F A Cup Second Qualifying Round - Crowborough Athletic (H)

[Mucky knees]

Any room for me HM?

MK

[Sparky]

I’m going to defend the players on this one.

Here’s my take. So, to get Jasper into the team after his couple of goals, we switched to a 4-3-3.

But, in my opinion, you need to be a very mobile team to play 4-3-3. We’re not a very mobile team. So whenever one of our players got the ball, they just got isolated, which led to panic and mistakes.

I thought it was quite obvious that the formation was a huge problem but we didn’t change it until we were 1-2 down, and Jasper was moved inside, closer to Cox, which occupied their defence and allowed Ash to exploit that wing.

Just worrying that it took us so long to change.

[TW10]

First half was as bad a game of football you could have the misfortune to watch, it was awful. Hoofball and inspite of being up against a poor team we played little football and insisted on long straight impossible balls to the CF. We had no plan. Second half was at least entertaining for the chaos. I was there with someone attending for the first time. He just said we are bad team. Hard to argue with that .

[TW3 Beaver]

3.3 replay Tuesday

7:30 KO
Fair play to anyone that goes.

[Tony]

Dowse's upbeat Friday interview turned out to be , as I feared, just whistling in the dark. Somehow we came out of today with a replay but it was another shambolic performance. Mather gave us an early lead inside three minutes tapping in from close range from Max K's pass. He seems to know where to be at the right time. three in three. But thereafter we did very little to justify being the "better" side managing only one further attempt in the first half when Sho Silva blasted over from inside the six yard box. I have no confidence that he will ever score from open play; pity our penalty came when he was off the pitch. We seemed to be playing a 4-4-2 formation but then Mather was pushed wide right for some reason. Crowborough weren't creating too many chances but were giving our defence a hard time with their energy and closing down. Their obvious lack of finishing was masked by a much greater determination than the home side possessed. We needed the second goal to close out the game but couldn't manage anything like a forward threat in the second half. The game drifted. Fonguck on for Mullins didn't alter things much. And then the inevitable happened. A Crowborough long throw, a flick on and stabbed home from close range for 1-1. Did that galvanise us into action? No, we conceded another headed goal from a corner second ball, all too easy and suddenly we had stepped right on the banana skin. Having done exactly nothing all half, we then copped a soft penalty when Mather fell in the box. Not a penalty to my eyes but Grego-Cox who obviously felt he needed a goal, took a tame penalty easily saved. At least you could see the reaction from RGC who made amends setting up Mather for a close range header for 2-2. Thank God, a replay! Then an incident where Jackson pushed a player following a bad tackle on Barrett to earn a second yellow with the Crowborough player getting a straight red. 10 v 10 for the last few minutes and the game opened up completely. We looked like favourites to find a winner. But with 89 minutes on the clock, Underwood came rushing out of his goal to clear a ball in the corner but instead of hitting it into row Z, skewed his clearance straight to a Crowborough player who lobbed back into an empty goal for 3-2. Calamitous and about summed up our day. And yet we suddenly found an urgency to attack that had not been evident the whole game and a tiring 10 man Crowborough looked out on their feet. RGC got an unlikely equaliser from close range to send the game to a Tuesday replay.

We await Dowse's verdict on the performance. Had we lost then I think his time as manager could have been up. Crowborough did themselves proud and were mightily unlucky not to win.They are in the bottom four of a league two steps below us and I'm guessing their budget is just a bit lower than ours. On this showing there's nothing between the sides and that is a big concern to supporters. Without Siziba in the squad (?injured?) we had no pace in the side, couldn't get forward quickly enough and went sideways and backwards most of the time. At no point did we really control the game until a chaotic last few minutes when it turned into schoolboy football. But one bright spark. Mather got two today and fourth in three games. I think that is telling us something. Play him as lead CF not out on the wing. He might be Charlie Moone.

[Tony]

First half was as bad a game of football you could have the misfortune to watch, it was awful. Hoofball and inspite of being up against a poor team we played little football and insisted on long straight impossible balls to the CF. We had no plan. Second half was at least entertaining for the chaos. I was there with someone attending for the first time. He just said we are bad team. Hard to argue with that .

Chap in front of me walked out at 1-1 saying he couldn't believe how bad we were.

[HamptonMad]

Any room for me HM?

MK

Big Rich said there is room in The Club Car. But you need to bring the Soup.

[Lord Elpus]

Dowse's upbeat Friday interview turned out to be , as I feared, just whistling in the dark. Somehow we came out of today with a replay but it was another shambolic performance. Mather gave us an early lead inside three minutes tapping in from close range from Max K's pass. He seems to know where to be at the right time. three in three. But thereafter we did very little to justify being the "better" side managing only one further attempt in the first half when Sho Silva blasted over from inside the six yard box. I have no confidence that he will ever score from open play; pity our penalty came when he was off the pitch. We seemed to be playing a 4-4-2 formation but then Mather was pushed wide right for some reason. Crowborough weren't creating too many chances but were giving our defence a hard time with their energy and closing down. Their obvious lack of finishing was masked by a much greater determination than the home side possessed. We needed the second goal to close out the game but couldn't manage anything like a forward threat in the second half. The game drifted. Fonguck on for Mullins didn't alter things much. And then the inevitable happened. A Crowborough long throw, a flick on and stabbed home from close range for 1-1. Did that galvanise us into action? No, we conceded another headed goal from a corner second ball, all too easy and suddenly we had stepped right on the banana skin. Having done exactly nothing all half, we then copped a soft penalty when Mather fell in the box. Not a penalty to my eyes but Grego-Cox who obviously felt he needed a goal, took a tame penalty easily saved. At least you could see the reaction from RGC who made amends setting up Mather for a close range header for 2-2. Thank God, a replay! Then an incident where Jackson pushed a player following a bad tackle on Barrett to earn a second yellow with the Crowborough player getting a straight red. 10 v 10 for the last few minutes and the game opened up completely. We looked like favourites to find a winner. But with 89 minutes on the clock, Underwood came rushing out of his goal to clear a ball in the corner but instead of hitting it into row Z, skewed his clearance straight to a Crowborough player who lobbed back into an empty goal for 3-2. Calamitous and about summed up our day. And yet we suddenly found an urgency to attack that had not been evident the whole game and a tiring 10 man Crowborough looked out on their feet. RGC got an unlikely equaliser from close range to send the game to a Tuesday replay.

We await Dowse's verdict on the performance. Had we lost then I think his time as manager could have been up. Crowborough did themselves proud and were mightily unlucky not to win.They are in the bottom four of a league two steps below us and I'm guessing their budget is just a bit lower than ours. On this showing there's nothing between the sides and that is a big concern to supporters. Without Siziba in the squad (?injured?) we had no pace in the side, couldn't get forward quickly enough and went sideways and backwards most of the time. At no point did we really control the game until a chaotic last few minutes when it turned into schoolboy football. But one bright spark. Mather got two today and fourth in three games. I think that is telling us something. Play him as lead CF not out on the wing. He might be Charlie Moone.

Terrific report as usual Tony, thanks. What we wouldn't give for a Charlie Moone now! Moone never did that much in the way of tracking back or teamwork etc but he usually scored, so what was the problem with that? Managers tried (usually unsuccessfully) to pair him with someone, but once he was left alone to just do his own thing up front he became one of the most feared strikers at our level.
Trouble is, we now face the very real prospect of losing the replay on Tuesday and that would be a massive blow at such an early stage of the season. Unfortunately we don't look anything like the sort of buoyant, confident side who will realise they messed up badly today and will comprehensively knuckle down and beat Crowborough in the replay. And with the experienced players we number in our squad that really isn't good enough.

[Thelittleowl1]

Felt we didn't switch on properly until the last 15 minutes. Really poor performance and lucky to get away with a replay. Jasper looks fantastic and it's nice to see Reece get off the mark finally despite the missed penalty (didn't think it was a penalty myself). Thought defensively we were a mess. Jackson did himself no favours getting himself stupidly sent off which means he will be out for Dagenham. Our defence clearly our weak point this game and we paid the price.