Interesting view of our performance from the Colchester board: "Guys, we played some really good football tonight against a side whose pace, movement and allround ability is fabulous. " He never gets to the vic obviously. Maybe we should get AWAY season tickets.
To be honest even when we were winning home games the away performances were much better (we got praise from Scunny,Coventry and Norwich fans as well...)
And the Smart/Dumb balance is restored.. Appalling.................. Pinot 04/12/200722:45 ........Watford, Boothroyd, the referee and Gerken's failure to cover his back post! All that's wrong with English football has been the issue since the Croatia debacle and it was writ large tonight by Watford and their disgrace of a manager. Aided and abetted by the worst referee I have seen in decades - will he be reported as totally inadequate or in Boothroyd's pocket? Watford's muscular and over aggressive tactics were not restrained at all by the officials. To cap it all the Us players were pulled up for fouls all over the pitch and any flow to our game broken up by the inadequate in yellow. It was clear that he was determined to allow Watford to hurl the ball into our box time and again from free-kicks and that the Us were not to be given that opportunity. I think we were given one free-kick that was as close as 35 yards tonight. However, in addition to Watford and the referee the Us are just not strong enough to counter teams like Watford and we will suffer until George Williams gets his finger out and gets players in that can do a job. One change must be an experienced goalkeeper - Gerken has now been 'done' for three goals in the last two home games by his inability to cover crosses to the far post. His efforts in that area tonight were dreadful; merely flapping at the first and rooted for the second, a reprise of Palace's winner in the last home game. If Williams insists on not changing his style or strengthening the side then we will go down. The alternative is that the new owner dumps Williams for someone with a more realistic view of what the Us can achieve. The last word of my rant rests with the likes of Boothroyd who are the real enemies of football in this country; skill doesn't count but muscular aggression is the foundation. Last year he was feted by the likes of Lawrenson and Hansen for being a good progressive coach - how can they eulogise over Arsenal's style and at the same time declare what Boothroyd is doing is Ok as well. They should get out a bit more!
Is there anything they didn't rant about in that piece. I wasn't there so won't comment about our tactics etc, but they are not the first team to label us like that.
We were quite physical last night but that said so were they! Colchester are certainly no angels...they're not a big team all over the park though so most of their fouls were late tackles on the ground.
I didn't think we were as physical as we have been in past games though. It's a man's game, it's not frigging Ballet! Colchester fans are up there with the biggest wa*kers in the world...didn't really expect that from someone like them...but oh well! Colchester are a very dirty side! Williamson was kicked up in the air about 6 times last night!!
When he came on he was penalised all the time! One incident was right in front of me, he just stood his ground and the Col U player bounced off him...outrageous decision! He get's victamised all the time!
