Dale 0-2 Lincoln

I don`t know where Hilly was today but one thing I do know is he will not be happy with that performance. Losing 2-0 at home to a team so near the bottom is not good enough. Any thoughts we have of getting into those play-off positions should be put to bed at least until we sort out our home form. Flickers was on his phone at one point and whether Hilly was giving him instructions from the stands I`m not sure but the tactical changes made later on suggested it was Flickers who was pulling the strings.

So we started with the same team that put in an excellent performance against Darlo, but oh look they`re not performing like they should be why are we being so frustrated by this team? Not to worry though I`m sure some astute changes in the second half will sort us out, or not?

I`m sat here trying to think of something remotely interesting to say about the first half, I`m not sure I can even remember a chance. We got caught offside a fair bit and Lincoln were dealing with any threat we posed with ease. Actually I have remembered one or two things. Ramsden fired over the bar and Russell made a decent save from a Lincoln free kick maybe there was one or two other things but I`d probably dozed off.


The second half was a bit more interesting but for all the wrong reasons. Doolan was having one of those games we all know he`s capable of, sadly I don`t mean that in a good way. We were losing the game, yet again, in midfield. Jones, having fully recovered from his brief purple patch, now seems back to his usual level of performance.

We still couldn`t get hold of the ball and our passing was erratic at best. We created a good chance though when Joe Thompson broke free and crossed for ALF, a deflection on the cross eluded him and his effort on goal was rather weak. Murray came running in for the rebound but again the effort was blocked. It seemed that it was going to be one of those days where we would be happy to just get the three points and get the game over with. Of course we didn`t do that, mind?

Read carefully now because what follows is key to the way the game unfolded. We bring on a sub, Higginbotham for ALF, bit of an odd one that. Anyway, we all like Higgy and I`m sure he`ll have a real go at ’em so we say. We`ll just wait a few minutes and we`ll bring on someone to finally get us going in midfield?I`m still waiting. We then scored the match winner, or at least what should have been the match winner had the tosser in green not decided Murray had fouled the Keeper. He hadn`t of course and we all know how protected Keepers are these days. Anyhow, not content with chalking off a perfectly good goal the ref decided to keep up his levels of ineptitude by booking Murray. Murray will now miss the game at Wycombe, nice one ref.

Eh up, we`re making another sub, but oh no it`s still not a midfielder it`s Evil. Aha! Replace our main goal threat, good shout that one, see you later Murray thanks for the effort. There`s a 12 year old lad who goes with his Dad to Dale and stands on the Sandy, even he could see the two subs had been wrong.

Doolan then decided to foul a Lincoln player in the box and somehow get away with it. So we got lucky, then the ref gives them a dodgy free kick and they score. Not so lucky. Russell had made a good save from the first strike but couldn`t keep out the rebound. The Lincoln fans were a bit happy, as you`d expect.

We pushed forward a bit and then they broke free and scored another. A good strike it was too to be fair to the lad. But that was it game over. Not good enough Dale. We had a penalty shout turned down when the ref decided not to bother to give it as we were probably gonna lose anyway.

Some of the fans in The Sandy chose to blame the ref for defeat. Personally I believe we need to sort our own acts out before we start blaming others.