Temple Of Saints - Shambolic Saints

Bells League Division One 18/11/2006

Airdrie 2 Saints 1 League Table Here

Team : Halliwell, Lawrie, Stanic, Mensing, McManus, Pamela, Lawson, Hardie, Savo, Jason, Sheerinho
Subs : O'Brien, Peaso, McLaren, Sheridan, Dyer

With a long 10 days of celebration amongst the Saints faithful (and amazingly enough even the odd morsel of praise from those areas of the media not conducting post-mortems over TFOD's start to the season), Saints returned to league action this afternoon in the almost-as-neddish surroundings of the Buckfast capital against an Airdrie side who have struggled for most of the season. But Broomfield hasn't been a happy hunting ground over the years for us and the home players were given an added incentive with the need to impress new manager Kenny Black following Sandy Stewart's sacking earlier in the week. For us results hadn't gone according to plan on our week off and this was a game we needed to take three points from. Unfortunately, the end performance was about as depressing as the Ibrox one was joyous with Saints continuing to maintain the crap record at New Broomfield.

Even allowing for some strange refereeing decisions and a home side more intent on timewasting than playing the game, Saints barely deserved the chance of a draw they had from Savo's late consolation. Far too many players were off-form and in terms of a wake-up call let's just hope that Saints take some heed from the mess today - we've already slipped back down the table and too many players seemed today to have swallowed their own media praise and that's not a healthy attitude to have in this league.

There were some enforced changes in the Saints lineup with the Cat out until the end of the year as he recovers from a broken finger with Gordon O'Brien replacing him on the bench. Elsewhere and Lawrie and Mad Mental Martin had barely trained due to illness but still started the game, while Jason returned from international duty. Apart from that the only change to the sixteen saw Willie Dyer get a spot on the bench in place of Andy Jackson.

For some reason the locals have begun to cut costs so even though we hadn't all updated our tetanus jabs, the large Saints support were moved alongside the home neds in the one stand. The game got off to a quiet start on a heavy pitch although the referee started early with a second-minute warning for Simon Mensing for a soft challenge. There was little real action with Saints looking fairly lethargic and definitely showing signs of the ten-day gap since the last competitive match. Our first chance came in the fifth minute when Hardie headed down a Goran cross into the path of Savo whose shot from the edge of the box went straight into Robertson's arms.

Unfortunately that was about it from Saints as Airdrie went up the park for their first chance with a McPhee header going wide. The Diamonds striker was causing more problems within a minute as he went in for a challenge with Pamela although the Saints defender came off best this time with Halliwell coming to collect the loose ball. The game was pretty scrappy really with little in the way of action and certainly nothing of incident that will get the Sunday papers talking up the First Division. Mad Mental Martin picked up a head knock which he shook off (and based on later evidence it certainly didn't knock some common sense into him). Elsewhere and Pamela continued his battle with Brian McPhee while McManus covered Prunty - the main problem being that this meant we were relying on Goran and Lawrie to cover the rest of defence and the former especially looked well off the pace. In midfield Sheerinho wasn't getting the room to move while Mensing on the right wing rarely got forward and Hardie was relying on his height to little effect.

The only small ray of light for us was Lawson who was actually looking a lot more comfortable than the rest of the blue shirts in his distribution and movement off the ball - pity his discipline still looks a bit suspect. Up front Savo was running all over the place chasing everything as usual while Jason was showing the sort of lazy approach to the game and general apathy which has begun to infuriate the Saints support. It was fair enough when Scotland was banging in the goals but his scoring form has deserted him and today it looked like he just couldn't be bothered.

Hardie saw a couple of headers go over the bar but even they didn't come close to threatening the home goal. For Airdrie the only real chance they had was a long-range shot from McGowan which sailed over Bryn's goal. That was about it for the first half-hour of the game with neither side in danger of generating the sort of excitement needed on a freezing afternoon. The game sparked into life on the half-hour when another Airdrie attack saw McDougall go down under a challenge from Pamela which ended with the Saints player winning the ball. The referee eventually pulled back the play after giving a generous advantage and booked Anderson.

That livened things up a bit at least and the heavy challenges started to go in, not that the referee paid attention to most of them with Stuart Taylor getting away with several challenges from behind on Jason (who was getting worse as the half wore on). The ref missed another incident when Halliwell picked up a Lawrie backpass. Saints broke up the park and Sheerinho just missed connecting with a Mensing cross. But Airdrie hit back in the worst possible way for Saints. A long- range shot in the 38th minute seemed simple enough but Halliwell went down to it and spilled the ball. Prunty was there to follow up in the box with the Saints defence nowhere. Cue the rush of blood to the head and with the ball loose out comes the Saints keeper to bring down the Airdrie striker. A definite penalty and to be honest Halliwell should have seen red for his stupidity which is all the more galling since he knows that we're not exactly overwhelmed with cover in that department due to Cuthbert's injury. As it was there was a massed sigh of relief from the Saints support as the referee decided to be lenient and stick to a yellow card for the keeper. The spot-kick was a formality with Bryn barely moving as Airdrie's no 11 stuck the spot-kick into the net.

Before today you'd have expected that the experience and team spirit which has typified a lot of our performances this season would shine through again as we fought our way back into the game. No such luck as Saints began to show the sort of indiscipline more normally associated with our hosts. Lawson wasted a couple of free kicks (as in punt them long and watch the ball soar out for a goal kick). There was bugger all else in terms of real action for the rest of the half as Saints seemed to be bereft of ideas and unable to string more than a couple of passes together. Still there was the small delight in watching the home support become more and more angry at the referee for not sending Halliwell off.

The traditional foot up the arse from Owen at half-time seemed to have a little effect at the start of the second-half. McPhee had an early cross held but three minutes into the half, some good pressure from Saints almost paid off as Jason laid the ball off nicely into the path of Sheerinho but his left-foot drive was well held by the keeper. Goran forced a corner which was cleared but five minutes into the half a Hardie chip in saw Savo head the ball backwards just wide of the goal. That was about it though with another sucker punch just about to come. Before that though things went from bad to worse as Pamela and McDougall clashed with Anderson coming off worse. He had to limp off and get treatment and although he won the ball, the freekick still went to Airdrie.

And with Saints down to ten men temporarily Hardie was next to see the referee's wrath and another fair challenge saw a freekick go against him. The ball beat the wall and again Halliwell failed to hold it with the defence eventually clearing in a panic. Anderson was back on but limping heavily. Hardie conceded a corner from another cross that the keeper missed in the 58th minute. This time our luck didn't hold out and a deep cross was headed in by McPhee. Halliwell made a good instinctive save but failed to hold onto the ball and Smyth was clear to smack home the rebound from 10 yards out.

Two-nil down and you got the feeling that the fight had gone out of Saints - even Owen adopted the Mr Foldy-Arms attitude of a certain Billy Stark and it was hard to blame him since there was a real problem with the approach of too many players on the park. The first change wasn't long in coming and Pamela limped off on the hour mark to be replaced by Willie McLaren. That meant Mensing dropping back to the centre of defence with Lawson switching to the right wing and Sheerinho moving through the middle. Scotland was finally replaced by Peaso with 25 minutes to go to little effect while Lawson made way for Darren Sheridan five minutes later.

Airdrie had a few counter-attacks but Saints were showing little threat or effort although to be fair the front pairing were doing a lot of running - pity they had such little support from midfield. A 77th minute corner was cleared as far as Lawrie and his shot seemed to hit a hand, although the referee was having none of it while Sheerinho's follow-up on the rebound was easily blocked. The pressure was telling and Airdrie finally had a booking with McGowan picking up a yellow card for upsetting the linesman (a soul so sensitive that he spent most of the last fifteen minutes complaining to the referee every time someone shouted at him which meant a lecture for Owen as the game drew to a close). Mind you the linesman didn't help matters eight minutes from the end when Peaso was blatantly held on the edge of the box but he flagged the other way.

Still at least we made a fight of it a couple of minutes later when Savo and Peaso pressed the Airdrie defence into making a mistake. For the first time today we got the break of the ball as a miskick fell for Savo and he sent a cracking angled finish past Robertson to make it 2-1. Even though the last six minutes and the lengthy injury time saw little else in terms of efforts from Saints although McManus did seem to be held in the box when a Sheridan freekick was floated in in the final minute - we knew the way our luck was going we'd get nothing though. And just to add to it we had another booking for Hardie for being an arse towards the end - summing up the lack of discipline today.

MoM isn't the easiest of decisions, but I'll go for Savo for a decent goal and at least trying to make the best of the rotten deliveries he was getting all afternoon. But the likes of Stanic, Sheerin, Scotland and Lawson all need to start taking a look at themselves - we are going to have to work for every point for the rest of this season, and that was missed so badly today.

As for Airdrie - it didn't take long to meet a club to rival Clyde in terms of timewasting and spoiling tactics. Hopefully justice will be done the next time we meet.

This Match Report is copyright Temple Of Saints - not to be reused without permission. Contact webmaster@grange.demon.co.uk.

Remember to vote on todays ref Steve Conroy - send marks out of 10 to refvote@grange.demon.co.uk or just select a rating and press the button below ::

Saints Index Fixtures Index Grange Index

Any problems / comments mail webmaster@grange.demon.co.uk