10 men Town fall at home to Wrexham
Youth Alliance
Shrewsbury Town 1 Wrexham 2
Saturday 12th January 2013
Town: Wearing, Carpenter, Phillips, Westray, Easthope, Jones, Gwilliams, Musslewhite Stephenson (Ryan 58), Evans (Fletcher 78), Molinuex. Unused subs: Burton, Holmes, Anderson. Goals: Gwilliams
One moment of stupidity from Sam Molinuex on the half hour made life very hard for the remaining 60 minutes. A foolish kick out by Molinuex gave the referee no other option other than to show him a straight red card.
That meant we had to reshuffle the team, defend patiently and look to counter attack quickly by using the pace of Jack Gwilliams.
This gave us the first real chance in the game when Stephenson played Gwilliams through and the winger composed himself well to place the under the advancing Wrexham keeper for a 1-0 lead on 35 minutes.
Giving the boys confidence, we hoped the concentration levels would see the half out, but unfortunately sloppy defending, this time by Phillips soon allowed the Wrexham striker to run on the blindside and receive a diagonal pass and place the ball in the bottom corner giving goalkeeper Connor Wearing no chance.
The second half began nervously as the task ahead against 11 men was always going to be difficult. As early as the 51st minute, Wrexham found themselves 2-1 in front again through a mistake in midfield firstly by Evans as a misplaced pass was intercepted.
Phillips then mistimed a header only for the ball to find the Wrexham striker one on one with Wearing left in no man’s land and slot into an empty net.
Our reaction had to be positive otherwise the score could have easily escalated out of control. Fortunately Wearing saved well twice to keep us in the game as the pace of Gwilliams, Ryan and Jones going forward looked like it might get us the one chance we needed.
Good play from Jones put Ryan in on two occasions but he was unable to work the keeper.
Overall our play at times was crisp, quick and penetrative, but too many times we do not mix the play up to our advantage.
We need to go longer at times to turn the tables on the opposition as we find quite often when we play or defend in the opposing half that we are not bad.
By Peter Wilding