U's:0 Robins:0

"Now I'm back, we can only hope the players don't return to their old shot-shy ways in tonight's match against Altrincham." - Me. Yesterday.

Next time I'll just keep my mouth shut eh, because this is getting beyond a joke now. The last player I saw hit the net for United in a proper match was Scott Rendell against Stevenage in last years play offs, 360 goalless minutes ago. What possessed me to book tickets for Wimbledon on Saturday I have no idea.

It's not that we played especially badly last night, but I struggle to believe that we are capable of scoring more than one goal against anyone, let alone three, four, or seven. Forest Green, Gateshead, et al must be really, really, bad.

Alty have been waiting almost as long as me to see a U's goal, given that we haven't scored against them in our last three encounters. They returned to Abbey employing the same innovative 8-0-2 formation which successfully nulified us in the final game of last season, but could have taken the lead in the first minute, when Dale Johnson's flick found Chris Senior, who was denied by the legs of Danny Potter.

Johnson's willingness to collapse when in the vicinity of a United player won him plenty of free kicks from the penickity referee Jerden, but mostly United were on top, with early balls into the channels for Holroyd and Crow causing problems for the visiting defenders. At times last season I don't think we were direct enough, and it's good that Ling seems to be addressing this. Unfortunately in the second half the accurate distribution of the first period lapsed into high hopeful balls which were easily dealt with by Greg Young and Robbie Williams. Perhaps if the manager hadn't been absent due to illness we would have stayed on task for the whole 90 minutes.

Anyway, Crowy put in a good stint up front with some intelligent running, but missed the two best opportunities of the first period. Both came from Holroyd crosses, with the first being blocked by a defender and the second looping over the bar.

The second half followed an all-too familiar pattern, with United attacks getting more and more frantic as time progressed. We did have the ball into the net twice, but both goals were disallowed. First Parkinson strayed offside during a move which culminated in Willmott scoring from close range, then Dan Gleeson being penalised for pushing seconds before Wayne Hatswell crashed home a volley at the far post. I wasn't really in a position to judge whether either decision was legitimate, but the latter certainly looked like the kind of shirt tugging that always goes on in Conference games.

It's disappointing that we couldn't break down a hard working but limited Alty team, and I think our line up could do with some tinkering. I don't like continuously slagging Parky, but he doesn't seem to do anything, and it seems ludicrous that Willmott is being played out of position to accomodate a blatently inferior player. Courtney may not be the most consistent, but he is surely a better bet to make things happen than the scouse baldy. It will be interesting to see whether Ling makes any changes for Saturday.

Man of the Match: Danny Crow - Lots of hard work and nice touches from a player who seems to finally be approaching top form.





Announcement of the Match: "Could Joe Bloggs please report to the money room" said the tannoy man during the first half. Perhaps we've finally found the answer to the age-old question of where the Dion money went.