I’m a bit baffled by the overwhelming doom and gloom on here. I actually thought Boston did alright considering the sending off. No, Tamworth aren’t much good, but managing to get back onto level terms with ten men is no mean feat regardless of who you’re playing. And actually, for a while we looked the more likely to score again until an unfortunate ricochet caught us out and began a short sequence of events that let Tamworth in again. On the balance of play, a draw would have been a fair result, so I can’t buy into this “we’re no better than last season†narrative, as last season’s shambles would have probably ended up losing that by three goals or more.
That said I have to agree that playing Karl Hawley alone up front is never going to be fruitful; to say it was a mistake though is a bit harsh as surely we all expected that AM was going to do that with Gregg suspended. AM realised it was futile and changed things at half time, and look what happened. Kabongo must surely start against Chorley.
Adam Chapman – I get that he’s AM’s righthand man out on the pitch, but it seems to me that a lot of our own players don’t actually like him given their reactions to his instructions. He was laying into everyone last night, and they were starting to give him an earful back. This is definitely not a good thing, even if he were somehow blessed with the passing range of Xavi.
In short, this is a team that I believe is lots better than last season’s, but is still flawed. The defence can look wobbly, we’re picking up too many cards, I worry about the lack of options up front and I fret constantly that Adam Chapman is going to push one of our own players into doing something daft.
But – and this is a big but – we have much more talent in this team now. AM just needs to work out how best to unlock it. I don’t think we need to despair just yet.