Rallying call to save Royal British Legion clubs
- Today's leader
Blog: Another triumph for the officials
Monday 21st March 2011, 9:05AM GMT.
Jon Taylor of Shrewsbury Town gets past Danny Foster of Wycombe Wanderers
Blog: Another promotion rival and another lack of victory thanks to the officials, writes Shrewsbury Town blogger James Pugh.
With teams like Bury, Rotherham and Port Vale losing this weekend, Town’s failure to hold on to a lead and finally beat a promotion rival has to go down as a missed opportunity.
But some poor decisions, including allowing Wycombe a goal that never crossed the line, cost us two points at the weekend and a chance to close the gap with the teams above us.
They say mistakes made by officials balance themselves out over the course of the season, but in such a big game that isn’t a good enough justification.
Putting aside the performance of the officials, a 1-1 draw at home to Wycombe would be a good result in most people’s book, but our failure to beat the division’s top teams continues to concern me.
We are fourth and only four points off second place, but we cannot rely on other teams slipping up.
We certainly don’t want to make do with another play-off position, even if it means another trip to Wembley.
With the loan transfer deadline day being this Thursday, Turner hasn’t ruled out making some signings.
The interesting thing will be to see what areas of the squad he will strengthen.
On paper we haven’t got too many weaknesses, but I would like us to bring in a more experienced striker who will score us plenty of goals to complement our younger players.
Unfortunately these are like gold dust at this stage of the season.
After no win in three Town need to get back to winning ways starting at Bradford on Saturday.
Bradford were seen as the “big” team in the division at the start of the season, but things have not worked out for them for one reason or another.
Languishing in 17th on 44 points they seem safe from relegation but too far away from making a late promotion push.
Town should take confidence from the fact Bradford have lost seven home games in the league this season and the fact we beat them 3-1 in the reverse fixture on the opening day of the season.
By the way did anyone else notice a certain Jake Robinson score two more goals for Torquay at the weekend? Take note Turner!
Sponsored Links
UK Sport
Shropshire Star on Twitter
Keep updated with the latest breaking news and content on our Twitter feed.
Lifestyle
Interactive Dining Out map
Hundreds of reviews by the Shropshire Star and Express & Star's teams to help you decide where to eat.
Entertainment
All the film reviews
Before you plan a trip to the pictures, get our critics' verdicts on all the latest movie releases.
OUR NEW APP
Get the new Shropshire Star app
Download the Shropshire Star’s new app to your iPad or iPhone to get one week of access to our digital newspapers absolutely FREE.
shropshirestar.com
Popular sections
Useful links
James
As a Town columnist and supporter i would have thought you would have known that we have no chance of going to Wembley this year.
Thats because the play off final (if we are in it) is at Old Trafford!!
Report abuse
Mr Pugh could work for the BBC football website with knowledge like that!
Report abuse
More lazy reporting, Bradford may be languishing in 17th place, but on current form (last 6 games)……..Bradford are 7th and Shrewsbury are in……………………………………………………..21st !!
Report abuse
I got sacked today but I want the ‘Town’ To go up!!!
Report abuse
If we played to the rules, we should never have gone up defeating Aldershot on penalties at Stoke when Scott Howie went off his line
Football karma comes to bit you back in the end – we lost to Gillingham from a corner that wasn’t.
Things could be a lot lot lot worse. I think any Town fan would have taken promotion from the Conference with a promise of competitive football and two play off finals. Otherwise the club were doomed to be another York, Halifax or Cambridge.
As Gary Peters used to install, if the ref is against you, it should be a positive thing and drive the mentality of the players to work even harder – quit moaning and just score more goals – simple
The reason Town lost was not because of the referee, it was simply because they did not score more goals than Wycombe. There was ample opportunity to score more goals, but they didn’t.
When Geoff Hurst hit the bar in the World Cup Final in 1966 it did not really matter as England went on to score more goals. Thus the incident was a lesser of a talking point. On Saturday Town could have scored countless goals but at the end of the day its all too easy to criticise the officials, who were wrong – yes – but as stated the team had more than enough time to fight back and show what they were made of.
Thus – Blame the attacking flair of the team, not the blind linesman.
If it is a failure that Shrewsbury Town fail to defeat the division’s top teams then your expectations are too high and just state that or that the team is not good enough.
Report abuse
Point of information for ‘Town Fan’.
We did score more goals than Wycombe – two to their zero. However, the officials decided that one of those goals should be disallowed and that they would gift a goal to Wycombe probably from the reaction of a Wycombe player.
Report abuse