A poor way to end a poor year

Yesterdays game against Sheffield Wednesday summed up 2011 pretty well,  some glimpses of good form and positivity, but overall it was very poor. Goals at the start and the end of the first half killed off any hope of Preston taking home any points but it's fair to say that we wouldn't have deserved them if we had taken anything from the game, although you'd be forgiven for thinking we deserved something if you had read our official website which made it look like we were very unlucky to lose when in fact we were outplayed for long periods of the game and really Sheffield Wednesday never went higher than third gear. From a PNE fans view both goals were soft and our defence has to hold its' hands up and admit it went awol for both. I strongly believe no team should ever concede from a short corner, and the way we let them walk into our area and bundle the ball in was not acceptable for a league two team. David Gray got his angles all wrong for the second goal and headed past Stuckmann into the net, although the goal wasn't given as an own goal to spare his blushes, but you would expect someone of Gray's caliber to cut out the cross instead of putting it into the net. The second goal killed the game off as far as it was pretty certain that we were going to lose. But the most worrying thing to come out of the game was Hume limping off after 30 minutes, this along with a long term injury for Mellor is very bad news as our two main strikers could be out for a very long time. But in the short term at least we have signed Jake Jervis on loan from Birmingham for a month, and really he can't be any worse than Brown's striker signings.....

Courtesy of pnefc.net

In my last post I was critical of Alexander and Unsworth playing Barton, but in my opinion Barton was man of the match against Sheffield Wednesday. Unlike the last few games he got stuck in and was more comfortable in possession, he made himself available for passes and tried to get forward whenever possible. But our big problem yesterday was what we did in the final play, apart from the two goals our defence was very solid and midfield was good at going forward, but we seemed to have no idea what to do with the ball when we got to the edge of the area, too often we ended up going backwards once we got anywhere near the opposition goal. It wasn't until the last twenty minutes that we started to get balls into the box and have shots and on another day Parry might have had a goal or two when he headed just wide and had a shot cleared off the line. Douglas was impressive again and might be pushing for a start tomorrow if he keeps this current form up as his all round play has been superb so far and he himself was unlucky not to get on the scoresheet late on.

Courtesy of pnefc.net

I'm sure every single Preston fan is relieved that 2011 has now passed and it surely has to be up there as one of the worst in living memory, the year that saw us drop into League One for the first time in 10 years and the massive disappointment that we dropped off from 2nd in the league in late September to ending the year in 11th, 20 points away from the summit. There has been some highs, the home wins against Swansea, Coventry and Sheffield United in late March and early April that gave us hope that the great escape might just be possible, but some even bigger lows, like relegation and two runs of not winning for 13 games. But 2012 begins with an away tie against local rivals Rochdale in what will be the final game for Unsworth and Alexander before Ridsdale makes a decision on who the next permanent manager will be. Without a doubt, three points tomorrow against the relegation threatened team would make their claims more viable for the job, but a defeat could possibly rule them out of the job as we try to ensure they don't do the double over us after they won 1-0 at Deepdale in late November.

But Happy New Year everyone, and let's hope 2012 brings more joy to PNE than the last few years have done.