1-1..... and the good points were......
um....
Hang on, I'll think of sommat.....
Oh yeah, we got a point!
Tonight's game was exasperating, more from managerial ineptness than the team - but neither did very well.
Cheltenham won almost every arial ball so to combat this, Carlisle kept putting it into the air for them... It never fails to amaze me that when a team has an obvious advantage, we try and play them at the same game!
For me, we lacked any real width tonight. If you're going to play a 5-3-2 then your wingbacks have got to be hungry for the ball and want to stretch the opposition. We showed no signs of either.
Hopper went off after 25 mins with some injury and Pitts came on and took the rest of the half to work out where he should be on the park.
There were a few forays in the first half which were dealt with harshly by the linesman's flag and Halliday was batently fouled on the edge of the box but the ref was having none of it.
To be fair, I thought that Cheltenham closed Carlisle down well and their passes were far more accurate and probably reflected their position in the league. Their goal came in the middle of the second half with a shot from 25 yards. Weaver didn't stand a chance.
What worried me was that Carlisle heads did seem to drop however there was little threat of a second for Cheltenham.
Carlisle fought hard but had little in the way of ideas. There were several occaisions where we looked like stringing something together -usually involving Durnin or Halliday. The trouble was that whenever Halliday got hold of the ball, all supporting play seemed to stop as they watched him vainly try and beat Cheltenham on his own.
In a most perplexing substitution, Baker replaced Searle, who was having a great game up until then, with Anthony. Anthony did well and should take a lot of credit for lifting the Blues toward the end but why Searle was taken off when Bowman, playing.... I don't know where, was having a 'mare was beyond me and the rest of the Paddock.
Baker finally realised that he might have pulled the wrong guy off 10 mins from time, finally taking a poor Bowman off for Richard Tracey. Amazingly, Tracey actually contributed a bit to the game and his running at least gave the defense something to think about.
Durnin was denied a penalty from a push that everyone in the whole ground saw - apart from the linesman 10 yards away and the ref. Still, the boys did battle towards the end - although with their infuriating ability to hit high balls when Halliday is screaming for it at his feet.
I can't tell you much about the equaliser except that Soley scored from what I thought was at least 5 yards offside. Still, it cancelled out some other decisions that went against us and I don't think that Cheltenham did enough to secure all three points tonight.
There are positives to come out of this game... Cheltenham's play made us look worse than we actually were but we played badly and we got a result. The Ref & the linesmen were the worst I've ever seen at BP and they favoured Cheltenham as if it were Man-U at home. We didn't give up and scored with 15 seconds to go (and the goal stood despite from being offside). We must take heart from this, hope this marks the end of our run-in wobble and get down to Chester ready to scrap.
Roger Porthouse
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