Can we start the season again?

Photo credit: Steve Hope

Last night the Iron slipped to their third successive league defeat at the hands of fellow promotees Fleetwood Town. First of all, despite the performance not being anything close to acceptable – it was an improvement on Saturday. 4-0 against Preston was a fair result, they battered us. But did we deserve to lose 2-0 last night? Not for me. Their first was a nice breakaway goal against the run of play whilst the second was a sublime flick of the head from an even better free kick. I’m not sure many teams in this league could have defended the second goal any better than we did, due to the quality of the cross. So if we didn’t deserve to lose, did we deserve to win? Nope. We quite simply did not create enough ‘good chances’. And the two we did create Canavan decided to squander, when both looked easier to put away. Don’t get me started on Canavan.

We have McAllister and Bishop both playing in the middle. Individually these two are fantastic, but together – it just doesn’t work. Neither are nearly forward thinking enough to give us that fine balance that we had in the side last year when we had Syers playing alongside McAllister. Okay so Wilcox has been a little unlucky that Syers picked up his season ending injury as I am sure he would have chosen him ahead of one of Bishop or McAllister in the past two games. But why as soon as Syers was ruled out wasn’t he the first player we replaced? Yes we needed Winnall’s replacement but we could have survived much better without Kee coming in (for now) – but we will not survive if we do not bring in a high quality attacking midfielder, and soon. It has to be the highest priority. And I’m afraid Nicky Featherstone is not that man – but admittedly a nice back-up to have. He’ll probably start on Saturday if Neal Bishop’s injury was worse than it looked!

On a more positive note I am happy with the signings we have made over the past few days. First through the door was Billy Kee from Burton Albion – whom we’ve paid for so fair play Swann for releasing the funds for that! Kee signed a 2 year contract and boasts an impressive goal scoring record at League 2 level. He made 117 appearances for the Brewers scoring 42 in total.
Swiftly followed on from Kee was the announcement of Luke O’Neill coming to the club from Premier League new boys Burnley on a three month loan deal. He impressed massively on his debut yesterday picking up the Twitter Man of the Match, as well as the sponsors award too.
Finally a few hours before kick off yesterday we brought in Peterborough United’s goalkeeper Bobby Olejnik on a one month loan. The Iron were without a senior keeper after Sam Slocombe and James Severn both picked up injuries.

Welcome to the new arrivals and let’s hope we can kick on after this dreadful start.

Up the Iron!