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NOT A DISAPPOINTMENT...
Tuesday, 25th January 2005 . |
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Previous Reports: |
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Flying High
Fans Report: |
It was
truly a game of two halves - the first was action-packed with
incident at either end of the pitch,
the second was fairly
dire with very little to get excited about.
Although
Gary Megson will doubtless try to weave some magic, on the
evidence
of this performance he's got
a lot of work to do. Forest, with the exception of Andy Reid,
looked quite poor and, considering the
chances they squandered, obviously
lacking in confidence. More worryingly
from his point of view, I would have
thought, is that several players looked overweight and not all
that sharp. Reid himself looks to be
carrying a few pounds, but was
nonetheless the only one who looked a potential
matchwinner.
I felt
Albion, with all the pre-match talk of not losing the game, were
always content simply to draw, and
this seemed to take away any genuine
desire to go looking for a win. Obviously
if Leon Knight's early penalty hadn't been brilliantly saved
by Paul Gerrard, it would have changed
the complexion of the
game. There were three other occasions in the first
half
when he also denied the Albion.
But
Kuipers too made a marvellous one-handed reaction stop to push
Reid's quick free kick onto the bar,
so the game could be
said to have been dominated by the keepers. And,
indeed,
the more worrying focus for
the Albion was the injury near the end to the former Dutch Marine.
In flying
in to a melee and punching clear
he evidently dislocated his right shoulder. Chris May did OK in
his brief spell as sub goalie, but
we'll obviously need to bring in an
experienced loanee with Ben Roberts still
not fit to return.
So a point
gained, and the 12-point gap between the teams was
maintained,
but a bit more adventure wouldn't
have gone amiss. When McGhee replaced Hart with Nathan Jones,
I can only imagine what
Molango
must have been thinking. Is he
ever going to get a game in the remaining
two and half years of his
contract?
Nick
Turrell
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