Not a fantastic night up North Lincolnshire it has to be said. Charlton were demoralised in defence after Lewis Page was taken off early doors and we were 1-0 down. Not a great start.
I was very confident that we would come back as we usually do, but what I was not expecting was Scunny to be playing the way they did last night. Lyle Taylor converted a Naby Sarr header to make it 1-1 and Taylor was back scoring again, happy days! To make matters even better Taylor then assisted Joe Aribo to make it 2-1 and I thought that was the game in our hands. Oh how wrong I was.
On loan Manchester United defender Cameron Borthwick-Jackson had an opportunity up the other end just a few minutes later and he made it 2-2 and I thought to myself “this is going to be a long night”.
Unfortunately I was correct on this part, we haven’t had a team fight like this against us this season like The Iron did and they showed they are a very solid team when they put their mind to it, because another 8 minutes later Borthwick-Jackson scored again to make it 3-2 to the hosts.
So it was half time, its now time to re-group and get our heads back in the game we know we can win this game so we just got out there concentrate and play some quick, fluid football. We did end up scoring again through Joe Aribo and another Lyle Taylor assist made it 3-3 and the comeback was on!
That was until a very unfair penalty was given after the ball came flying in to Jason Pearce’s arm after a cross, however the speed of the ball and where his hand was looks to me like it was a very harsh decision, nothing we can do about it the refs made his mind up just get on with the game. Josh Morris strikes the ball home to make it 4-3 just 5 minutes after we struck level.
After that we must have been feeling mentally drained, every time we fought back they fought back i’m sure the fans were feeling sick to their stomachs seeing this happen throughout the game I know I was feeling like that.
And then the final nail in the coffin, Stephen Humphrys made it 5-3 confirming the win for Scunthorpe and confirming we need to work on our defence otherwise games like this are going to become a regular occurrence, something we really don’t need with our target being promotion.
For the Coventry game I think we should give Phillips a chance in goal, Steer has not been living up to what we thought he could be. I’m hoping Lewis Page will be okay but it’s not looking likely and we really need his presence in left-back, I think we were really missing him last night and if Dijksteel is going to be playing there more often he really needs work on his game he is just not there yet.
But with the attack you just can’t ask anymore of them. If our defence were playing with the same quality as our attack was it would be very hard for teams to get a goal past us, we need to be more vigilant at the back and that is clear to see as mistakes in our final third cost us the game.
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