Reaction to the Darlo victory

For the first time in god knows how long, I have no real complaints about the match. A comprehensive 3-0 win over Darlington has restored a lot of optimism at this club and even LJL and Jamie Clarke looked half-decent.

For the last two years, including towards the end of Schofield's reign, I have gone into every reaction with at least one major criticism, but other than the fact we could and probably should have scored at least five against a poor Darlington team, I have nothing really negative to say. For the last eight/nine months I have been using stats, figures and any other useful piece of information I could get my hands on to show that Peter Jackson was not the right man for the job, only scoring in two of his last ten competitive games is a bit of a clue.

It's hard to say at this stage who I want as manager. I think I was the first person to go on record last time stating that I wanted Peter Jackson, so I'm avoiding that situation again as I don't want to be firmly in anyone's camp and then end up regretting it again. However, based purely on the performance against Darlington, I would be happy for Simon Clarke to be given a fairly decent chance.

Anyway, onto the game. Our first 3-0 home win in nearly five years, LJL and Jamie Clarke playing well, and scoring as many goals as the rest of the season combined, there are many things to talk about in this reaction, so we'll start with the performance. From the first minute until the very last, we were the dominant team in the game, something I haven't been able to say for near enough three years. Not one player put in a bad performance, the players actually showed they cared and it was just a great chance from the days of Jackson.

I said to my friend Ash early on that every player appeared to be told to go out and express themselves and it was obvious that both LJL and Jamie Clarke took this to heart and both, especially LJL, had their best games for a long time. LJL not only helped set up two goals, but was unlucky not to score himself with a few efforts from long range. Jamie Clarke on the other hand was not only able to beat his marker on numerous occasions, but actually appears to have learnt to get the ball off of the ground when crossing it, well done Jamie.

One interesting point of note over the last few weeks has been Rene Howe's insistence that he gets his way. In some ways it's great as it's nice to see a player who is determined to do well. For example, the farce between him and Fagan with regards to the penalty and today he got into a big argument with Aaron Brown after our third goal, although it did appear to be over a mistake made by Brown that almost lead to Darlington scoring. It's probably a good thing that we have a striker who aims for perfection and his finish for the first was fairly decent.

Oh well, as I said, there's not a lot to complain about and I don't really fancy going through everything that was good because I quite frankly have better things to do :P.

Anyway, until next time. PEACE!