Thoughts on recent affairs

After 2 games in charge it's fair to say that David Unsworth and Graham Alexander have made a solid start as caretaker managers. Beating MK Dons away (the only team to do so this season) has given the team massive confidence as there is no doubt we would have been hammered if Phil 'put Paul Coutts on the wing' Brown was still in charge. The new combination (dubbed Grezzworth by many fans, including myself) immediately recognised what Brown was doing wrong and the team that played MK Dons and then Carlisle yesterday had everyone playing in their correct positions and it is no surprise that we've taken 4 points from two teams pushing for the play offs whereas we were losing to the likes of Rochdale and Bury only a few weeks before. What was obvious from the Carlisle game yesterday that the caretakers had installed a new belief in the players, twice during that game we were behind, at 1-0 and 3-2, but at no point did we give up and credit has to go to Douglas for picking the perfect moment to score his first senior goal and send Deepdale into raptures.

Image courtesy of pnefc.net

However, there is one thing which I'm critical of with the caretaker duo and that's their insistence on playing Adam Barton. It was no coincidence that when he came on for Mellor against MK Dons we suddenly stopped creating chances and it wasn't until the introduction of Tsoumou that we created clear cut chances again. This pattern continued yesterday as Barton didn't win any challenges, go in for 50-50s and despite his height, lost almost every header he went up for while Iain Hume (who is far far shorter) won his fair share of headers, it was this carelessness that gave Carlisle a foothold on the ball and made Coutts and Doyles jobs far harder than they need to be. With a very tough test on Saturday against Sheffield Wednesday who are one of the best teams in the division, if Grezzworth want to be seriously considered for the job, it is vital that Barton doesn't play and preferably replaced with Tsoumou. He seems to be getting stick recently but I think that this is undeserved, while his first touch is awful, he is a very good finisher and his hold up play is superb as we have seen in the last two games, him and Hume up front would be a very effective combination as Hume would relish running onto Tsoumous lay offs. If we were to beat Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday, it would certainly make Peter Ridsdales decision difficult as to who to appoint as Grezzworth would be very popular with the fans and 7 points in 3 games would be a very strong record. But I would still more than happily take a draw and extend our unbeaten run to 5 games, it would be a nice way to end what has been an awful one for Preston fans everywhere.

The start?

This is my blog and will be the (mainly incoherent) ramblings of a seventeen year old Preston fan. More often than not I'll be using this to rant about Preston's current underachievement in the third tier of English football and the constant failure of the club to win the play offs. But as 2011 comes to a close a ninth play off attempt is still on the cards and there is still reason to be cheerful