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After Tuesday night’s defeat at Doncaster, Rovers will be looking to get back to winning ways with a win at Leyton Orient. To be honest I’m a little surprised the game is going ahead following this week’s rioting down in the capital. Add in Tottenham’s game against Everton just 4 miles down the road being postponed and it seems odd that one should go ahead but not the other.
Tranmere got the season under way with a 1-0 home win over Chesterfield with Robbie Weir scoring his first goal for the club. It was a confident performance where the scoreline didn’t reflect the dominance of the second half performance. The sides were evenly matched during the first period but Rovers were able to step up a gear after the break and should have extended their lead but first Labadie, then Akins headed wide when they should really have scored. The more comforting aspect of the performance was the desire to extend the lead after scoring and not sitting and waiting for the inevitable suckerpunch. Tuesday night wasn’t such a commanding performance as we crashed out of the League Cup in the first round, defeated 3-0 at Doncaster Rovers. It wasn’t a great start, conceding a penalty in the first 3 minutes. It was shame that after a decent start we couldn’t at least follow up the Chesterfield with another good performance even if the outcome had been the same.
It coulde be worse however as Leyton Orient started their season with a disappointing defeat away at unfancied Walsall. The Orient fans must have known it wasn’t to be their day when former O’s player Chambers, released in the summer, scored a screamer to give his new club all three points. Concerns will hardly have been dismissed a few days later when they struggled to see off League Two side Southend United, only winning on 4-3 on penalties. What will be a concern for them, but a benefit for us is that the team that played on Tuesday only had two changes from the side that started on Saturday and appears to be their first choice eleven. What’s more, FA Cup hero Tehoue got himself sent-off and won’t be available for selection tomorrow.
The last meeting between the two clubs came on the penultimate game of the season just 104 days ago. It was a meaningless end of season game for us, but a vital game for them as they continued to chase an unlikely play-off berth. They’d be on a fine run of form on in the league, which inspired their cup run to the Emirates. So when Rovers won 3-0 it was really quite surprising, but amazing. We completely destroyed their game plan by playing a high line and pressed Orient at every opportunity. It was the day Adam McGurk finally showed us what he’d been promising to do, scoring twice. The goal of the day however went to Aaron Cresswell who smashed in a left footed drive from 30 yards. It was a phenomenal performance that demonstrated exactly what this squad was capable of when they were allowed to play with some freedom.
Despite the strong performance last time we were down in east London, I can’t see us getting much from this game. I think the home side will be more determined to right their wrongs of last weekend whilst we’ll be playing to not lose as we did for last chunks of last season. However, it’ll be interesting to see how Les Parry sets up for our travels this season. Will it be another season of hoping to struggle to safety hoping we dull our opposition into giving us goals, or whether we’ll play with more of a spark and hope to win the game for once.
Unfortunately I can’t be at the game tomorrow, and indeed my first game isn’t until Brentford on the 27th August.
Predicton:
Leyton Orient 2 – 0 Tranmere Rovers
Tranmere got the season off to a winning start for first time since 2006 – a home win against Oldham Athletic. Funnily enough this was also a 1-0 against a side that John Sheridan managed that played in blue. It was nice to look at the table and see ourselves up in 7th place, which is the first time we’ve been in the top half since we finished in that position in the 2008/09 season under Ronnie Moore (under whom we beat Oldham back in August 2006). That’s right, it’s been over 2 years since we were last positioned in the top half of the table. But just how important was yesterday’s win over the reigning League Two champions, and how big a blow will that prove to be for Chesterfield?
As it turns out the statistics do not really add any weight to the notion that it’s vital to win your opening fixture. At first glance there does appear to be a pattern for in the last five years, with 50% of the sides who were relegated losing on the first day. Conversely, 30% of the teams that have been relegated from League One since 2006/07 have actually started their campaign with a win. Logically this makes sense, as you’d expect the four worst sides in the division to struggle from the off. The picture is altered however when you factor in the 15 teams to win promotion over the same period with only a third of the sides that have been promoted have won on the opening day. Of the sides to win promotion in the last five years, 47% of them have actually started the season with a defeat. Norwich City famously lost 7-1 at home to Colchester United before going on to win promotion as champions in 2009/10.
So, what can we take from yesterday’s positive start? From the performance and manner of the victory it sounds like we can take a lot of comfort from the victory. Performances were good across the pitch and when we took the lead we continued to press the game & perhaps should have scored another late on. This is exactly the kind of game we’d have lost last year (Bristol Rovers, Swindon Town & Yeovil Town all spring to mind). In fact, this game had all the makings of the Rochdale game last season. Last season we would have dropped deeper & deeper inviting the inevitable late goal on to us. If we can continue to keep up this mentality there might be hope for us to improve on last season after all. Our away form last season, whilst far from great wasn’t terrible and we were left to rue missed chances at home. A few more wins like this one and we could see out the season without a horrible crick in our collective necks from constantly looking over our shoulder.
Did winning yesterday really make a massive amount of difference? Statistically there is no way of knowing as at this point we’re just as likely to win promotion as we are to go down. However, the confidence boost to everybody at the club, most importantly us the fans, should mean that we can go into the rest of the season without the current feeling of, “Here we go again”. I’m sure we’ll go to Doncaster on Tuesday & get turned over before losing away at Orient & Notts County and we’ll all be suicidal again. However, unlike sixteen of the clubs in our division, we can relax knowing we have our first win on the board with clean sheet already to our name.
Tranmere Rovers vs. Swindon Town at Prenton Park – League One – 07/05/11
Well what a terribly disappointing end to the season it’s turned out to be. As far as I’m concerned this weekend has been an awful one for Tranmere Rovers Football Club and one that could be difficult to recover from come 12 months time. I won’t go into the full details of events from today (Les Parry’s new contract in case you missed it) but needless to say that I’ll be touching on it later in the week.
Saturday didn’t get off to the best start I have to admit when after a night out on Friday I woke up to find myself feeling a little worse for wear. So much so that on the train over from Leeds to the Wirral I ended up having to use the facilities in order to remember exactly what I’d ingested the night before. There I was throwing up in a train in Manchester thinking, “At least this is the worst today is going to get”. On the plus side it was a hangover that could easily be fixed thanks to the delights of a large chips & curry sauce from Eastern Delight. £2 lighter but feeling somewhat more alert I was finally able to focus on the game.
Following last weeks performance down in London it wasn’t surprising to see we started with exactly the same side:
Warner
Kay – Taylor – Goodison – Cresswell
Welsh – Robinson – Weir
Akins – McGurk – Jennings
As seems to have been a familiar theme of late, Rovers started brightly and could easily have been 1-0 up within 15 seconds. Somehow the awful kick-off & hoof into touch routine almost actually paid off. The throw in taken by Swindon was one back by Jennings who took a decent shot from about 20 yards to the left of the box. It was well blocked but fell to Robinson who had a go himself but the ball went behind off a Swindon player for a corner. From the resulting kick Ash Taylor got to the ball first at the front post and seemed to try an ambitious flick but the ball hit the side netting in front of the Swindon fans at the Cowsheds end.
Despite the early chance Rovers failed to really test the goal for the remainder of the first half and were made to look atrocious by an awful looking Swindon side. If we get played off the park by a far better team I am usually quite happy to hold my hands up in the air and concede as much. I won’t be doing that today, we made a very poor Swindon side look just poor. We put this into practice on ten minutes when we decided to gift Swindon the lead. A corner from the left was met by Swindon player who got there before Goodison and the ball fell to their left back who, with unreasonable amounts of time and space, fired easily past Warner from just six yards. It was terrible defending and we were caught napping.
It seemed we might have woken up within a few minutes though when Akins hit a shot from the right hand side of the box towards goal and their keeper could only parry the shot into the path of Jennings. It was a carbon copy of the goal he scored at Hartlepool on Good Friday or at least it should have been. I’m still not sure now how he missed and assumed when the flag was raised it was for offside not because he put it wide.
The majority of the first half was quite a dull affair with the player seemingly on their holidays already. It was very much the performance that I, and I’m sure many others, had been expecting from our previous two games and completely lacked any urgency. It turns out the players had been off to Chester racecourse during the week so when comedian Les popped up after the game and said, “We weren’t at the races”, his joke fell on deaf ears.
Things were to get worse though as Rovers seemed to commit people forward without leaving anyone back or actually positioning themselves in a decent position. What inevitably happened was Swindon broke and despite taking all the pace out of their own attack managed to find plenty of space about 25 yards out in order to hit the ball towards goal. It was a good strike and to be fair quite a few fans clapped the goal in recognition but Timlin’s effort certainly hadn’t been unstoppable and indeed shouldn’t have had the time to pick his spot as he did.
So after 40 minutes we were 2-0 down at home to the worst team in the league with nothing more than an a missed open goal and a series of ballooned half chances to show for it. It was a very flat end of season game in which the complete apathy from the players was matched by the lack of atmosphere in the stands.
The second half began in identical fashion to the first and within a minute or so Rovers could easily have been back in the game and given themselves something to chase. A superbly taken free-kick by Aaron Cresswell, who by the sounds of things was playing his last game in a Tranmere shirt, struck in the inside of the post after looping over the Swindon keeper. Unfortunately the ball fell kindly to Akins who missed what seemed like another open goal.
From then on in we offered very little in the way of attacking threats for the next 25 minutes with only the introduction of Labadie for Akins really making any attacking sense. Indeed Labadie was unlucky not to get a penalty as he seemed to get fouled as he broke into the box but as usual his claims were denied.
The most dramatic moment of the game for us happened in the 70th minute when Les Parry showed all 5,000+ Tranmere fans in the ground why he shouldn’t have been offered a further one year deal. With us chasing the game, not very hard mind but chasing all the same, Robinson our most creative and threatening player on the day was replaced by Mark McChrystal who slotted into the centre back spot whilst 38 year old Ian Goodison was thrown up top. Rather than using the game as a chance to blood some youngsters Parry kept the same team and when that was working desperately threw our most frail player (after Mahon) into the thick of it needlessly. The response to this decision from the fans & players alike was clear to see as one massive feeling of discontent went up.
The game kind of fizzled out after that, which is really saying something as up to that point it had been an awful game. In the end the final whistle went and players made their way to the tunnel before re-emerging about five minutes later for a lap of honour to take the applause for their efforts over the season. I stayed to the end for a few reasons;
So that’s it for another year. Not as dramatic as the end of last season but yet seemingly a lot less to proud of. When Les came in last year the football was terrible but we survived against all the odds. This year we survived just as we should have done but without ever really attacking any teams until the last week in April. Indeed I think it’s quite fitting that we finish in 18th (the position we’ve been in pretty much since February) behind Oldham in 17th on the same amount of points, goal difference & goals scored. In fact the only thing that separated the two sides over the course of the season was our head to head record. That’s right, our final league position came down to a result on the first game of the season when we played at home and decided to try and avoid defeat. It sums up our season and our time under Les and gives us a lot to look forward to in 2011/12.
Still give it three months and I’m sure I’ll be itching to go again but for now I need to re-charge my batteries and enjoy the sunshine whilst it’s still here. I’ll be going through our season, our players under contract/released as I did last year and start my summer blogs into our new opposition fixtures over the next 12 weeks.
Rovers MotM: Ian Goodison – Even when he was at centre back he was our best playmaker & defender before becoming our most effective striker of the day.
Attendance: 5,302
Final League Position: 18th
It seems strange to think that tomorrow is the final game of the season and that we have the chance to finish the season with three straight victories. It seems odd now that a month ago I was laying into the club over our poor performance at Sheffield Wednesday on a night when it seemed we were doomed to relegation. Wins against Bournemouth & Dagenham put us back in the driving seat and despite missing the chance to seal safety at home to Notts County positive results over the Easter weekend meant what we’d feared all season could no longer happen. Indeed we seemed to be incredibly relaxed and went into our game at Leyton Orient with all pressure and showed what we’re capable of and arguably what we could have been doing all season had we set-up to win, not to avoid defeat.
Things aren’t quite so rosy for Swindon Town who, just 11 months after losing in the Play-Off Final to Millwall at Wembley, find themselves stuck to the bottom of the division and preparing for League Two football for next season. Their fall from grace is quite spectacular and really shows the importance to build on a positive season and not undergo full scale changes – something we learnt only recently falling from 7th in 2009 to 19th last season. The loss of Greer & Paynter in the summer with no suitable replacements brought in was the beginning of the end for Town which only got worse when Charlie Austin, still Swindon’s top scorer this season, left for Burnley in January. Vincent Pericard was the man left with the responsibility to try and score the goals desperately needed if Swindon were to escape the drop. The player with the most goals that still plays for Swindon is on loan Portsmouth winger Matt Ritchie, who has scored just 7 league goals all year. In fact it takes the cumulative total of the Swindon’s three top scorers to surpass the total Charlie Austin scored from August to January.
Tranmere go into the game however feeling largely positive having scored 7 in our last 2 games, keeping clean sheets in both games. I’m feeling strangely confident that we should win tomorrow and that isn’t a feeling I get very often. Certainly if we approach the game in the same we have against Exeter City & Leyton Orient, who were both chasing a play-off place when we played them, then we really should be too much for a Swindon Town team who can’t even play for the pride of not finishing bottom. It’ll be interesting to see how Les sets up as in both games we’ve played two different systems, which have both worked very effectively. Against Exeter we played with a more traditional 4-4-1-1 with Robinson playing just behind Enoch pulling the strings, but against Orient we played our normal 4-5-1/4-3-3 but mixed with a high tempo pressing game disrupting their passing game but allowing us to play ours. Either way hopefully it’ll be full of attacking intent and come full time I hope we’ll be going into the summer happy with how things ended, even if we’re not happy with everything up to that point.
With news coming out this week that Bakayogo has earnt himself a new 2 year contract it reminded me we are about to go into the annual merry go round that is the summer transfer window. It sounds like Cresswell won’t be with us next season, Les saying that 4 or 5 Championship clubs are looking at him. I’d heard rumours saying just that but figured they must be way off as whilst Cresswell is decent, I don’t rate him as highly as Andy Taylor and he seems to have struggled at that level. It also sounds like Alan Mahon, who hasn’t made a single first team appearance this season despite apparently being our highest earner, will agree to terminate his contract at the end of this season with a year left still outstanding. If this is true I wouldn’t be surprised to see him making a five minute cameo at the end of the game tomorrow to say goodbye to the club properly after he never got the chance to do so when he left in 2000.
For the Record – LP Speaks:
Les Parry told the Official Tranmere Rovers site: “”It’s important to keep our run going. Teams generally start the season in good form if they ended the previous one in good form.”
Parry says Swindon’s relegation this season shows just how closely fought games in League 1 can be, with the Robins having reached the Play Offs only 12 months ago with a similar squad.
“It’s a great example of how tight it can be [in League 1], and a great example of slippery slopes. Once you get on that slope trying to stop that slide is very difficult. That’s why we’ve put a lot of work into trying to stop consecutive defeats. [Swindon caretaker manager Paul Bodin] has been making noises this week about unless people want to play for Swindon they won’t be playing on Saturday which is brilliant, that’s what their fans want to hear. So he’ll be picking a side that will come out and give 100%, not a side that has booked a couple of weeks in the Maldives and is thinking about which factor sun tan lotion to buy.”
OMW,B! Prediction
Tranmere Rovers 3 – 1 Swindon Town
Last Result
Form
Top Scorer
League Position
Last Meeting
Swindon Town 0 – 0 Tranmere Rovers – League One – Tuesday 25th January 2011
Leyton Orient vs. Tranmere Rovers at Brisbane Road – League One – 30/04/11
How nice it was to travel down to London yesterday without having to worry about needing to win to have a chance to stay in the division. Fortunately our result against Exeter last week meant our last away day of the season would be a comfortable one, and with the sun shining it was to prove to be a perfect day out. I think the fact I expected us to get nothing out of the game helped in that sense as there seemed, to me at least, nothing to lose. I arrived in sunny Leyton with plenty of time to spare so took my time to have a look around the ground as opposed to running straight there last season. That was primarily down to the fact that rather uncharacteristically the Tube I actually needed to use was working without any problems. That’s not to say there weren’t problems, just that for once London didn’t manage to ruin my day by just being there (incase you hadn’t noticed I’m not a fan of London – my thoughts on the place can be summed up here).
Orient have done a really good job of modernising most of Brisbane Road. They have developed all four corners of the ground into plush looking flats which in places overlook the pitch. Certainly handy if your season ticket was also your home, although this season I’m sure many Rovers fans couldn’t think of anything worse. It’s a prime example of how to keep character to a stadium but yet being able to maximise commercial revenue to keep the club making money aside from the fortnightly gate receipts. It’s something that we can only dream of achieving whilst we have Prenton Park in it’s current guise and underlines the importance of bringing the mainstand into the 21st century and the need for executive boxes or anything that can gain us some much needed cash.
One thing that did make me laugh though was the cheerleaders they had on before kick-off. Now I’m not necessarily against cheerleaders at football, it’s something pleasant to look at and is fairly harmless fun. What I do find odd however is when clubs decide to use cheerleaders who aren’t older than about 14. What’s the point in that? Especially when the cheerleaders are dressed up and doing routines that are, shall we say, slightly more risque than perhaps they ought to be for someone who is only 14. That said, it was quite funny when the “Cheery Os” performed they pre-match routine in the centre circle only to receive the full brunt of the pitch sprinkler system to the face. Fair play to them they did carry on and smiled about it but it certainly made what is normally a slightly awkward few minutes somewhat more bearable.
Following the news that Enoch had broken his leg in the game against Exeter it meant Rovers would be forced to make a change up front. This coupled with Joss’ returned from suspension meant that Les would potentially have a selection headache. Of course Les being Les, this wasn’t really the case and McGurk, who’d been coming on as a late sub went straight into Enoch’s place and Joss could only manage a place on the bench. In fairness after our trouncing of Exeter it seemed right that most of the same players got their chance to go again. However we did revert back to our now familiar away tactic of 4-3-3:
Warner
Kay – Taylor – Goodison – Cresswell
Weir – Robinson – Welsh
Akins – McGurk – Jennings
I was slightly less surprised, but still equally pleased, with the way Tranmere started to the game. We pushed our hosts back up the pitch by applying pressure on Orient the moment they put their foot on the ball. It was a bold move on such a warm day as it was going to require each and every player to run continuously for 90 minutes. It seemed to be working as Leyton Orient seemed shocked by our high tempo start but continued to try to play their own passing game. Despite retaining the ball Leyton Orient failed to open up the Rovers defence and indeed it was Tranmere who carved open the first chance. A corner was whipped in from the right and Weir, finding spacing at the backpost headed over.
It was a warning that Leyton Orient failed to pick up on. On 8 minutes Rovers won another corner from a decent strike from Cresswell forced a fine stop from the Orient keeper. From the resulting corner they failed to clear the ball properly and McGurk reacted smartly by laying the ball back to Cresswell who was covering at the back. With a smart first touch he seemed to set himself up for a whipped cross but what he actually delivered was somewhat more special. With no Orient players closing him down he smashed the ball goal ward and left the keeper with no chance of saving it. It was a wonder goal and one that was deserved from the opening 10 minutes. It was the kind of goal our players wouldn’t even think of attempting normally but with the pressure off and, heaven forbid, the players looking like they were enjoying themselves.
Tranmere continued to press Leyton Orient who were struggling to get the ball out of their own half. They were playing the ball around their back four at every opportunity but when it came to probing the Tranmere defence they seemed to run out of ideas and the ball would keep going out of play. In fact more often than not they’d try an outrageous pass which would sail out of play.
We weren’t even being tested by a side that had to win to have a chance of reaching the play-offs. For the second game in a row we were totally out playing a side that should have and normally would have been turning us over without any problems. Despite their passing it was Rovers who made the better chances. Jennings went close after winning the ball back and cutting inside. It seemed to be heading wide all the way but as it reached the goal it couldn’t have been more than a foot wide of the goal and a deserved second seemed so close.
The Orient fans to their credit continued to back their team despite their team just not turning up. In fact it was how they responded all game and even when they were 3-0 down they were superb in backing their team. If a neutral had come in around the hour mark they’d struggle to pick which team were 3-0 up.
Rovers should have been clear by half time and just like in the Exeter game, the crucial goal in the game just before the break. Tranmere were doing a good job of keeping the pressure up and following yet another short goal kick Orient shot themselves in the foot. Jennings & Weir forced the Leyton Orient defence to make too many passes at the back and Weir was able to pounce on a slight piece of mis-control and slide in and sent the ball into McGurk’s path. He seemed to have an unreal amount of space between the two Orient defenders about 30 yards from goal. Taking a couple of touches he steadied himself for a shot and I thought to myself he must be mad shooting from there when he has so much time & space to run into. With a quick movement of his foot he proved why he’s the pro and I pay to watch. It was a fantastically well placed finish into the bottom left hand corner. It was the goal we and McGurk deserved and put us well and truly in the driving seat at just the right time.
It was a fantastic first half performance and one that even now makes you wonder why we didn’t approach games like this back in August when there was zero pressure on us then too. If we’d have done that then perhaps we wouldn’t have had to put up with so many horror shows over the last 8 months.
Things were to get even better just after the break too. Orient made a couple of changes at half time, realising the game might be up without a quick goal and knowing the Bournemouth were winning up at Hartlepool, even a win might not be enough to keep them in the play-off picture. It wasn’t to be for Orient this season though as four minutes after the break we were able to have the game wrapped up in a neat little package. Cresswell was able to send in a dangerous curling free-kick from the left hand corner of the Orient box which seemed like it was going to miss everyone. McGurk though was to have other ideas and was able to shape himself and the ball hit his chest and bounced off him into the net. Just 49 minutes in and the game was over.
From then on Tranmere began to sit deeper and weren’t so forthcoming in their attempts on goal. However, due to how we’d defended in the first half, which had been a masterclass in how to take a lead and keep it, I was never in any fear of us throwing this one away. That’s no mean feat as, you may have noticed from my predictions, I am pretty pessimistic when it comes to things I expect Tranmere to do. As I mentioned before it wasn’t a lack of support from the home fans that let their players down, they were exceptional, it was just the players had no answer to our tactics.
The only sour note of the day game on the hour mark when McGurk had to go off injured. It looked like cramp, and certainly that seemed to be the case as Jennings tried to help out – much to the annoyance of our bench who shouted at him to get back and defend. It was a fantastic display from the former Aston Villa trainee who reacted incredibly well to being ask to fulfill the role of Enoch Showunmi, something I don’t think many expected anyone else to be able to do. His two goals were very contrasting but both were the kind of goals you want your strikers to be scoring. Hopefully this will convince Les that Adam deserves at least another year to show what he can do.
In his place came Joss Labadie who despite playing only half an hour managed to pick up his customary bookin, although it has to be said it was pretty harsh. Akins was penalised for a foul on the half way line but the ball fell to Labadie who struck an instinctive first time shot towards goal before he could have had time to react to the whistle. The referee, who I thought had a decent game apart from this and booking Jennings for taking a quick free-kick in the first half, seemed to relish the prospect of booking the league’s least disciplined player.
Zoum was introduced not long after Joss, taking the place of Jennings who appeared to be back to his confident self. More good pressing from Bakayogo allowed him to block a pass and react fastest and dribble down the wing. He put in what appeared to be a curling cross to the far post, in fact it was incredibly deep as the ball looped over the keeper and struck the inside of the post and bounced out.
Leyton Orient’s best chance came late on as Dean Cox, who was by far and away their best & most influential player, forced a reaction save from Tony Warner but despite being required all game, Warner reacted with a smart save with the top of his arms/shoulder. With the midfield starting to tire Les made his final change, bringing on Blanchard for Robinson and Rovers were able to see the game out with relative ease.
It was the perfect end to a far from perfect season away from home. However, credit has to go to Les and the lads for putting in a non-stop performance at ground that has seen many teams come unstuck, even famously Arsenal weren’t able to come away with a win there this season. It was the kind og game that made you proud to be a Rovers a fan again and on the train home I was able to wear the shirt with pride, and perhaps just as importantly, I was smiling all the way back to Leeds.
Rovers MotM: Robbie Weir – Difficult this one as there were plenty of outstanding performances but he never let up with his hassling and he was able to play some good passes when he got the ball himself.
Attendance: 5,302 (331 SWA)
New League Position: 15th
Next Match: Tranmere Rovers vs. Swindon Town – League One – Saturday 7th May
Next OMW,B! Match: Tranmere Rovers vs. Swindon Town – League One – Saturday 7th May
If I was an Orient fan I’d be rubbing my hands with glee following our result against Exeter on Monday. Not only did we eliminate one of their main rivals for a play-offs but in doing so secured our own safety ensuring that we had nothing to play for in our remaining games, starting with Orient away tomorrow. As I just mentioned Leyton Orient are having a blinding season, building on their famous FA Cup run by challenging Bournemouth for the final spot in the League One Play-Offs having, like Exeter, last season finished on the same amount of points us.
Orient head into this game having won their last two games and managed to keep the pressure up on Bournemouth who a few weeks ago looked like they might steal the final automatic spot, but now look incredibly shaky about involved in the season beyond 7th May. Unfortunately for us the key success to their season so far has been their home form, losing just four games at home in the league all season, and with them fighting for promotion they will be looking to give their fans a decent send off before their final game at potentially already relegated Plymouth.
We head into the game with a completely different mindset. With safety assured I’m sure most of our players are already on their holidays. This combined with Enoch breaking his fibia & McChrystal set to miss another game it’ll be one for a few younger players to go out and play for a contract next season. Hopefully this might finally mean McGurk gets his chance to try and impress. With Goodison getting old it would make sense to rest him too giving Ash Taylor and Nick Wood/Max Blanchard a chance to prove themselves perhaps one more time and hope their desire to fight for a place will prove a suitable match. Knowing our squad, who have yet to show much desire typified by our lack of ability to come back from a goal down, this simply won’t be the case and if Orient can grab an early goal I can’t see us getting back into it.
Last year we faced Leyton Orient 4 times, twice in the league and twice in the FA Cup first round following a draw at Prenton Park forced a replay at Brisbane Road. Ash Taylor provided the only goal of the game that evening but Leyton Orient got their revenge just 4 days later when despite a first half equaliser from Charlie Barnett we lost 2-1. Typically it was the second of the two games I was able to make and witnessed the defeat. On the plus side though it was the first game that covered for Oh My Word, Barlow!.
This Time Last Year
Tranmere Rovers 2 – 0 Millwall – League One – 01/05/2011
An Ian Thomas-Moore penalty and a stunning goal from on loan Andy Robinson saw us pick up three vital points in our late surge for safety, whilst denying Millwall the opportunity to leapfrog Leeds United into second place. In what was probably the biggest game of the day due to it’s effects on both ends of the table my nerves were playing havoc with me. However, it took until just before half time for either side to get their noses in front in a game where the first goal was always going to be critical. Luckily for us it was Tranmere who took the lead when Ian Thomas-Moore broke into the box and seemed to trip over his own legs which the referee interpreted as a foul and pointed to the spot. As usual Ian Thomas-Moore proved how valuable he was in these situations and slotted home to put us one up. Millwall wasted a few vital chances before Andy Robinson popped up with the ball 25 yards out and struck this beauty:
And with that glorious strike Rovers were able to keep their chances of survival alive keeping within touching distance of the three sides above them. It would still require a win for Tranmere and then hoping teams above us would win, but when it had looked beyond us we managed to haul ourselves back in and set up a must win game away at already relegated Stockport County.
For the Record – LP Speaks:
Les Parry told the Official Tranmere Rovers site: “The lads have the same aim as me. They want on their CV that they’ve finished as high as possible in this division. So I’m sure they’ll still give everything. We’ll approach both games in the same way. I said to my staff two weeks ago that whenever we’re safe we don’t change anything. We still look at the DVD of the other side, we still look at the DVD of our last game and go through the positives and negatives. We will prepare exactly the same as we always do.
Adam has come in and done well and looks a player. He’s definitely in the running to replace Enoch. We’ll have a little look at it today and tomorrow to see how we’re going to go. It’s not just a straight swap. Enoch is the only player we’ve got of his type who has that sort of presence. So it may mean changing things around a little bit.”
OMW,B! Prediction
Leyton Orient 2 – 0 Tranmere Rovers
Last Result
Form
Top Scorer
League Position
Last Meeting
Tranmere Rovers 1 – 2 Leyton Orient – League One – Saturday 11th December 2010
Previous OMW,B! Visit:
Leyton Orient 2 – 1 Tranmere Rovers – League One – Saturday 21st November 2009
