Sunday 7 November 2004

Stockport County vs Sheffield Wednesday

Living in Manchester has it's advantages - it's only a bus ride to Stockport, so I went and saw my first "home" game of the season.

We dominated the game, and never looked like losing, helped in a bid way by Stockport being rubbish. We won't get any more straightforward wins than this. Unfortunately, the problems with the team are still there. After going 1-0 up at the end of the first half courtesy of a much improved (thank you Mr Sturrock) Proudlock, Wednesday did their best to self destruct. Anyone who's watched the Owls in the last few seasons will have seen it before: withdraw into your own half, and whenever you win the ball, just lob it upfield to the halfway line or so, where the opposition will pick it up and resume the attack. Fortunately it wasn't long to go until 1/2 time.

2nd half we came out and played like we had for the majority of the first half - dominant, and much the better team. Until we scored, of course. 50 minutes in, two goals up, and Wednesday draw back. Fortunately, we weathered the (self-inflicted) storm, despite several scary moments (including an amazingly bad backpass from Heckinbottom - setting a forward up for a one on one with our keeper!). We did come back into the game more towards the end, and had clearly won it after the third goal.

Overall it was a good performance. If we can play the same game when we're winning as we do when we're losing or drawing, I reckon we'll make promotion.