Hard to know what to take from today’s game. Outside of the euphoria of making it into the play-offs and the good point on the road I actually thought we were pretty poor in the second half. I don’t know if it was nerves from us, whether they just kicked it up a notch or maybe a combination of the two but we were really struggling to keep hold of the ball for most of that second 45. So many sloppy bit of play under little pressure and a lot of panic-driven actions. Execution of the outball to Gyokeres was so poor as well. We’ve been so good at getting the ball to him on the break this season and letting him do his thing but that was really lacking today.
Like I said I think you can probably attribute a lot of it to nerves, and it felt like we noticeably relaxed and started playing better as soon as we knew Blackburn were ahead, but they also passed the ball around so well and looked very confident in doing so. We did well to limit to them to few chances, the centre backs were outstanding as usual, and Kelly was great too, but we also invited them onto us so much and it felt like if they’d had wanted it a bit more they might have been able to put us under a bit of pressure and find a winner.
How that all impacts the game on Sunday, I’m not sure. Their injuries seem to be impacting them a fair bit, especially at the back, and I think we saw today in the first half especially, that we can get at them. Not sure whether I’d start Godden or not for this one, I think he struggles to impact the game as much in these games where we don’t have much of the ball and he can be painfully slow (there was one instance in the first half today where he looked clean through and Lenihan pretty comfortably caught up with him from a worse starting position), however he has also been good in our last two home games and we might play with a bit more of the ball in this one.
Think that if we can get at least a 1 goal advantage to take to the Riverside then we should have a good chance, but it’s going to be a really tough game. Fingers crossed.