City v. Margate

No teams yet. City need a quick start tonight against an in form team.

Kevin A back. Isaac on bench with a Kieran Hodges? Keeper?

Keeper from rovers

0-0 ft. Seaside trip next tuesday. Did we miss a game on saturday and so not so sharp?

Only 341 attendance so bad night from all aspects.

Poor game. Freezing.

On such a cold night against, with all due respect to Margate, less than glamorous opposition 341 is a good crowd I think.

Yes. Apart from Slough who were selling tickets for their FA Cup game this wd be one of the best.

Disappointing game. City did hardly any of the things Gerry Gill talked about at meet the manager. I did not like Riggy alongside Richards but to be fair Jarvis wasn't offering an outlet up front so we had to play in front of their defence with no penetration. We had very few efforts on goal and Southwood make about five point blank saves to keep us in it.
Having said this we looked worse when Nick and Marvin came on.
We will have to play a lot better if we are going to win this tie. We really missed Smith.

Jerry Gill said after East Thurrock "The atmosphere at the last game was fantastic. There was noise and singing, and there was a good incentive from the club to try and get students in."

The attendance tonight could have been greatly increased and thereby helped the team if City had been more imaginative with ticket pricing.  For example give anyone who went tonight a voucher for 50% discount off the standard cost of a league game.  A small admission cost reduction in tonight's game simply reflected the lower grade opposition BUT with prize money for a win...

I would still make City favourites in the replay but who wants an eight hour round trip to go to the seaside midweek in this weather?

I'll sleep well tonight after watching that

Hendon await the winners after penalty shoot out victory.

As Bob Chester pointed out in the MOM interview afterwards, our march to the semis a few years ago started with that dire 0-0 at Gloucester so maybe tonight was a good omen! But I agree that we'll have to play a lot better next Tuesday - Margate were dangerous going forward and looked the more likely scorers.

Beau Nash wrote:Jerry Gill said after East Thurrock "The atmosphere at the last game was fantastic. There was noise and singing, and there was a good incentive from the club to try and get students in."

The attendance tonight could have been greatly increased and thereby helped the team if City had been more imaginative with ticket pricing.  For example give anyone who went tonight a voucher for 50% discount off the standard cost of a league game.  A small admission cost reduction in tonight's game simply reflected the lower grade opposition BUT with prize money for a win...

I would still make City favourites in the replay but who wants an eight hour round trip to go to the seaside midweek in this weather?

Cup tie, 50/50 split, prices agreed by both clubs, no smaller club is ever going to agree to heavy reductions.

I very much doubt the cost of entry has anything to do with a low turnout.

There were actually very few children about.

BenE you are being unfair to Big Marv. It’s hard to do anything when a defender is literally hugging you to stop you running onto a through ball! Lord knows how the referee and his assistant couldn’t see it! We did lack urgency though. Playing in front of the defence is par for the course against a team setup for a replay, but you must force the issue. I was disappointed with the energy levels tonight considering no game on Saturday. Jim must have worked them too hard last night.

If bringing on Nick and Marvin signals a move to plan B, then there seems little benefit in not playing the ball to them and allow them to play to their strengths. It’s not pretty or in line with Gerry’s philosophy of how he wants to play, but two 6ft blokes need the ball put in an area to allow them to use their physicality, they aren’t ever going to use fancy footwork and silky passing; if they could they’d be on at the start.
I can’t recall, when they were on the pitch, any cross from free play that we put in to allow them to battle for it.
I was reminded by a friend who watches a lot of league games that when you get into those final stages of a game you need to go direct because there is always a defender who has a mistake in him.
And that’s what we didn’t do when we had Nick and Marvin on.

To echo the above, no idea who from towards the tea bar shouted "Just cross the f**king ball" in the last few minutes did seem to sum up the feelings of many.
Shame that after promising performances that we went back to sterile possession. Hopefully Saturday will move back towards quick movement again.

Started pretty well and got gradually worse other than the occasional glimpse of goal. Rigg's shot was a couple of inches from hitting the post and that was the closest we came. Should've tested what looked like an inexperienced, young keeper who ended up having a pretty uneventful evening.

Welch-Hayes getting MOTM was a bit surprising. Thought he looked good but would've gone with Richards or Watkins personally.

Jarvis did essentially nothing but wasn't getting great service either.

Roll on Saturday.

Sluggish performance all round as if the players had showed the sharpness and ability of the City goalkeeper we could have possibly avoided a replay. Luke Southwood made at least 3 superb saves in the second half to keep us in the tie and I felt was easily our MoM on otherwise a stalemate of a match.

Jon_BOA wrote:To echo the above, no idea who from towards the tea bar shouted "Just cross the f**king ball" in the last few minutes did seem to sum up the feelings of many.
Shame that after promising performances that we went back to sterile possession. Hopefully Saturday will move back towards quick movement again.

That was me - the swear word just slipped out I'm afraid.

I have been thinking that perhaps they were over-trained on Monday night.

But interestingly Jerry did say that their monitoring of Opi suggested he might get an injury. That is exactly what happened last night.

Beau Nash wrote:

I would still make City favourites in the replay but who wants an eight hour round trip to go to the seaside midweek in this weather?

I think this sums up how ridiculous it is that at the 3rd Qualifying Round stage the competition isn't more regionalised that just north and south - between them City and Margate will have travelled the best part of 800 miles. This at a time when the FA is introducing some new leagues from the start of next season with the intention of reducing travel.

The round threw up four ties that stand out to me to show why the present system needs changing: as well as City v Margate, Truro had to go to Lewes, Weston to Welling and Chippenham to Whitehawk. An east/west split would have given the chance of local derbies for all of those teams which I am sure would have produced much better attendances than the games that actually took place did. It would also prevent the need for long midweek journeys for replays. Apart from the £5000 prize for the winners I can't imagine any of the clubs made much money from the games after the expenses were taken out.

Well said. While sports like cricket and rugby seem to change how their competitions are organised almost every season, football never seems to address issues which to most fans are blindingly obvious.