Swindon Town: March 2012

Hello Everyone and thanks for reading this latest episode. The March schedule is a very short one for Swindon so this post is quite small.

A crucial home game against Blackburn was to begin our March schedule and was a must win game for us to keep free of the relegation zone. Looking at the squad it had now become difficult to find anyone whose moral was better than okay so as we got into the game the performance was very reflective of this fact. We fashioned a couple of chances is the first half with Brandy finishing weakly and Gibson with a clear cut attempt decided to pass the ball back instead of shooting.

Blackburn took the lead through Steven Reid on yet another long shot from 30 yards who was someone I’d specifically asked to close down realizing the threat. Moral was already bad enough already but that goal made things even worse and we never saw the Blackburn half of the field for the rest of the game. Brett Emerton (another long shot) secured all three points in the second half which has now seen our eleven point cushion over the relegation zone reduced to just four.

A trip to Molineaux was up next to face Wolves where we had been so successful in the Cup but since then our form had dropped considerably. Wolves started off strongly almost scoring from the kick off when they hit the bar from a shot inside the centre circle. Our first chance came after 19 minutes when Ridgewell’s header was cleared off the line following a corner but that was about all we could muster in the first half. Following the interval Wolves took the lead after a defensive mix up between Ridgewell and Solokowski allowing Andrew Surman to put the home side ahead. Bulgarian youngster Naydenov was having a fine game and four minutes after the Wolves goal he was first to pounce on a cleared ball out of our area and ran from the half way line to round the keeper to make it 1-1. We fought hard for the rest of the game and secured a valuable point.

The final game of a short month was a trip to second place Man City with an impossible task ahead of us to get anything out of this game. City of course put the pressure on us early with their star studded line up though we did produce a few chances on the break with Gibson having the best chance which was comfortably stopped by Hart in the city goal. We eventually fell to the constant attacks after the hour when Toure scored from a corner kick which was quickly followed up by a second goal seven minutes later and City easily played out the rest of the game.

March Results at a glance

Current League Table

April — May Fixtures

So we ended the month still above Blackburn despite losing to them and so if we can take advantage of the two games in hand over them we still might stay up. Its going to be a dramatic end to the season for sure.