Following Tuesday's terrible npower League One defeat to Scunthorpe United, columnist Sam Wright shares his Match Report;
FT: Walsall 1 (Grigg 90+3) Scunthorpe United 4 (Canavan 13' & 50' Duffy 30' Clarke 75')
ATT: 2,787
REF: T, Harrington
In my preview to this match I emphasised how vital this match
was in getting our season back on track. A must win game. Well, the reality was
much different to this.
The Saddlers looked shaky from the first whistle. Scunthorpe
kept the ball well and without having any real chances had a lot of good
possession around our penalty area, resulting in 2 early corners and a scramble
in the box. You would think that this would have been enough of a warning for
us to step up and show some passion in the game, but instead we gave away yet
another corner that was then converted with a free header from Niall Canavan.
Taundry claimed he was pushed, but there was little interest showed from the
referee or anybody else for that matter. A terrible start and we were 1-0 down
after just 12 minutes.
This season the team has kept the fans approval by fighting
out of these sticky starts to games, but this time it would prove to be
different. To be fair to Scunthorpe, they were playing the beautiful passing
game that we had shown earlier this season, and we couldn’t cope with is.
Featherstone was having to drop very deep to find the ball, and could only find
the centre halves of even David Grof when he did pick it up.
Anybody who reads my reports regularly will know I am a big
fan of James Baxendale, but in this one it was his inability to pick up the
ball and attack that was leading to us dropping deeper and deeper in a
desperate attempt to keep the ball against a dangerous side. Ultimately, we
were punished for this again after half hour. Karl Hawley was allowed to turn
and shoot in the box, and David Grof’s parried save fell kindly to Duffy who
slotted into an open net from close range to give the visitors what was
truthfully a 2-0 lead.
After this we did manage to keep possession well, but this
was largely due to the fact that Scunny were letting us have the ball deep as
they knew were looking unthreatening. We did have a half chance on 36 minutes
when Jones hit one from long range and it flew past the right hand post,
sparking sarcastic cheers from all over the ground for our first shot of the
game.
Just as we were giving up on the first half though, we were
handed a lifeline. David Prutton lost control of the ball and he and Chambers
both dived in towards it. Chambers came off the worst of the 2, but Prutton was
dismissed by the referee for serious foul play. Maybe we could claw this back
after all. Half time had arrived at 2-0 down, but now against 10 men.
HT: Walsall 0 Scunthorpe United 2
HT: Walsall 0 Scunthorpe United 2
The second half began with a optimistic atmosphere consuming
the home crowd that we could turn this around. Grigg was on for Jones and we
were back to good old 4-4-2. However, this renewed hope didn’t last long. Yet
another corner the undoing of us as Newey’s ball found Canavan again in too
much space to miss and he flicked it into the far corner of the goal. The
inevitable boos rang out around the ground, and in this case they were surely
justified. Our must win game, and we were 3-0 to 10 men after 49 minutes.
We then went back to the first half approach of ‘If we have
the ball they cannot score’. However this doesn’t impress the home fans when
you are 3-0 down. We were passing the ball round our defence for long periods,
not coming forward at all. The best we were managing were crosses from 40 – 50
yards out that were more often than not finding the keeper, or going straight
out.
As the game went on Scunthorpe began to realise they were not
going to lose this one, and allowed us to attack them more that we had been.
Through all of the possession we managed though, we could only get a few long
range shots in from Baxendale who tested the ‘keeper of several occasions.
However this seemed to fizzle out again as we gave up on getting anything, and
this would lead to embarrassing consequences.
As we switched off, a ball came over the top from Callum
Kennedy and found Leon Clarke in acres of space, to chip the ball over Grof’s
head and casually run it into the goal, despite Butler’s best attempts to bring
him down and get himself sent off. It was beginning to be embarrassing to
watch, Walsall 0-4 Scunthorpe.
Scunthorpe new as well as us after this that we had given up
and both teams sat back and painfully waited for our fait to be sealed. There
was, however, time for a slight consolation, as Taundry found Grigg to pull one
back in the 92nd minute, and Bowerman rushed to get the ball back to
the halfway line, hoping we could get another 4 in the next 90 seconds.
Nevertheless, a terrible day at the office for the Saddlers, and by far the
worst performance of the season so far.
FT: Walsall 1 (Grigg 90+3) Scunthorpe United 4 (Canavan 13' & 50' Duffy 30' Clarke 75')
ATT: 2,787
REF: T, Harrington