Sutton (H) match thread 7 PM KO

I'll be honest, I don't know how to process what we saw tonight. A bad day at the office? I wish I could reassure myself it was that simple. After all, the first twenty minutes or so we looked the better team, certainly created all the chances. But then the goal comes and.. we seem to lose our heads as well as our belief. Second half starts just as poor then the sending off comes and any semblance of team shape goes with it, then finally even players' basic technique starts to fail them. Rooney wandering about the park like he owns the place. Throw ins thrown directly out of play. Players looking helplessly at each other, moaning pointlessly at the referee. I'm struggling to remember the last time I saw anything like it from a team of professionals. England that time v Iceland comes close.

On the one hand it's obviously too soon to be passing any kind of decisive judgement on the new coach. On the other... I'm aware of the danger of having put on my rosetinted nostalgic glasses here and pining for the halcyon days of a week and a half ago... But can anyone seriously imagine a team under Jim's charge disintegrating so thoroughly during the course if ninety minutes? Apart from anything else, they'd surely be frightened to.

This I'm sure of. The new coach has just been handed the challenge that will make or break him. I might slightly archly add that a good start would be to get his hands out of his pockets. Because that body language post-final-whistle there... Was not good.

This is interesting, because it looked a stonewall pen to me from the stream.

Even if he did win the ball though, I am not sure why he was diving in making a challenge like that there - he should have just stood up and pushed the Sutton player wide? 

I would imagine it would have to be an clear and obvious mistake to overturn a red card wouldn’t it? Not just, well it looked ok from this angle but yeah it looked bad from another.

Struggling to think of a more unlikeable captain of a County team than Hogan. Took him an age to get off the pitch and I’m surprised nobody told him to get the f*ck off. Just don’t like his demeanor. Even in the West Ham build up he seem void of any feeling or personality. If you add in the Bell incident at Torquay and Lefts claims of his agent playing up, something just doesn’t sit right with me. Really good player most weeks.

Bromley’s was the best I’ve watched this season.

I ment this season as a whole not just tonight.rooney had to try something tonight as the rest were shite. He's trying to grab the game and turn it on its head

It’s a stupid and rash challenge. But if what Sam is saying is correct I’d be screaming blue murder as would most professionals as the ref clearly doesn’t understand the rules.

It looked to me like the attacker has a heavy touch which takes it away before Hogan goes through him, but I could be wrong there. I guess if that is what happened then the argument is that touch stopped it being a goalscoring opportunity.

I’ve no way of knowing if it was a genuine attempt to play the ball, but given Hogan’s record of giving fouls away this season I’m not convinced he was.

Whether the ref was wrong to give the red or not though it was foolish ill discipline to go in like that there and that’s what I’m angry about - even when I thought he’d only been booked (as a card had already been flashed) I was already raging about the foul.