Just got home. Fk, how do you sum that up? Poor crowd but reasonable support - nothing special but a good effort after the disappointment of the Cardiff game. Utd’s support pretty crap, but it’s a long way on a Tuesday night.
Trying to look past that shit ref, I thought we played really well. First half we were all over them. Everything good came down our right. Peart-Harris had them on toast and was linking well with Key, Franco and Bianchini. Bianchini ran his nuts off. 2-0 or even 3-0 at half time wouldn’t have flattered us.
Second half and we do our usual trick of not coming out and there’s a few minutes of madness that kill the game. It wasn’t clear what Darling did - saw him go to ground, but couldn’t see through players, so I’m keen to see that back. Their pen seems to have been nailed on based on comments on here. It looked extremely soft in real time - the guy was hitting the floor whatever.
The sending off killed the game and we stopped using our right hand side which had caused them do much trouble in the first half. But I was pleased with how we kept going and pinned them back in the last 15 mins - why not bring VIP on then to get some more presence up front? Parker with 3 minutes to go was a waste of a sub, no disrespect to the lad.
I thought Utd were poor but more savvy than us. As usual, it’s us getting key moments wrong that was our undoing. It’s no wonder players cheat when refs are so easily conned. Had Pratt-Harris gone down when he was fouled in the box we probably go 2-0 up and they go down to 10 men. It’s a different game then.
Oh, and our crossing was atrocious wasn’t it? Terrible - worst I’ve seen from us. Tymon at least normally has one or two decent crosses in him, but he was poor.
Overall that was a lot better than I was expecting and it’s hard to criticise the effort. First half was excellent. With crowds dropping off though, I wonder if that will focus Coleman’s mind to the fact we need to strengthen?
