As performances and results go, last night’s mauling at the hands of Worksop Town invoked feelings of embarrassment, frustration and out right anger that I haven’t felt towards at Blyth team since that 5-1 defeat to Vauxhall Motors in the FA Cup, way back in 2010.
When it comes to the FA Cup with any non-league team and especially Blyth Spartans, you expect players to raise their game and be hyper focused, ready to graft their nuts off. The FA Cup is capable of changing a club’s fortunes in a financial sense while putting the club and town on the map, with the nations press and some pockets of the worlds press descending onto a small town.
On top of all that, the competition can give supporters, players and everyone associated with a football club the chance to experience the wonders that are the big days out at Football League clubs and the chance to cause a famous cup upset, or two. For a lucky few, it’s an opportunity to write your name in the annals of the FA Cup and be remembered at clubs like ours for the rest of time.
With all that in mind, to lose 5-0 with that sort of performance in an FA Cup game to a side in the league below fucking sickens me.
With Knight’s injury set back, Cedric Main out due to an injury he picked up on Saturday and with Hooper out for whatever reason, victory last night was always going to be difficult to achieve, be it in 90 min’s, extra-time or on penalties. That left the management team with a difficult task when setting the team up, confounded by Michael Liddle going off with an injury early on, forcing Rhys Evans into moving over to the Left Back role and Joe Oliver to come and play Right Back.
With a bit of a compact midfield, the loss of the width we’d have gotten from Michael Liddle hurt us early doors and the game played out pretty much like the original tie on Saturday did. Worksop were pretty much unchanged when it came to their game plan, and simply bossed possession, pushing our lads about with ease while creating a fair few chances for themselves that they could have easily converted before half time.
While we did have the odd chance to create something, going forward we were once again sloppy in possession and just struggled to create anything bar some crosses/shots that were easily blocked or dealt with by a defender. With a bit of luck we may have been able to slip a pass through and grab a goal, but it would have been very much against the run of play.
The second half would see us fail to test the Worksop keeper at all. In fact, I don’t even remember the lad having to make a save throughout the second half at all. Of course, once they scored the first goal my gut feeling was us fucked. Al Mitchell had pulled off some good saves to keep the game even early the half but alas, it would be for nothing as the Worksop goals began to pour in.
As the goals did pour in, we did begin to look lost and simply unable to stop them. I wouldn’t say we rolled over and stopped trying at all, but the lack of quality and coherent attacking play on offer as the game went on was genuinely painful to watch. In defence though, we just looked lost and incapable. It seemed like the Worksop midfield were almost free to pick passes and create an almost unlimited amount of chances for themselves and Liam Hughes. The players did battle on till the end, but you could say many began to show their frustrations with us picking up 6 yellow cards by the end of the game, which I think will result in a fine.
I think the main reason I’m so annoyed by last night is because we’ve seen in flashes last season and throughout the opening 6/7 weeks of this season just how good these players are as individuals and as a team. We’ve seen some brilliant football from these lads in the opening stages of the season, even in the games we didn’t take all 3 points from but the performances and results since the Bradford PA game have been a step or two down from those standards, and that need addressing quickly as every single one of them is better than what we’ve seen recently.
Onto Saturday we go though. Here’s hoping for one hell of a reaction.
