So I’ll preface my thoughts by stating that was the first time I’ve seen us since the Plymouth home game in mid-October. The wife gave birth to our second child at the end of October meaning I’ve not seen us since. In a piece of outrageously poor parenting I took the older kid to her first game of the season yesterday (driving rain, freezing cold, icy wind - kids love that right? Apologies to anyone around us in the far right of the East Stand who got fed up of the endless episodes of Mickey Mouse she was watching on her tablet, and the tantrum each time said episodes ended!)
Bearing in mind when I last saw us our recovery had barely started, I thought we were outstanding in horrific conditions. The second half was I imagine, to the neutral (and frozen toddlers) in attendance, horrendous. But I thought the way we shut the game out was a thing of beauty. We nabbed the goals in the first half, then made it a cold, wet, ugly slog keeping them at arms length. Exactly the kind of professional, calm, point-winning showing we’ve missed since the Appleton days.
Loved the Mous/Cam/Henry trilogy in midfield, I thought Ruffels was excellent at LB. Whyte and Browne can both be irritatingly naive, but they’re both so threatening to defenders at this level. If Whyte had some composure, or Browne passed a bit more rather than had his head down the whole time, we could’ve had a couple more.
Having missed much of our resurgence, I thought it was a calm and commanding performance. Still think any talk of the play-offs after our start is far too optimistic. But if (Tiger/Singha/Thohir/Thai Airlines maybe we have the cash, maybe we don’t funding dependent) we can get a couple of decent additions in January (and tellingly, permanent additions so we can build for better things next season) we have the foundations laid for a decent top half finish.
