Well of course there was reason to fear them. But if – as I believe – those are the games we must expect to lose, while being prepared to be thankful when we grab a point or three out of them, being beaten today was not a disaster.
What is absolutely clear is that we CANNOT trot out dismal performances like that one last week at Wigan and hope to survive, let alone aspire to a mid-table or better finish.
Today, it seems clear, we played with bags of purpose and pride, and came close to scoring once or twice. Listening to BBC Radio Newcastle, I offered this as my blind tasting: “Sounds a brave, hardworking performance, never enough.”
Then came Pete Sixsmith’s Sixer’s Sevens verdict: “Plenty of effort but short of quality.”
And what should make us very wary indeed is that Pete, as astute a reader of any game of football as I have ever met, was making exactly that sort of comment, match after match, during the (second, if we are to be unfair) Mick McCarthy relegation season before our hopes were rekindled by Niall, Drumaville and Keano.
Pete’s seven words sum up perfectly what we witnessed for 90 minutes yesterday.
It highlighted what I have been barking on about for some time now that we need a 20 goal a season man.Chopra is hungry and will run all day for the cause but although he has already scored 2 this season I will be surprised to see him score more than a dozen by May.The problem with goalscorers is that they are not readily available and even if they are they don’t come cheap.
I read various articles in the papers today where RK did admit he was looking for a defender , I assume to fill in at left back , where Wallace despite his best efforts is out of position.It also has to be said that Halford didn’t have one of his better games yesterday.RK also mentioned that a creative midfielder and a striker were also on his shopping list.
We were up against a very good side yesterday and one along with probably 3 others that I would not expect us to get many points from.We need to find our best form against the teams that are likely to occupy the bottom 8 or so positions at the end of the season.Although it is early days and there is not a lot to get concerned about yet , the transfer window closes at the end of this week which may render the next few days as pivitol for SAFC and what may lie ahead for the remainder of the year.