Well that was quite a humbling experience, losing 1-3 to Histon. The first half, apart from their equalizer against the run of play, looked quite comfortable, we were dictating the play and carving out some chances. The second half was pretty shambolic. We suddenly started looking jaded and lumbering. Defensively, McNeil had a decent game, as did Wardley, but the midfield was disappointing, all too often we had 7 and 8 men behind the ball when we were losing. Its not the way to score goals. The midfield has to push up more and support the attack. Up front, only Wilde looked really interested, but he rarely got any quality service from the midfield. The pairing of Wilkin and Collins frankly didn`t work, they are too similar. Although it has to be said that the manager was without frontrunners Gutzmore , Clements and the now seemingly Dorchester-bound Matty Hann. I feel we need another striker in the mold of Dominico Genovese or Laurie Ryan to feed off the knock downs of Collins.
I was very impressed with Histon, they are undoubtably going to be in with a chance of promotion this season. They have some quality players in their team, we know all about them. They are very organised too. Neil Coburn was outstanding today, It amazes me that he was allowed to leave City, under the previous manager. Coburn is class.
All in all a disappointing afternoon, hopefully next week will see a marked improvement.
Totally agree about what has been said so far about the game today. The first half we were OK, but the second half we were just a shambles. No one seemed to have much idea what system we were playing.
I think it is becoming obvious that we need something in midfield, and someone else to work in tandem alongside Darren Collins.
McNeil does OK, but I'm not entirely convinced that he is better than what we've got.
Give Histon a lot of credit though they played well (albeit with a team made up of City rejects). They were up for it, and I would think they would go close to winning the Eastern Division title.
If City play like they did in the second half today against Newport next Saturday, then we could be in trouble!