Walsall Mk 1: 1-1

With apologies for a lot of downtime thanks to our blogging software, we resume with the Walsall draw, a Jekyll and Hyde affair if ever we saw one.

During the first half Brentford were excellent, Myles Weston making us look quite the fool with a scintillating and ambitious performance. Half time merited more than a one goal lead.

Once he went off injured Brentford laboured and the ball kept bouncing back (past our non-existent midfield), leaving an equaliser tediously inevitable.

And that’s all we can be bothered to say at this stage.

84 minutes of Brentford v Southend report

**This report is dedicated to the f*cking moron colleague of mine who set off our office burglar alarm while I’m on call, resulting in my missing the end of the game. I assume it finished a draw. I don’t have a tv. Or the Internet.**

Well then, it turns out that having two six-out-of-ten goalkeepers is actually worse than having an eight-out-of-ten and a three-out-of-ten keeper. That’s a slightly unfair validation of Beesy’s distinct dissatisfaction with our goalkeeping options, since there is no way the whole ball crossed the line. Francis’ poor free kick was caught by Bull who stumbled slightly and stepped back, thrusting the ball forward. No Southend player appealed for a goal, yet goal was given by a linesman some ten yards west of the byline. We reserve our right to change our partisan minds completely when we see the replay on tv (which we don’t have) or the Internet (which we don’t have).

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the entire phantom goal episode was the fact that only Alan Bennett seemed particularly bothered by it. No Southend player appealed; no Brentford players bar Bennett berated the officials. Either the Respect campaign is religiously followed in TW8 or it was an awful decision most of our players were too spineless to contest.

The first half performance was, to be frank, dirge. Charlie Mac missed a couple of half chances but to sum up our performance in a sentence: “first ball misdirected header from Mark Phillips, second ball aimless hoof upfield from Phillips towards Miles Weston, header from massive Southend centre back, midfield mess won by Southend”.

The second half sparked into life after Sam Wood superbly riled Francis into springing up after feigning injury, and a woken crowd – who had earlier all but failed to cheer the announcement of the team – seemed to bring out the marginally better in the side.

Miles Weston drew a needless foul chasing a through ball and Kevin O’Connor pelted the penalty home.

At this point phone calls from irate neighbours and the Metropolitan Police obscured my following of the game – the draw – so here are the ratings instead:

Bull 5 – Wilson 7 (but for the love of all that is pure, play him at centre back) Phillips 5 Bennett 6 Foster 5 – Saunders 6 Bean 5 O’Connor 6 Wood 7 – MacDonald 5 Weston 5

No subs had been made at the time your correspondent left.

Brentford 1 – 1 Oldham: classic division three

If an experiment in financially inexplicable merchandising were conducted to bottle the smell of division three, the lunatic manufacturers could do worse than boil this match down.

An open first 15 minutes gave way to a dominant Brentford performance against unambitious opponents, only for a lack of attacking penetration and moments of defensive disorganisation to prevent a better result.

Both sides could have taken the lead inside the first five minutes only for the first half to degenerate into aerial attrition, marked only by Sam Wood’s obvious discomfort at left back in Ryan Dickson’s absence – doing no favours to Beesy’s confident assertion that the pair will swap positions this season. Auxilliary left winger Sam Saunders was the brightest spark, and it was his run across the box that drew an unnecessary foul, allowing The Grey Goose to open the scoring from the spot.

With James Wilson enjoyably showing himself to be far too good to suffer Pawel Abbot’s flat track bully routine it looked like a rick would be needed for Oldham to draw level. Cleveland Taylor dutifully provided, giving the ball away in his own box after Mark Phillips had failed to clear, although a superb lofted finish was still needed to capitalise.

Oldham’s gaggle of serial whingers can reflect on a job well done targetting the referee as the discipline-free Taylor perplexingly escaped so much as a booking despite kicking the ball at a linesman, shoving Sam Saunders in an altercation in front of the referee and kicking Sam Wood long after play had stopped – at the feet of the same linesman he’d already kicked the ball at.

Brentford threatened to get a winner with Wilson always menacing from corners, and Steve Kabba almost finished a slick move from the left, but with Oldham playing for the draw the game petered out instead.

Price 5 – Foster 6 Phillips 5 Wilson 7 Wood 5 – Taylor 5 O’Connor 5 Hunt 5 Saunders 6 – Weston 5 (Kabba 6) Cort 5