Planet Swans ArchivesSwans started by handing a debut to Shaun Byrne, on loan from West Ham and bringing James Thomas into the side due to the suspension/injury to Lee Trundle. New signing Alan Tate had to be content with a place on the bench (surely cringing at some of the things in the first half)
Freestone
Byrne O’Leary Iriekpen Howard
Martinez
Maylett Robinson Connolly
Nugent Thomas
Swansea started badly and gradually got worse in the first half. Izzy’s new blue boots firmly proved that blue has no place on the football field as he became unable to string one pass together and with Byrne showing nothing special on his debut, the defence was very shaky. Up front we showed nothing with Nugent winning a few headers in the air but everything was coming down yellow as Torquay simply looked as if they wanted it more.
It was 35 minutes before Swansea mustered a shot on goal – Martinez hitting a stinger well held by the Torquay keeper. But by this time the Swans were one down and could have been two or three as they gifted chances to the opposition. O’Leary flapped at a ball played back (badly) to him leaving David Graham the easy chance of lifting the ball over the advancing Freestone and into the back of the net. Just five minutes later it was Izzy’s turn to gift him a ball to run onto but this time his shot lifted over Roger but thankfully over the bar at the same time. Swansea were still in a game that should have been beyond them.
Up front we missed Trundle in that we weren’t able to create out of nothing which is something that we have to do as no-one else seems capable of creating. Maylett failed to beat his man on numerous occasions, Robinson did what Robinson does but to no avail and Martinez drew a gasp from the crowd when he went down holding his knee. Fearing the worse, the crowds spirits were lifted when he got up and carried on but in truth he added little to the side and isn’t the same player at the moment that he was last season.
Connolly was two yards off the very slow pace and Torquay could feel unlucky that they went in at half time just one goal to the good.
With no changes at half time (what a surprise!) Swansea started brightly and a goalmouth scramble saw three shots blocked without troubling the keeper and the Swans looking as if they may actually want to get back into the game. This lasted all of five minutes as the pattern of play deteriorated to that of the first half with Torquay happy to neutralise our attacks and look for the breakout. Neutralising wasn’t hard against an impotent attack.
Coates replaced Connolly to no real effect and Thomas was jeered off the pitch – out of order for any player – when he was replaced by Pritchard. Torquay for their part brought on Kuffoor and Tony Bedeau – both of whom caused more problems for us than our substitutes did for them. Of course throughout all of this we reverted to the fail safe method of the long ball to Nugent and again it bought the usual results of nothing.
Tate came on for Izzy – who at half time had swapped blue boots for white – and it was not long after that the Swans grabbed a fortunate equaliser. Nugent shot across goal only to see the ball deflected off defender/goalkeeper and into the net. It was the only way we were likely to score and it was not what we deserved.
Torquay though hit back soon after but not before Michael Howard had just missed the goal with a pass back and it was the same player failing to look to put a challenge in on Kuffoor who calmly went around him and fired home – justice was being done.
Laughably as the referee showed three minutes of injury time, the Swans were awarded a corner. As Roger joined the other 10 players in the penalty area we decided that a short corner was the way before predictably losing possession as we tried to play the ball back up the pitch.
Tranmere scouts watching must be looking forward to next weeks game – perhaps we were lulling them into a false sense of security that we are crap or maybe we really are.
Jeers rang out around the Vetch as the final whistle went. The buck stops with the manager for the performances of the team and today the only time Flynn was seen out of the dug out was the four minutes between our equaliser and their winner. There was no motivation, there was no orders and there was no clue. We have been heading into this mid table slump ever since we beat Huddersfield in September and the league table now is giving a pretty true reflection of where the side really should be. We are a one man team and it is probably safe to say that without the goals from Trundle then we could easily be looking at a repeat of last season’s fiasco. Don’t kid yourselves on promotion – the FA Cup run has masked how bad we really are.
The queue outside the club shop at full time could easily have been for people enquiring about the possibilities of a refund on Tranmere tickets rather than purchases and frankly you couldn’t necessarily blame them.
Something needs to change and contrary to management belief we can actually change midway through a game but Plan B doesn’t seem to exist.
Quite simply, not good enough.
