! Good stuff...

We are now up to fifteenth in the table, which I believe is our highest position since Ronnie's departure.

That's a pretty amazing statistic.

 

[SCooperSomersaults]

Looks like I picked the wrong game to miss! Good stuff...

Can I ask that you stay away more often then please?! :-D only kidding. Pat Nevin was on 5 live summarising the game and he said he hadn't been back to PP for 10 years, Les Parry told him after the game he has an open ticket to come back to every game!

Thought we fought really hard which is what we need to do as we don't have the quality throughout the side as other clubs do. It's no disrespect to our players but other clubs pay bigger wages so should have better players.

The new lads were fanstastic. I gave Mendy motm in the match report (http://whitereview.co.uk/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1283687930&archive=&start_from=&ucat=1&) but Grandison alongside Goody was superb as well. Blanchard is a real battler too. He doesn't have the physical presence but he was niggling away at their players and did really well, as did Fraughany.

All in all, a much improved performance and 3 precious points. Let's just hope we can build on this and push on a little. We need to show some consistency to our performances, show that same commitment and desire as was on show yesterday, and no little good play either, it was very good. Let's see more of that lads please! \\/

 

[SonkORLY?]

Bollocks, didn't know it was on 5live. Can we motivate ourselves to put in that sort of performance in the more mundane home games rather than only versus the Peterborough's and Huddersfields of this universe? Guess that's down to Les. Wait and see.

Maybe we can talk the loan signings into staying a little longer. Hopefully we can afford to keep them. Send Kay Brown back to WBA...

 

[The Bootle Rover]

Full marks for effort

What a welcome result and an even more welcome display of all round effort.

Wrong to single anyone out in a team display given on Saturday. It was really good to see the encouragement from the crowd and the big rise in excitement level as the game went on. The younger players must take that in and build on the experience, wanting more of all that was positive about the performance.

I wont get carried away, we all know that consistency is hard to achieve even with seasoned pros, but many of the players may now start to realise what they are capable of if they put in the effort.

Well done to Les and the team----and the crowd who really showed great support and stayed on longer than usual after the whistle to show their appreciation.
Light at the end of the tunnel? Here's hoping.

 

[amplesou]

yeovil will be a wake up call !
away from home battling won,t work we will be down to 9 men no time and get a hammmering!
we need to show a different side of our game there !
yeovil are smarting and there big open pitch where there happy will make it a long afternoon if we get it wrong !
composure! are the young oners capable !
i can,t see it !

 

[SonkORLY?]

Oh do cheer up. Fair enough to moan after a bad run of defeats but we did brilliantly to pick up a win on Saturday.

 

[Sparky]

Agree with most - Grandison was my m.o.m who played just like a young Goodison. Showed a meature head for a young guy, no nonsense defending.

I have criticised Les this season but fair play to him for bringing in what appeares to be quality (apart from maybe Brown), and more importantly, fitting it all together.

That midfield 3 of Blanchard, Mendy and Fraughan did worry me before kick off but they were quality on Saturday. Les will have some interesting decisions to make when Joss, Welsh etc are back.

On the captaincy, I was surprised. Presumably he picked Enoch as he leads the line fairly well and is experienced. If he wont give ITM it back and doesnt fancy Goodi anymore, I dont know who else could have done it on Saturday

 

[Filed Under Rockford]

A Pleasing Display

Agree with most - Grandison was my m.o.m who played just like a young Goodison.

Maybe "Grandison" is an abbreviation for "Goodison's grandson"!!:-D

I thought our defence showed great resilience on Saturday and the midfield trio worked extremely hard, Mendy seemed to have a great knack of being in the right place at the right time to produce some key tackles and break up their possession. This enabled us to catch them outnumbered at the back on a few occasions, it makes a nice change for us to do it to someone else for a change!!

I thought each of our players took it in turns to have a really bright spell throughout the match, it's just a shame we weren't able to capitalize with a 2nd goal on the counter-attack, Showumni, Moore and even Fraughan at the end if Brown ever looked up to pass!! All in all, a good afternoon's work!!

 

[TheBunnyBellEnd]

All of the palyers deserve a massive pat on their backs for the way they battled non stop on saturday, what we need now is a bit of consistency, what I would say is that if you were any of the injured players watching how the youngsters performed you would be very worried about getting your place back in the starting line up when fit.

Yeovil will be a completly different game however confidence among the young lads will be high and there is NO reason we cant go there and get something.


Well played lads.

 

[OneNightInGayParis]

Unfortunately I missed the match on Saturday having already committed to the Muse gig at LCC. It was a great gig, but obviously the wrong match to miss! Starting to get a bit worried since I have only seen us lose this season - I hope I don't become the jinx ...

I did manage to keep up to date via internet and radio, and have seen the beeb's brief highlights. It sounded like a good game and an excellent defensive performance in particular. Like most others, I was very nervous about our very inexperienced midfield trio but it sounds like they rose to the occasion in splendid fashion. It is not often that Les has a selection headache, but he will have one for the trip to Yeovil. I am delighted for everyone as this may be the lift off we need to avoid spending the whole season in a relegation dogfight. However, we can never be sure that the next game won't be the other side of our Jekyll and Hyde.

I notice that Aaron Cresswell was selected for last week's FL Div 1 Team Of The Week, no doubt for his excellent strike, and I would expect at least one of our defenders to make the team this week going by the match reports and the praise given out by Gary Johnson and Peterboro' fans. This season, apart from Cresswell, the other Rover to have made the team was Joe Collister following his shut out against Huddersfield.

Fifteenth! Glad I don't suffer from acrophobia ...

 

[Filed Under Rockford]

Going Forward

All credit to the loan players who are more than playing their part at the moment, the worry is how long they will remain with us to compliment our own personnel. Les has confirmed that he is trying to extend Grandison's loan period to the maximum allowed which is 93 days. Apparently Broomes' rehab is taking longer than we initially thought, you can make up your own conspiracy theories on that one!8-[

I guess my main concern is what I've posted previously, when we're playing at home and up against a team who take the initiative we're able to grind out results, however, when the onus is on us to do likewise against your Yeovils, D&Rs & Wycombes (oops, they've already thankfully been relegated) we sometimes struggle. I'm not intending to be negative[-(, just constructive/honest.

 

[Sparky]

Yeah Rockford I agree.

Musnt get carried away with Saturday, as good as it was.

It wont mean much if we lose on Saturday against a team that got battered on Saturday and will clearly get relegated.

 

[OneNightInGayParis]

All credit to the loan players who are more than playing their part at the moment, the worry is how long they will remain with us to compliment our own personnel. Les has confirmed that he is trying to extend Grandison's loan period to the maximum allowed which is 93 days.

I guess the more successful we are and the more that the loanees contribute to that success, the longer they will be wanting to stay. If they spend a month with little involvement or being beaten every week I think they would be begging to get back home and perhaps see what else is on offer!

Would Joss Labadie have signed if he had finished the season on the bench, or if we had gone down? I doubt it, somehow!

 

[Tartantranmere64]

To me the reason we tend to do better against better teams is we play more like an away team against them. If you didn't know any better on Saturday you would have thought it was Rovers who were away the way we sat in and broke the play up and looked to play on the break. There's nothing wrong with this approach although i think it explains why we struggle against less good sides, especially at PP, who surrender possession and ask us to do the possession/attacking stuff.

That's why I don't actually think Yeovil away will be too different from last Saturday in terms of what's required to get point/points and it might also explain why cr*p like Wycombe find it easier to stuff us.

Just a thought.

PS we were awesome on Saturday - it was rousing stuff. That little period after about 70 mins when they simply could get the ball out of their half cos we were snarling round them - brilliant fun. GIRFUY!