Marine

Another away win, another clean sheet, prize money for the club, advancing in a national cup competition. A penalty scored by Rob Wilson is like double money for netbusters. More postives, Glenn Steel seems to have played the full 90 minutes, & Matty Blinkhorn around 70 minutes.
According to their twitter feed & match report, we seem to have sat deep, at least in the 1st half, & hit them on the break. According to Mark Fell's comments, Simms hasn't had a save to make.

I don't think we sat deep, but we did defend with superb discipline and hard graft. After a fairly chaotic first ten minutes, the two defensive lines got organised and the lads effectively stifled every attacking threat - there was no way through the two lines, so they were forced to play over the top - which was meat and drink to the 3 centre backs, all of whom (Stanley, Hudson and Steel) had excellent games. The only other alternative was the long diagonal pass to a winger, which worked a couple of times but never produced an end result. In the second half, from the first minute, we looked the only side that was going to win it - they never looked like scoring, and, as you say, Jack Sims had barely anything to do. Killer created both goals from near-identical positions - decent, on-target shots from the left corner of the penalty area. Martin Fearon beat the first one away, but only back to Killer who was scythed down by a desperate defender; the second Fearon pushed out high into the centre of the penalty area where Glen nodded in the easiest goal he'll ever score.
Playing like this, City are going to be increasingly difficult to beat - indeed, increasingly difficult to score against, and if we can keep Blinks/ Winder/ Wilson and Killer fit and suspension free, we will score goals, too.
After Charnock Richard 4 weeks ago, I never imagined I'd be able to write stuff like that at any time this season, let alone before the end of October.

Huge steps taken these last few weeks. I even felt there was an improvement under Stanners and who's own form since returning to the team has also improved dramatically. Another excellent result yesterday and also a few quid into the coffers. Players seem to be gradually returning from injury which thus strengthening the squad. One question I have though it's regarding Richie Baker. He was on the bench v Scarborough but didn't get on. He's since been nowhere near, so is he still with us, is he injured or has he left?

Also I feel worth noting we were playing into a blinding low sun in the second half, it was bad enough from where I was watching so playing into it must have been a challenge at times - I did worry at the turnaround how we would cope if they started lobbing high balls and set pieces into our box but I thought we looked comfortable. The upturn in the last month and a half has been great to see - agree SC after the Charnock game I could never have imagined feeling so encouraged as I currently do!

Nobody has commented on last night's second instalment of our cup exploits v Marine. I suppose we should feel reasonably happy that we won the more important of the two games, particularly from a financial perspective, but it would have been nice to be still in two cup competitions and to maintain interest apart from just trying to keep out of relegation danger.