A win!

On Saturday something happened that hadn’t occurred since Boxing Day. A home win! Things were very different. 5 of the players present on Boxing Day weren’t there on Saturday. Two of the players on the bench have since left.  It was Tranmere Rovers but not as we know them now. And we scored twice as many goals as we did on Boxing Day. 

It’s only when you look at our results in this kind of context that you realise how challenging our season has been. Huge segments of the team have either been injured or left. Smallwood and Davison are now at new clubs. Neither have particularly impressed so far in their new colours. By contrast the players who we have brought in seem to have had a positive impact, but it’s very early days. 

Despite this I was impressed by Zach Oberio. His goal was excellent and well taken. Stephan Negru also put in a more than decent shift. He added some quality to the back line and played some neat passes. His tackling was much neater than Cam Norman’s. Lewis Warrington is reasonable cover for Billy Blacker. Blacker is, from my perspective, a better player. However, he will likely return to Sheffield at the end of his loan period, whereas Lewis is signed up for a couple of seasons. He will improve, not that his start was too shabby. Whilst Plant is not Jayden Joseph he worked hard, showed some promise. The only player who didn’t convince me was Dickov. That’s not to say he was bad, but he clearly needs more game time if we are to get the best out of him. 

The other thing that I took from the match was that the blend seemed a bit more balanced. Our passing was a bit crisper, our movement was a bit more imaginative. We sat too deep for most of the second half, but the game was won. Crawley pressed but their finishing was what let them down.

Someone mentioned to me that we were close to our worst losing streak since 1948. We at least have that 0monkey off our back. Accrington will be a tougher challenge on Tuesday night, but I’m much more confident that we can play well. We shall see. However, the objective now has to be safety. Nobody should be talking about climbing the League because we have some tough matches ahead, including the visit of Oldham, who will leave ice-station Zebra and come to Prenton Park on 7th March. There is a slim possibility that we could achieve safety on that day. This being Tranmere we probably won’t. 

This has been a frustrating and challenging season. The team continue to need us to get behind them and be the 12th man. Let’s keep the faith and hope that the players can push on and accumulate points that will preserve our League status. Everything else is irrelevant until that’s sorted.

All views expressed are personal.