I'm all for women coming along to football but they do look at things from a different perspective than us lads
Here is another women's perspective...
for me there were three critical and unexpected positives today -
1) we didn't lose.
i would have taken a 0-0 happily before the game, I was expecting us to lose by at least 2, so it was a bit of a revalation that we could have easily taken all 3 points.
2) we kept a clean sheet.
With such a patched up defence I thought it was inevitable that we would concede freely. Maybe we were lucky enough to be playing a very poor Rochdale side today, but that doesn't take anything away from the great work from the lads.
3) we gained a point and moved up the table!
There is also a whole heap of smaller positives, right across the park. These are:
Lenny! Was awesome today. Looked very comfortable out of position, led the line magnificently and was covering, encouraging and advising the others. Definately a credible centre half and captain, very glad we didn't lose him in the transfer window. My MOM.
Elvis - a young man with a very bright future. Definately held his own, wasn't bullied too much and visibly grew in confidence as the game progressed. Deserved the official MOM award, very good to see him get that recognition on his league debut in a very difficult set of circumstances.
kyprianou - huge leap forward since I last saw him play. Another lad with a bright future, could develop into another one of Ricky Duncan's young stars!
Ranger - looked in good shape, and whilst obviously not match fit yet he brought something special to the mix. Give him a couple more weeks and some more game time and he will be causing defences all sorts of issues. Hopefully he has learnt a lesson and won't be creating any of the other types of issues, time will tell!
Yearwood - another young revalation! I thought he did a great job as well, and he is another bright prospect.
Overall, with such talented youngsters coming through, and while they might not be completely ready yet, given time they will be able to offer something pretty special. Ranger will add some much needed support for Simon Cox, which will hopefully help his confidence and sort out the goal drought. Wordsworth should be back soon, so suddenly we have a lot more options. We will also get Demitriou back from his international duties, so no reason why he couldn't play in a midfield role with Elvis behind him at right back until some of the defence recover from their war wounds.
it wasn't the best game of football I have seen, but it was by no means the worst either! We definitely need to get back some confidence, particularly up top, we need to play Kightly wide, we need to use the flanks much more, we need to stop giving the ball away cheaply, and we definately need to do something urgently about the state of that pitch. That said, the positives outweighed the negatives for me, and I enjoyed the game today!
