Tilson derailed by an unfair advantage?

A reasonably mild Tuesday evening near the Thames estuary, two wins on the bounce and the prospect of playing a team that has struggled when on the road, the pre-match even music featured that catchy tune by the Kaiser Chief`s – ‘I predict a riot’. There was me sitting not too far away from the press office in the East Stand thinking will we get 2,3 or even more tonight, how wrong could I am the other 6 odd thousand fans be?

Where do I start? – Not an easy question having witnessed one of the worst performances for quite some time.

Crewe came here playing and maybe hoping for a draw, they set their team up to defend and defend they did, well when I say defend I really mean get 11 men behind the ball – I think one senior commentator has previously referred to it as ‘parking the bus in front of goal!’

Southend started fairly lively with a couple of good looking runs from Theo Robinson, unfortunately there wasn’t to be a Blue body on the end of the resulting crosses.

Some words, broken English I am thinking were exchanged between Dorian Dervite and Steve Mildenhall regarding the keepers distribution and from then on an pretty much the whole game the French defender made himself available for a short pass out, this produced a slower tempo build up which was not to all the fan’s liking, personally I think it gave us a chance to keep the ball and build up rather than have it just pinged back and forth.

Franck Moussa had Southend’s first effort on goal which was reasonably struck however to quote a standard phrase was straight down the keeper`s throat, 2 or 3 yards either side and we would have been up on our feet celebrating the young Belgium`s shooting skills!

No one could really get a grip on the game, Dougie Freedman tried with his experienced head but Crewe always had plenty of bodies in front of him, Peter Clarke went on many a marauding run but lacked the killer pass, our midfield battled huffed and puffed, there were signs that this wasn’t going to be a good game already.

Then came a piece of poor refereeing, a foul by Dougie as he was chasing back about 6-7 yards outside the Blues box, the ref played the advantage as it broke to a Crewe player, there was a pass to the wing and then a cross into the box, Mildenhall caught the ball with ease – wait, a whistle from the ref and he now wants to give a free kick for the earlier challenge! Surely not as they had the advantage for a good while and the railwaymen gave the ball away to Southend – we never took it off them.

You won’t by now need me to tell you the outcome; it`s fair to say that you will have read it elsewhere,

One nil to Crewe, Mildy will probably feel he could have been less flat footed when he sees the replays?

At this point I am not too worries as I really did think the Shrimpers quality and resilience would avail, another mistake on my part.

Some changes we made in the 2nd half to try to get us back in the game, Osei Sankofa coming off for Francis Laurent – it would appear that Simon Francis didn’t get the memo as he was totally unsure of whether he was now at right back or part of a 3-4-3 formation, for what it is worth Steve Tilson should have removed Franno from the battle as he was probably our worst player on the night, stray passing and poor control coupled with that short corner routine that was caught off side at least 2 times, Tilson YOU MUST STOP THIS AS IT IS NOW GETTING BEYOND A JOKE! Plus if memory serves me right there were 2/3 corners that Simon took and they didn’t get off the ground – wasted, wasted opportunities.

Young Theo who for my money was our best player, possibly along with Clarkey or Dougie was replaced by Lee Barnard close to 80 mins in, the issue that I had at this point was that we had so many attackers but very little width to actually get the ball in to them, as I said earlier Franno wasn’t playing well and the Moose who fared a little better isn`t really known for his crossing ability – the two wide men were still warming the bench, well one of them was at least running up and down the touchline.

On came Kevin Betsy with 6 mins on the clock, a little on the late side Steve? Unfortunately the game was pretty much over apart from a late penalty claim from Barney.

I had plenty of summing up time as I travelled back home by train to Harlow, a not very enjoyable evening out that ended just after midnight having jumped in a black cab at the station, Tilson said he was bored during the match, well not as much as me! – Will I be doing it again? Yes of course but please can the experienced players in the team try more to get a grip on proceedings!

Up the Blues