Accrington Stanley? Who are they?

[gazan]

The temptation to quote the above lines from the milk advert may be high after last Saturday but we should know not to be complacent. After the buzz of Salford, the 59 years of watching the Alex tells me Saturday will be anti-climactic. I don't know how Accrington will approach the game but I'm sure the Alex won't be allowed the free movement of last weekend.
I'm going for a 1-1 draw. March to score.

[LordK]

Well, top of the league (admittedly just because we are nearer the front of the alphabet), at least we can say we were there at one point in the 25-26 season.

So, Booth, solid, heart in mouth as he became a sweeper for the first 15 minutes, but did get away with both. Billington, but just needs to stop the silly mistakes giving the ball away, however, I like him moving forward, Hutchinson, I doubt he will hit a sweeter strike all season, a good solid performance. Connolly and Demetriou solid enough, but like a another fullback so Billington can replace either in the middle of the defense as required. Lunt and Thomas, like it, as Thomas appears fully fit for he first time in a long while and Lunt a terrier. O'Reilly, a touch of class, and he did defend more this week, Sanders, a cool head with Agius growing into his opportunity. March, my kind of player, puts himself around and pushes the opposition into making mistakes, his goals will come! Off the bench Moult and Tezgel. both look accomplished and will get their chance before long. Powell and Finney again filled the spaces well. So 5000 folk at Gresty Road, nice to see. Bring on Crawley, more of the same, 3 x points and make the pack chase us. I had us with 1 or 2 points at this stage, so nice to have 6 on the board. Go Alex!

[gazan]

Yes another outstanding first half full of energy. Hope they can keep this up. O'Reilly is something else. We'll be lucky to still have him after January (unless he's clogged in the meantime). We had March down as leading goalscorer but has had 3 assists already! His lay off for Agius was sublime. Credit also to Hutchinson for his goal which was quite difficult considering that the ball was coming at his right foot and he had to adjust his body to hit it so cleanly. It was great to see his celebration- he clearly didn't know what to do with himself!
Two more mentions, another creditable performance by Connolly. My lack of confidence in him seems misplaced. Also Connor Thomas who seems to be benefiting from the rotating midfielder role.
All round a good team performance again. Just a slight worry that they couldn't play the wind in the second half.
Another crap ref who bottled a moment. The 2 footed lunge on Booth after the ball had gone warranted a straight red. The same player committed a deliberate trip 10 minutes later but feigned injury to fool the ref into taking no action. However, the worst thing about the ref (and his assistants) was the blind eyes to the constant shirt tugging occuring just yards in front of their eyes.

[ShropshireAlex]

Yes awful one-sided decision making by the ref - imagine how we'd have done with a homer! We basically overwhelmed them early on, first to every second ball. As expected they fought really hard to hold us 2nd half, shooting on sight (clearly to orders) in the hope of getting a sniff of getting back into the game. They'll struggle again this season i think, but the fight, and Rawson, may well be enough to keep them above team with less bottle.