Shamed Again!

I'm convinced, Fergie, for all his prowess, a Irish league legendary striker, doesn't have a clue when it comes to tactics. In our column on Friday night on Sky Blue Sport News page, we were urging him to try and stem the tide of our leaky defence. Urging him to play a 5,4,1, formation or a 4,5,1, formation, with the emphasises on defence. In the end he played a 4,5,1, formation, but there wasn't a tackler in sight in his midfield 5. Added to this, for some reason. Mike Ruddy, was deployed at centre defence and Archie at leftback.

Archie has a play anywhere mindset, but his best position is central defence, he can fill in at leftback and has done so on numerous occasions, or he can play in front of a defence 4, adding a bit of spice to midfield, but his natural position is central defence. So too with Ruddy, his natural position is leftback, but like Archie, he has a play anywhere attitude and has played centre-half before, as well as wing-back and left midfield, but his natural position is leftback. So we had two players, playing in unnatural positions, a recipe for disaster if I ever saw one.

Then Fergie in his wisdom, picked an attacking midfield that comprised the out of form Cush, he's been struggled for form since last February, Ally, who only plays in fits and starts and he was a virtual passenger yesterday. Then we come to our centre-midfield three, Captain Jenks, Thommo and Brian Mack, not a tackler in sight, which leads me to the conclusion that Fergie hasn't a clue. He was singing the praises of Cookie, in the programme and in his interview with the Ballymena Times, yet he didn't start him yesterday.

Admittedly we were a bit short on numbers, with JT and Tony suspended yesterday, we really need to stop these silly bookings, four more yesterday, its having an affect as we are short on numbers. But and emphasis the word 'but', we had Sparky on the bench and Cookie, surely those two had to start, but no Fergie went with the 'gung-ho' approach and we paid the price for his bravado. The much maligned Dwayne Nelson, vindicated his critics (I'm not one of them), with a butterfingered display, reminiscent of United keepers in the Tommy Wright era .

United fans were rightly calling for Dwayne's head, but I fear, we will have to put with him as he's better than Addis and Macauley Cairns, the only alternatives. The game itself was over as a contest in ten minutes. United, this season, have been missing numerous chances to score. I'm not talking about half-chances, I mean 'clear-cut it's easier to score than miss' chances and these things have habit of coming back to haunt you and so it proved yesterday. Fergie, in the close season signed Matthew Tipton (Tippers), to get us some goals as he had a pedigree as a goal-scorer.

He fell flat on his face yesterday, as he blazed the ball over from ten yards, with the goal at his mercy and there was a barely two mins on the clock. The move began with a forceful run by Thommo and Captain Jenks had a shot blocked and it fell kindly to Tippers, but with the goal at his mercy, he blazed the ball over the bar. The sizeable crowd in the home stand, the scum only brought measly 500 to the proceedings, miserable gets, could hardly believe it and worse was to happen two mins later.

The scum won a dubious free kick about 20 yards from our goal and referee Heth, was seen to count out eleven and a half paces for our defensive wall (I foolish thought it was only ten paces, but the rules must have changed). Up stepped McCaffrerty and he had no trouble getting his free-kick over the wall and Dwayne seemed to have it covered, but he let the ball squirm through his grasp and into the net to give the scum a fortuitous lead to say the least. Five mins later our midfield seemed to think it was good idea, to let Rory Harkin have a free shot at goal from just outside the box.

This proved to be a disastrous idea when Harkin's shot for goal and I'll give Dwayne the benefit of the doubt here, for it was a tremendous shot, but Dwayne was beaten for the second time on his left post. There was just ten mins on the clock and the game was over as a contest, Fergie's game plan had been undone, but he continued on with his tactics. It has to be said we came more into the game, but we never looked like pegging the scum back and the closest we came was from a well worked  free-kick, which saw Mack find Thommo in space, but his shot was blocked at the expense of a corner.

In the absence of Gawley (on the bench) and Tony suspended, the corner-kicking duties fell to Cush and I was telling the United players to get somebody on the opposite corner flag, knowing Cush just hits them as hard as he can and god guides them. This one was no exception as he drove the ball beyond the far post and Archie only managed to help on his way over the goal-line. I said to Sammy Patterson, if we could see Cush was no good at taking corners, why doesn't our management team see it, they have enough experience between the three of them, but he still takes them.

Disaster struck for United, when Kyley went down under a challenge and had to be stretchered off, with a suspected broken ankle, we wish him well. Cookie had to come on to see out the remainder of the half. The match had started with a minutes silence for remembrance day and it was only fitting for the team to be greeted with silence as they came off for their halftime cuppa, they had died a death and let us down in the process. What was Fergie and his management team going to say at their halftime talk I wondered idly, it was obvious that our tactics weren't working, we need a change.

2nd half
United took the field for the second-half with Darboy, replacing Ally and I think we went 4,4,2, but who was on the right-side of midfield, I honestly don't know. I can only remember one clear-cut chance in this half for us and as usual we messed it up. Tippers was fed by Mack and he drove forward and found Cush in space on the edge of the penalty box, but he screwed his shot wide, when he had at least work the keeper. I can't remember any clear-cut chances in the rest of the game. We forced some corners, but all to no avail.

Disaster struck for the second time, midway through the half when Ruddy limped off, leaving us short of defenders for our match on Tuesday night against Dungannon in the league cup. Sparky, at last got some game time and Jenks moved in alongside Cookie in defence. But it was too little too late as far as United were concerned and the scum looked the likelier to score and Dwayne saved well from a Miskimmon header. Archie got a slice of luck when he looked to have upended a scum player in the box, but Heth gave him the benefit of the doubt.

United were denied what seemed a cast iron penalty, when a Scum defender handled in the box, but the lino wasn't having none of it and Heth ignored our pleas. Cush had a free-kick go off the scum wall for a corner and although we piled players into the box we couldn't get a telling touch on the ball. The game was summed up for me with about two mins of normal time remaining and Sparky wanted to take a quick throw-in level with the scum penalty box, but not one of our forwards or midfield players were willing to go into to space to receive it, they just stood there like mutton dummies.

Sparky became our third player to be cautioned, but it was not a bad foul, but it was a foul. In added time Darboy found his name in the referee's book, making it four United players booked, Ruddy had been booked before he was injured and Cush for a clumsy tackle in the first-half, no fair play points for us this season. Mack, our best player by a long chalk, had blocked what seemed like a certain goal and at the other end had a couple shots from long-range, which never troubled the scum keeper.

When the final whistle sounded I couldn't wait to get out of the ground, our team had let us down once again, we had been beaten for the fifth game running, four league games and there seemed no light at the end of the tunnel. It has since been reported that Kyley had indeed broken his ankle, adding to our defensive causalities, Fergie and his team have a real crises on their hands, it'll be interesting to see how they go about resolving it, I can hardly wait for Tuesday night, lol!


Dwayne (5), Marky (5), Archie (5), Kyley (5) (Sub: Cookie 6,), Ruddy (5) (Sub: Sparky 6,), Ally (Sub: Darboy 5,), Cush (5), Mack (7), Jenks (5), Thommo (6), Tippers (5)

Man of the match: Brian Mack