Sand Castles!

According to this weeks Ballymena Times, Roy Walker and his management team (we imagine that contains, assistant manager, first team coach, goalkeeper coach, kit-man, physio, Alfie Stewart and any other hangers-on), have noticed that we are shipping a lot of goals. Now admittedly we've been following this teams fortunes for a long time and we can't solely blame Walker for the team's tendency to go asleep at the back. But what we can't forgive him for is trying to 'pull the wool' over our eyes and pretend that this manifested itself over this season. When Kenny Shiels left us we had one of best goalies in the league and along came Tommy Wright and the rot set in (Tommy's getting rid of Goosey is well documented). So it's been six years that our defence has been shipping goals and Tommy Wright couldn't fix that in his time (3 years) and so far Roy Walker can't fix it either.

We don't have a solution for the problem either but the panic buys at the deadline, Watson and Vauls are not the answer. Sky Blue Sport has been critical of Archie, but we saw on Saturday we were rather worse without him. Maybe Roy has to pick a settled defence, say, Kane, Rodgers, Archie and Vauls and play them for a match or two to see if they can get an understanding between them and the keeper. But he also needs to think with his head not his heart about the midfield. Kane was made the scapegoat on Saturday, but he had no cover in front of him, if we have to play Conor Downey, he's better inside, not on the wing. Up front we need a target-man, not someone who goes in half-heartedly like Elvis or wins one in ten headers like Baker. Surely there's someone in the first division we could get on-loan and ship Baker or Costello out to make room.

Of course Roy or his assistant(s) need to go see such a player, no use asking around, like we did with the last two goal-keeping flops, knowing our luck we could come up against someone who fits the bill tomorrow night at Bangor. Now for tomorrow night's game, we'll have to make one enforced change, due to Big Denver's sending off, but it should be a straight swap, bringing Archie back in . We see no great panic to change the team round, he could even pick the same starting 11, minus Denver, for at the end of the day we missed 3 sitters in the 2nd half, admittedly it would have been a travesty of justice if we had rescued a point, but what has justice to do with football. Hopefully Bangor won't pose the same problems as Portadown, but they won't be a pushover either, we're in for a battle, but we can win it and get into the next round, so come on Sky Blues, let's shag those Copeland islanders!