Swindon Town: November 2011

Hello Friends and greetings from Canada. Yes, I’m back with another update already as  it’s too cold outside to do anything else .

The first game of November was against big spending Manchester City with their all star line up. It didn’t take them long to get the opening goal with Carlos Tevez running between the two central defenders after 7 minutes. They doubled their lead before the half hour again through Tevez and a double strike by Adebayor either side of half time killed the game off. We created a couple of chances but were never really any competition for a far superior and organized side.

After that horrible encounter with Man City we travelled to Ewood Park to face Blackburn in an absolute down-poor. We got off to a fantastic start putting the home side under pressure very early on but no matter how hard we pressed we just couldn’t get that ball in the net and as it happens so often in football Blackburn took the lead against the run of play. We started the second half just as strongly but the end result was the same with Blackburn doubling their lead 15 minutes from time. However we were down but not out. Victor Palsson who had just come back from international duty came on for an injured Gibson and then single handedly set about bringing us back into the game with two beautiful through balls to Brandy who neatly put both away with one in injury time to earn us a well deserved point.

We finally got to play Man Utd after the game was postponed from earlier in the season. We were really up for this game and created several chances early on but again Brandy went off the boil and failed to make good when faced with a one on one situation. We got the breakthrough though just at half time when former United player Darron Gibson picked out Giudetti who unlike Brandy kept his head and stuck the ball in the back of the net. The visitors then poured on pressure in the second half hitting the bar no less than three times and were called for offside twice. Tom Heaton was brilliant in goal for us and so the result could have been a lot worse than the final score line suggests. We needed these three points for sure.

We stayed at home for our next game with Wolves visiting the County Ground. John Guidetti was again on song putting ahead after only 9 minutes after latching onto a through ball from Solokowski. John should have had a hat-trick inside 20 minutes but was denied by the woodwork and the flag at which point Wolves started to gain confidence and work their way back into the game and equalized right on half time. Wolves dominated the second half and we could not keep them back, try as we may and we went behind just before the hour after what seemed like a push on our keeper Tom Heaton allowing Doyle to score. Left back Geoffrey Adjet was absolutely livid with the referee and received a booking, followed up by a second ten minutes later as his game fell apart after which we found ourselves on the back foot for the remainder of the game.

Following the loss against Wolves we heard that we had been drawn away against either Oldham or Chesterfield in the Third Round of the FA Cup. Also the Republic of Ireland announced that they were seeking a new manager and so I applied for it!

The final game of the month was our League Cup quarter–final tie at the Reebok stadium against Bolton. As been the case over the last couple of months we failed to produce anything up front whilst allowing the opposition plenty of scoring opportunities keeping Tom Heaton busy between the posts all evening long. Although he played admirably he couldn’t prevent Kevin Davies from getting the winner right on the stroke of full time and knocking us out of the competition.

November Results at a glance

Current League Table

We will see what happens but I’m not completely sure whether I want to carry on too much longer as I’m starting to doubt my own ability to adequately assess the players I have available to me in order to get the best out of them. My spending strategy doesn’t seem to have paid off either.

Thanks for taking the time to read this even though this particular post has a less than happy ending to it.