A narrow defeat to a team that was built better to cope with the playing surface. On that, what on earth has happened to our pitch?  A couple of seasons ago it was one of the best in the league and now a park team would turn their nose up at it. The bowls club next door has a lushus green surface and I think they’ve had the same weather that we have had so why it’s it so bad?  We have had likely made tens of thousands of pounds with player sales and ticket income.

Pitch aside, we could have really done with our injured players today, Aaron as a target. Grant at the back and King in midfield.  Subs made a good impact on Saturday but not so much today. Think home support is in for a frustrating time as we aren’t equipped to play how we need to play at home.

Weston were very physical,thought the ref let them get the better of some decisions.Hope their goalkeeper has recovered from his leg injury(blatant time wasting and deserved a booking).Why we went back to playing across the back and taking short goal kicks is baffling,certainly led to their second goal.Don’t understand this eight second goalkeeping rule,thought last night both goalies held onto the ball longer than they should of.Any news on Harry Parsons and also on Harrison Minturn( who I thought took some hefty challenges)

My first game this season. Unusually I didn't get to any pre-season games either. I thought we did OK and WSM punished a couple of defensive mistakes to get the goals, but otherwise an exciting competitive game to watch. First ten minutes we looked like we would be in trouble, their 2 men upfront were big, physical and quick and we came under a lot of pressure but managed to weather that and it became a more even contest. I thought Mehew was good in the first half but not so good after the break, not sure why. Agree that Touray wasn't able to get in the game at all as a centre forward, rarely won headers against their defenders and didn't link well with Vozza (who I thought did well and put a good shift in- nearly got on to some good through balls with his pace) We need Parsons back or someone else with a more physical presence to threaten the centre halves and to hold the ball.

Also agree that WSM were much better at 'managing' the ref who I thought had a poor game - inconsistent decision making and gave too many 50:50 tackles to WSM because they shouted loudest, letting WSM steal a couple of metres with every dead ball, allowing too much time wasting, and missing at least one blatant foul that deserved a yellow at least for a WSM player already booked I think. (Coupe got a yellow himself protesting about that.)

Second goal came shortly after Minturn went off injured (hamstring? so maybe that's his loan spell over and we need someone else to come in) and that unsettled us at the back I feel although Poffley coming on did well to step up to the pace of the game at that point.

It would have been nice (and perhaps deservedly) to knick 1 point with the free-kick for the obvious pass-back ( not sure why the WSM keeper argued about it) at the end but although on target through the wall, it had insufficient power to trouble the keeper.

We are playing some of the top teams early in the season and are not getting blown away by them, so hopefully we will see improvements. The general movement of play seems to be much more positive than what I watched last season, with less of the negative side to side possession football in our own half that was so dull to watch.

Last edited by newfan (21/8/2025 1:07 PM)