After the festive crowd we were back down to the usual attendance. Despite having less numbers than against Leeds today’s atmosphere was possibly the best we’ve had all season, it’s just a shame the players performance didn’t match that of the fans. To no-ones surprise Roy Keane changed his team from that which had defeated Leeds only four days previous. Nosworthy came in for Nyatanga and Ross Wallace replaced Stephen Elliott.
The first half started quite brightly for the lads and despite not really dominating the game, we slightly edged Preston as the better team. We had most of the ball, yet as we’ve done in other weeks, we never made any clear cut opportunities. Mid way through the first half Caldwell went off with an injury. As we’d expect Keane brought Nyatanga on for Caldwell, though the shock to everyone in the stadium was that Nyatanga went to left back and Nosworthy went into centre half.
The shocking thing was that Nyatanga is supposed to be a central defender yet for some reason Keane thought it best to play our right back in that position. Though it didn’t make that much difference to Nosworthy’s game, he was still as poor as ever and how he plays professional football is beyond belief.
From this point on, we seemed to lose any urgency we had earlier in the first half and all features of our game became very poor. Preston’s goal, which was definitely undeserved, was an absolutely atrocious goal to have given away. Ward raced off his line to attempt to block Ormerod’s cross which went straight over him and landed on Nugents head to comfortably tap home. It sounds like a simple goal however, Nugent – who was sandwiched in between our two centre halves- somehow managed to beat them both in the air and knock the ball home. The first half fizzled out with no real creativity coming from either team.
The second half wasn’t much better than the first. Again we had lots of the ball, but not because we were playing better than Preston. Once the second half started Preston simply sat back and invited the pressure onto them, which they dealt with comfortably. Preston’s goalkeeper may as well have just sat on the bench for the whole game because he never had to make a save. Preston out battled us all over the park and when they ventured forward Nugent always looked dangerous, something that we are lacking.
What was surprising to see when our team was getting beat was that on two occasions when the ball ended up in the North Stand the fans decided to keep the ball and waste our time. Fair enough if we were winning it wouldn’t really bother me and many others if they did this. However, when you’re losing you don’t keep the ball and it is purely idiotic of these so called ‘fans’ to have done this.
Preston didn’t deserve to have won the match and a point would have been a fair reflection on the match. The difference between the two teams, other than the obvious goal, was that Preston were better organised in all parts of the field and we’re definitely lacking in organisation.
MOTM – Two names this time. David Connolly and Liam Miller, both players worked hard for the team and covered every blade of grass and received no rewards for their hard work.