"I saw the last of Waring … Oh, never star was lost here, but it rose afar!"
(Robert Browning)
For our final pre-season friendly game we visit Prenton Park, home of Tranmere Rovers since 1912 - and home of Kieron Morris for the past month or so. Promoted via the play-off final from League 2, they have had a strikingly similar batch of pre-season results to ours:-
July 6th Livingston (H) Lost 1-2
July 11th Liverpool (H) Lost 0-6
July 20th Stoke City (H) Lost 0-2
July 23rd Carlisle United (A) Lost 3-0
Rovers face the same problems as ourselves in the goalscoring department - Andy Cook and James Norwood were a fearsome combination in their promotion achievements, and there is still resentment on the part of some supporters following their departure. (Norwood scored a hat-trick for his new club Ipswich Town in one of their friendlies against Colchester United).
Meanwhile Darrell Clarke has the task of recovering his squad’s morale after DeanSmith’s multi-million £££ Aston Villa side did a number on them, all in the interests of a bit of cash in the till. Our much-heralded “solid defence” found itself 0-2 down after 12 minutes, and although efforts were made to play the ball on the ground, far too often the Villa pressure resulted in our familiar “hoofball” tactic which usually ended up in our losing possession. Villa eased off after half-time, and even with their full side being substituted they still demonstrated a huge gulf in the skills between us. One obvious (and basic) difference was seen in Villa’s running off the ball - so often when they had possession we were guilty of ball-watching, thus missing the movement off the ball which gave them an easy pass.
However, enough of that - it’s highly unlikely that we will encounter teams in League 2 with anywhere near that level of sheer footballing ability which, when combined with the coaching talents of Dean Smith, makes them almost unplayable!
Darrell Clarke will (hopefully) have his first choice XI pretty well sorted by now, and he may well treat this game as a proper rehearsal for the season ahead - so the starting players may be given the chance to complete the game without multi-substitutions…
Prediction? Go with the familiar 0-2 away win for the Saddlers, as long as Maik Taylor has got his goalkeeping students up to speed!
Expect Darrell Clarke to be treating this as his first league game. Starting 11 will be similar to what we see at Northampton I expect and few subs used.
Tranmere 2-0 Walsall.
This is a big preseason friendly. It’s as close to a dress rehearsal as I can remember from our preseasons in recent years. With a team that needs to gel this much I think it’s absolutely critical. The players should be up to scratch fitness wise now. This needs to be competitive with at least 60 minutes of just the first 11.
Today’s game should give us some sort of indication of how we are going to fair against teams in our league today. Let’s hope for a positive performance and result
Just looking at your avtar, we went to the Fox in Newport last week, the one near Telford, and they had Leffe on draught, first time i have seen that here in the uk, so i had a few, it wasn’t until we got the bill i found out it was £6 a pint .
Back to on topic, i think we will lose 2-0 i still can’t see where our goals are going to come from, and i think that Tranmere will be more organised.
The thing is,with DC only finalising his squad in the last few days (apart from an experienced striker ) he still doesn’t know what his best 11 is yet.
I guess he’s chosen Roberts as his No1.
He just needs a bit of confidence after the shambles of last year and he can be the keeper he was at the start of last season.
I just hope our “fans” don’t get on his back while he’s building that confidence which will only come with match time.
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) he still doesn’t know what his best 11 is yet.