Performances like Saturday evening’s are as frustrating as they are impressive as they are difficult to surmise.
Frustrating because: why on earth can’t we be that ruthless all the time away from home? Impressive because, well, we scored five goals. And difficult to surmise because, let’s face it, the opposition were awful.
The game was done and dusted as a contest by half-time, thanks to some clinical finishing from us, but just as much some suicidal defending from the hosts.
Two more goals after the
break sealed our spot in the draw for the second round, but how much can substantially be drawn from the game remains to be seen. Here’s how the fans reacted to the win…
Much improved
With the painful context of Wednesday’s loss to those lot, the main thing for the fans was that we saw a reaction from the players. And we did.
There were some solid performances all over the pitch, particularly Liam Fraser and Charlie Savage in the middle of pitch, who have thrown their name into the conversation for some starts in the league.
Weak opposition, yes, but the players could only play what was in from them, and scored five goals in the process…
Poor opposition
It’s not often the opposition gets much of a mention from the fans after a game, but I think we were all in agreement that we came up against a pretty poor team in Peterborough United.
I must admit I do have some sympathy for Posh fans at the moment. There was a horrible familiarity watching their kamikaze defending and you could sense the toxicity rise and rise as the game went on. Been there, got the t-shirt.
There’s also the question about how much we can take from the goals, the performance and the result, with it all coming against such a weak side…
Charlie Savage
It’s only right that Savage gets a bit of a shoutout here.
The only reason this game was on TV was that the producers at TNT thought the father/son dynamic was too good to turn it down. Because of that, all the attention was on the Savages, and thankfully it was ours who came out on top.
Not only that, but he played ruddy well too. I’ll hold my hand up, when I saw he was playing in the 10 I was not hopeful, but perhaps he can be an effective tool there after all…
Conclusion
You can’t moan too much at a 5-0 win, but what you can do is appreciate we came up against a really weak team and will face much, much sterner tests in the coming weeks.
There are some big winners and losers from the game of course; with the likes of Fraser and Savage firmly in the former camp.
It’ll be interesting to see just how Leam Richardson moves forward with this, but I guess we’ll see at Stockport County on Saturday.
