Match Day Thread Tranmere Rovers v Sunderland - Wednesday 29th January - KO 19:45

Well the first half was horrible to watch. The second half a minor improvement but neither team showered themselves in glory to be honest. Scrappy wins are the order of the day though so it's a good result.

The Tranmere fans were clearly feeling the after-effects of a busy week, I think at another time in the calendar this would have been a big game for them but it all felt subdued heading in after they had Watford here last week and Man Utd at the weekend.

The pitch was worse than any I've ever played on let alone seen used for a professional match.

 

Win ugly is a good win.
The change is we are now winning games we used to draw
Parkinson knows this league

Trust Him he isi in controll

They've done nothing wrong yet

 

i have seen games abandoned during heavy rain and the pitches have not been that bad, could be only a matter of time afore some player gets a serious injury and i think it showed during tonights game...no sharpness anywhere, players struggling to run with the ball, no one wanting to turn fast...the game quickly turned into a 'hoof fest' which i think we all expected.

not a classic performance by either team, we sort of got to grips with it more 2nd half but without really creating anything...last season and early this season we would have lost this one, i will take ugly/lucky/scrappy wins from now till end of season if it gets us promoted and away from these ****house tactics and worse officials.

 

I enjoyed that .
Ok poor first half, gave the ball away cheaply but passing was tough on that pitch,
Got the better of them second half and our defence is pretty rock solid. McLaughlin made one bad pass from goal and my heart was in my mouth but again the defence prevailed.
Gooch and onien were good,
i love onien, he is a little terrier.
Pleased for wyke to get the goal .
Me and the bloke next to me hugged each other
Buzzing. It means so much to be on the winning trail again regardless of the league we are in.
Their number 6 was shocking,
I enjoyed watching him leave the pitch.
Me and the lad were ill today after dodgy spicy chicken the night before and the daughter got back from work after a 90 mile round trip drive but we weren't gonna miss it.
Too late for a pre match drink and couldn't find a parking space for a while so got in ten minutes late.


I think we're going up fellas and was tempted to start singing "Phil Parkeys red and white army"

Ha'way the lads.

 

Excellent win on a horrible pitch. Well done lads ❤️⚪️❤️⚪️

 

I meant to say 'of the top 6', too late to change it now.

What I was going to go on to say is that catching up points will be a gradual process unless we're playing another top team.

We just have to grind out results by adapting our system as we did last night.

It would help if referees could be equally as poor for both sides. It's the little things that I noticed, last night, not the obvious fouls etc.

On both sides of the pitch their players strolled up the touchline to gain yards at throw ins.

In the second half one of them walked from three yards in their half into three yards of ours.

Neither linesmen ever flagged and the referee was oblivious. Yet O'Nien was pulled up for moving three or four steps on more than one occasion.

I always try to overcome my own bias, and be realistic, but it was really noticeable last night. There were no game changing decisions but all these little things affect the game. Their keeper was running all over the pitch trying to influence the referee and wasn't spoken to when he started time wasting immediately after the break.

Other supporters have a natural bias, because of who we are, but you'd expect better from the officials.

 

Agree with this, except the elbow on Wyke early on , which should have been a game changing moment.

 

I just got home from Hospital about 6ish after having a knee replacement so was all drugged up and went straight to bed for some R+R. Just woke up and saw we won so hopefully that'll cheer me up and help. Another clean sheet tho makes a difference.

 

Glad you mentioned the the throw in thing - the rules were so wighted in their favour it was terrifying- there was a ball put out by O'Nien 15 yards into their half in the second half - after he'd constantly told O'Nien to retreat for throw ins when gaining a yard or 2 - their lad took the throw from our half. He stole easily 20 yards and none of our players did anything about it. The ref seemed to want to keep the fans at the side of th pitch happy when they were telling him O'Nien was stealing a few yards!

 

I thought I was being unreasonably biased then received a WTF!!! text from my son saying exactly the same thing.

 

PS I was sooo pleased when their defender was red carded, made my night.

 

Worse - not even a foul!! (Never saw your post last night otherwise I'd have responded then!!)

 

I was going to post about it last night but thought to myself "No, you're not looking objectively" but it turns out I was! I do think we're the refs whipping boys in this league "I'm nopt bothered if you're a big team, I'm in charge and I'm going to prove it"

 

This is the only conclusion you can draw, even though we have also got away with one or two misdemeanors, the balance is hugely in favour of our opponents, and has been said before it was similar last season when we had at least three red cards reversed on appeal, welcome yes, but in effect the damage had already been done.

 

Hard fought professionally managed game and with quite a few players having off days McGuire and Dobson being the worst imo.

we are looking good and organized and that can only get better the more time pp has with the lads.

 

I kept moaning at the refs behavior regarding throw-ins throughout the game. Not only that, we were stood literally pitch side and could see more on the other side of the pitch than the referee seemed to manage.
I never really stuck with the viewpoint that refs were biased against us, just thought they were shockingly bad. Last night however really made me think that not only was the ref sitting in the Kop end but the linesman to our left in the second half must have been the dad of the bairns getting told off by the stewards in the first half

 

It seems to me to be more the officials worried about being accused of favouring the so called bigger team,that they err far too far the other way. The league need to do better with instructions to officials mind.....they can't say it isn't blindingly obvious!

 

Wish you a speedy recovery mate. Another win and another clean sheet is the perfect tonic.

 

We won couldn't care about the state of the pitch or the ref. In fact if we had lost most ****ers would blame the aforementioned. I'm not one to look for excuses!!.

 

I dont think anyone would have blamed the pitch to be honest had we lost... its an even playing field, bog, swamp.... I dont think Id blame the refs either but my opinion on them just being plain ****e in this league is changing