Verdict: Rovers robbed of well deserved win
Man of the Match: Tough one. Definatly not Delroy Facey, Danny Harrison or Paul Linwood for sure! Jennings had a reasonably good game, as did Greenacre but I thought Sharps and Jackson were outstanding and Rankine played very well too.
Great goal for Greenacre, nice finish, but it really should have been 2-0 at half time atleast, Facey put a free header straight into the keepers arms.
Second half, we should have had a blatent penalty, ball hit and was controlled with arm by their Ian Goodison look a like defender, but nothing was given, play moved on and 30 seconds later, they had scored a dubious goal. How it can have gone in I don't know, as it hit the bar and bounced about five yards infront of the goal! Then the penalty, looked pretty clear cut.
Very bright point was Chris Dagnal when he came off the bench. He looked lively and sharp, and if it hadn't been for some good defending he (and some terrible decisions from the referee and his assistant) he could have had a goal or two.
We were pretty good overall, but our shooting was often woefull, to mention Danny Harrison for one, and we never really looked like equalizing.
The referee did us no favours and was very poor in general. He failed to control the game the way a referee should, just letting players such as Windarse get away with walking away from him when the referee was trying to book him. He was inconsistant, and for long periods of the game failed to give any sort of decisions Tranmere's away, including a clear throw-in and corner which should have been to Rovers, but the other result happened.
Overall, a good performance, to which I have just two complaints. One being Brian's decision not to bring on Striker Calvin Zola when we were losing with minutes left, and the other is about our defence, again. We defended well for long periods of the game, but as is so often the case with Tranmere, around the 60 minute mark we went to sleep and low nad behold, the opposition scored, on this occasion twice.
Still people should not be calling for Brian's head. It was a generally pretty good performance today, apart from Delroy Facey upfront, who for the last 30 minutes seemed intent on not running for any through ball played to him or go for any headers, when he had a good first half. Stick with that team and formation Brian, and you could be onto a winner (just sort out your subs :wink: ) Now off to find something to help my very painful throat after losing my voice today.