Barnsley 0-0 Swansea

By: Oli | September 20th, 2009

And so, a clash between two of the few Offside Championship blogs that still get posted on occasionaly, and believe me, it lived up to the lack of hype.

Mark Robins had asked for the Oakwell Faithful to make a wall of sound, and he certainly got it when he was introduced for his first home game. Shame that the game wasn’t as lively really. Actually, it wasn’t all that boring, there was certainly some liveliness, not least of all Mr. Shoebridge’s(what a name!) antics as the man-in-black. But, as the official site says, at the moment it’s all about building blocks, and this is just another small step forward.

Swansea are a good side. Last season Martinez introduced good passing football, and Paulo do Sousa has tried to carry that on. He has, but the difference is that with out Jordi Gomez and Jason Scotland, the cutting edge around the 18 yard box isn’t there, and that was something we needed in places yesterday. We chose a 4-4-2 formation, which often moved into a 4-3-3, with Hammill-Gray-Hume as the front three. Anderson was the acting right winger.

The score-line seems to tell a story about the defenses, but it doesn’t actually. Certainly in central defense we saw an improvement on the recent performances, but Swansea had lot of good chances, which they could, and in places should, have put into the net. In particular one chance in the first-half saw Nathan Dyer free on Preece, and yet he skied it, yards over the cross-bar, with an effort that Kayode would have been proud of. On a positive note, in just two weeks Robins (or is it Robbins?) has done what Davey failed to do for three seasons. Julian Gray is a naturally left footed defender, and he certainly showed a lot of ability yesterday.

The attack actually looked weaker. We had three real chances, with two of them being Moore getting his unbelievably tough head in the way of a Hume set-piece. The other one was also Hume, as this time he raced onto a through-ball from the out-of-position Anderson, and after hesitating to check for the flag, took a shot high and wide from a tight-ish angle. There was a lot of ability in the attack, but with Emil Hallfredsson not fit, we have no-one to really hold it all together. Butterfield is really too young to be relied upon as a midfield-maestro, and we need the Icelander to create a bridge from the back to the front. The other major option is the wingers, and with JCR temporarily blind, and Hammill having a bit of a ‘mare, that didn’t really create anything either.

The other major talking point is the Ref, Mr. Shoebridge from Derbyshire. The inconsistency in places was laughable, and some decisions included booking Nathan Doyle for attempting to shoot, and also when he gave a free-kick against Anderson, as he received a ball and turned his man, even though there was no contact between the two players.
He also committed the cardinal sin of doing what will forever be known as an Andy D’Urso. I’m sure every Barnsley fan remembers the horrific incident with Chris Morgan, where the Blunt’s center back fractured the Canadians skull. Well, on 16 minutes Shoebridge stared at Ashley William’s give Hume an elbow to the face, and completely ignored it. The forward was furious, I mean, really furious. A less controlled player would probably have gone for either the Ref or the Swansea man. He left with blood streaming out of a wound on his face, to get stitches near his eye. Thankfully, he returned 5 minutes later, to come back on, angrier than ever.

So, there was some good tactics, hindered by a lack of personnel in the attack, while the defenders were more solid, but had some help from a lack of clinical play from the opposition. But how about some individual rating:

Preece: 8 – Much better. He did some great work on one-on-ones, and had easily his best game for us. I’m please to say that he can have my safety test, and is a suitable second choice keeper. Although, no doubt he was helped by much tighter marking on the flanks, as well as an excellent display from…
Darren Moore: 9 MOTM – Epic. He was here, he was there, and he was every f****** where.
Julian Gray: 7 – Coventry fans are convinced that he is useless, but they never tried him as a left-back, only on the wing. He looks like a left back, and he certainly commended his flank well, even with Hammill having an off-game.
Adam Hammill: 5 – Not his greatest game, but, like every good cartoon villain the world has ever seen, he’ll be back.
Iain Hume: 8 – A great performance, and he was the spark of the attack, with good creativity and delivery of the final ball. If he’d scored there would have been a different MOTM.
Emil Hallfredsson: leaves a whole the size of Ronaldo’s and Ibrahimovic’s egos combined. Please get well soon.

BBc match report, here, and Barnsley one here.

So, this was a good performance. We are begging to build the mentality which we need, and the player’s heads are slowly being dragged up. Tuesday night sees the first cup game at Oakwell since the historic beating of Chelsea. Burnley might not be quite the same, but hey, Premiership is Premiership. At least the Clarets can buy a player.