As is usually the case nowadays, when I am on match report duties Rochdale duly lose. The Wycombe game was no different.
Seeing as there is a superstition discussion on the message board I knew as soon as it was decided for me to do a report, Dale would lose. I did try to get out of it but Chaff is too busy with his new lady friend, Col is too busy buying man bags in France and Tommo deserves some time off after his mammoth pre-match build up efforts.
So there you have it, blame them not me and if you see them tell them just that.
Right, the game. Dale made just the one change from the starting line-up at Bradford with young Will Buckley surprisingly being preferred to Alfie in place of the suspended Lee Thorpe. So it was Big James in goal, Rambo, TK, ‘The Wall’ and Bob at the back, Jonah, Perkins, Rundle and Muirhead in midfield and Howe and Buckley up top.
Before setting off for the game I was quite confident of winning this one despite the poor home form and I had no reason to doubt it after a fairly bright but ineffective start. However, as is usually the case with my predictions I was wrong. After not really creating anything previously Wycombe took the lead through Leon Knight. Now I’ve not seen a replay of the goal yet and with my restricted view in The Sandy I’d imagine that Spencer was exposed by his defence or the ball took a nasty bobble off something for him to concede at his near post.
Dale then proceeded to huff and puff to find a way through but were fairly toothless in attack until just before the half hour mark when Will Buckley was brought down in/just outside the box (depending on your view). I thought it was just outside but some around me were quite adamant it was inside the area. Regardless, like so many of our free kicks from that range this season nothing came of it. Buckley then managed a decent chance before the end of the half but his shot went wide of the upright.
As the teams were going off I was absolutely astounded to hear some people in The Sandy booing the players. If the team were truly awful I could perhaps understand it but they weren’t and only trailed to a breakaway attack. Let’s hope any potential new supporters at the Chesterfield game are not put off by these people or even worse join in with them should we find ourselves behind.
The second half was only six minutes old when the gaffer made a double substitution with Alfie replacing Buckley and Kallum Higginbotham replacing Ben Muirhead on the right. Dale did seem to have a bit more urgency about them but again created very little apart from a decent hit by Alfie on 85 which went agonisingly wide. Big James was rarely tested in the home goal but I was always confident that if he was he’d have dealt with it comfortably.
Anyway the game petered out after the Alfie chance and it turned out to be another defeat on home soil. If the hoped for big crowd next week turn up we need to give them something to come back for so let’s hope a formula can be found in training this week to get us back on track at Spotland.
Despite a request from Chaff I won’t be doing any player ratings as I don’t want to put any kind of hoodoo on them for the next game given my jinxing abilities.