Not a yellow thing that you fall over on

Just to be clear, that wasn’t a banana skin. Nothing of the kind. Oldham are apparently a well resourced team, wealthier than us and getting beat by them in the FA Cup is just the way it goes. There are lots of positives to take from the game.

The first positive is that a mad axman did not wander around Prenton Park chopping the limbs off supporters and creating carnage. Admittedly Norwood scored, and it’s not like we didn’t know about him, but the fact that the game ended without any of the home fans being sliced into pieces has to be seen as a positive.

Added to this we had the most possession. 60% to Oldham’s 40%. That’s got to be good hasn’t it? It means that we conceded two goals despite being in control of the game. Those fans who want us to win matches and control the game clearly don’t understand football. You can’t do both. While we’re on stats we also had more shots on target. That’s another valuable stat. In fact we had double the number of shots on target but only half of the goals. That seems very unfair, and the fans need to recognise that.

We also scored a goal and took an early lead. Now, in the past Rover’s supporters have laboured under the misconception that scoring one goal should be followed by scoring a few more. The problem is that these supporters don’t understand the nature of the modern game. It’s not so easy to build momentum when you’re a goal up, much easier for the opposition to come from behind and score twice.

The thing is we don’t have the quality on the bench to turn games around. It’s almost as if our summer recruitment never happened and the weaknesses of the team last season haven’t been addressed. Of course we know this isn't the case because we are constantly told that we had one of the best transfer windows we have had.

For those who went to the game today and were disappointed the club would ask that you reconsider your perspective. That was a game that we won in every respect but for the final score. The players can be proud of the effort they have made. In Nigel Adkins we have a manager who can turn things around. Cars, supermarket trolleys, bicycles, he’s great at that. At some point he will start applying the same skills to our football club. We are lucky to have him.