It was another mind numbingly boring afternoon at the Banks’s, as we mustered just three shots on target, but, fortunately, this time two went in. giving a home victory at last!

WFC Rob gives this week’s match report and, to be honest, I have to agree with almost everything in it. Personally, I’d have given Man of the Match to MacDonald, as he was the only player who didn’t make any mistakes (Vincent may have pushed him close, if he hadn’t have misjudged the cross for the goal).

I think Brentford also deserve some credit for at least rying to play some football on the puidding of a pitch.

Good win today in the sort of game we’re used to losing. The pitch was difficult and Brentford were typically tough to play against.

I think Hutchings called it well after the game when he said that we were just too lethargic in the first half. Every pass was made to look like the most difficult of chores and the ball ended up in the stands far too often. Whilst I wouldn’t go as far as saying they deserved to take the lead, they had shown marginally more intent to get the ball down and play than us, so their opening goal didn’t come as too much of a shock. I think Vincent made a bit of a hash of things – no striker should be given the time to chest the ball down that close to goal.
The one moment of reasonable quality in the first half from our point of view produced our goal. A turn of pace by Westlake left his marker on his backside, Byfield made the right run, held the ball up well and put it on a plate for Nicholls to finish well. It was nothing too difficult, but was perhaps the only bit of quality shown by us in the first half.

The one thing we changed in the second half was our tempo. Taundry got himself on the ball a bit more, and we kept the ball well down the left at times. It was disappointing to see Byfield squander two good chances by over-doing things inside the box, but the previously erratic Nicholls came up with another rare piece of quality to give Deeney an easy finish. What followed was a professional spell of keep-ball, which was pleasing to see even if Smith almost got himself an unecessary red card.

We’ll probably played better than that previously this season and lost, so it was good to see a hard-fought win at home, particularly now that next year’s season tickets are on sale. I thought our best performers were McDonald (who commanded the air despite his long ball game being wide of the mark), Taundry (who looked to keep things simple on a difficult pitch) and Nicholls (who came up with two rare moments of quality). Other than that, I think we’d be looking at 6 out of 10 ratings for the majority, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.