Lower League Week – Notts County and Leyton Orient battle red tape

Shaun Derry: The new Notts County manager

Notts County Seek Shaun Derry Clarification

I’ll begin with an apology, as the last Lower League Week repeated an untruth about a prominent lower league figure, albeit one that had been widely reported elsewhere. It appears, despite discussion of new Notts County manager Shaun Derry retiring to focus on his new role, he may still be intending to play on, with the club seeking ‘clarification’ over whether Derry can continue as a player or not.

It appears that Notts County would like Derry to continue, but the problem is Article 5 Paragraph 3 of FIFA’s rules on transfers, forbidding players representing more than two clubs in the same season, despite his QPR spell in its entirety being 27 minutes in the League Cup.

At the start of the season, Derry, despite being out of favour, tried to battle his way back into QPR’s team. Derry was then loaned to Millwall, where he was in and out of the team before getting an excellent offer from Notts County, and tearing up what was bound to be a lucrative contract with QPR to take it. Surely his behaviour throughout represents the values FIFA seek to encourage – shouldn’t their legislation reflect this?

The rule in general seems far more powerful than the ‘problem’ it solved. I find it hard to believe there was ever a rash of players joining one club, demanding a transfer within a couple of months, and repeating the problem at their new club. And even if there was, the transfer window would have solved the problem. The transfer window may have prevented Derry playing in itself, with Derry being contracted to another club when the window closed. But it could be a while before it’s clear whether Derry can join as a player in January, with Notts County saying that the club are looking for clarification from the Football League on this issue and hope to know either way by the end of the year.

While Derry’s case is drawing a small amount of media coverage to the problem, there will be players elsewhere who’ve been out on loan to a club who isn’t interested in taking them back, and having played a few minutes for their parent club, find themselves in limbo for the remainder of the season kicking their heels rather than using their ability to entertain fans.

The legislative body’s creativity in putting this kind of block in the way of players taking to the field is pretty impressive.

Peterborough Divided

Peterborough started the League One season strongly, pushing Leyton Orient all the way. Peterborough haven’t had as much media coverage as Orient, largely because it was more expected. Dropping five points from the opening 12 games is an excellent start, but it was foreshadowed by the second half to their relegation season in the Championship, where they collected 41 from the final 25 games.

But things have gone a bit wrong since, with four successive league games without victory. First was a draw against a Sheffield United team so out of form that it was as bad as a defeat, followed by actual losses to Colchester, Leyton Orient, and on Monday night, Walsall.

Despite striking the bar from range early on, Peterborough were second best from that point onwards. Milan Lalkovic opened the scoring for Walsall, using his low centre of gravity to hold off the more physical Peterborough defenders and slot home the opening goal. Peterborough later sloppily played the ball into Craig Westcarr’s path, rather than the Walsall forward needing to move to intercept. Robert Olejnik responded by making a save he shouldn’t have needed to make. Romain Sawyers sealed the win when he raced past the Peterborough backline, before placing the ball across Olejnik in the Posh goal.

A red card for Shaun Brisley, a penalty given away by Gabriel Zakuani (Olejnik again protected his team-mates from the consequences of their errors, saving the spot-kick), and it’s understandable that Darren Ferguson was unhappy. But the level of unhappiness is a little surprising – saying that“We’re 16 games in now and I’ve seen certain patterns, inconsistencies and areas of the pitch where we’ve just not been good enough…It’s just a pity the next month is not January, because there are certainly going to be changes.”

Given that until recently Peterborough’s results had been near perfect, Ferguson junior has evidently inherited his father’s toughness.

Romain Vincelot v E3

Leyton Orient lost midfielder Romain Vincelot for their weekend game after he had a one-match ban extended to two. What was unusual about the extension was the reason. He was found to have breached FA Rule E3 and deliberately picked up a booking in the previous week’s FA Cup tie, ruling him out of the little-loved Football League Trophy but wiping his slate of bookings clean.

Manager Russell Slade denied it was deliberate, but Vincelot was unavailable against a resurgent Preston.

A narrow 1-0 defeat, the result of an excellent Joe Garner volley was Orient’s first home defeat since February, a result that saw the O’s replaced at the top of League One by Wolves.

Reports from those at the game suggest that Preston played a fairly deep 5-3-2, with the wing-backs functioning more like full-backs. Losing to one of the better teams, set up in a defensive manner, isn’t necessarily a sign that Orient are falling from their early form. Odds are that Leyton Orient will fade from their current position as title challengers, but the defeat to Preston isn’t severe enough to act as proof they won’t end up in the playoffs.

Brentford 5-0 Crewe

When two passing sides met at Griffin Park, Marcello Trotta opened the scoring with a Suarez-like header from the edge of the area; later goals included midfielder Adam Forshaw and forward Clayton Donaldson finishing off smooth passing moves. The final score was 5-0, with Brentford being credited with 55% possession against another passing club, and getting nine shots on target to Crewe’s one, hitting the woodwork twice more.

The Bees are now on a more than decent winning run, the Crewe victory being their fifth league win in a row, with Clayton Donaldson, and Marcello Trotta (returning on loan from Fulham for a second season on the condition he doesn’t take any penalties) each scoring three goals in that run. As a result Will Grigg, brought in from Walsall in the summer to provide the goals, has largely been relegated to sub appearances in the last half hour.

Brentford were one of the favourites for promotion in pre-season, having just missed out on automatic promotion on the last day of the season and losing the playoff final to Yeovil. They’ve started poorly, and have been hanging around mid-table. But they’ve now raced up to fourth in the table and seem to be building up a strong head of steam.

Crewe’s form has been poor for a while. They followed up the Brentford defeat with a loss to League Two Wycombe in an FA Cup replay, meaning the Railwaymen have picked up only two wins from 14 in all competitions and have now conceded 36 in 16 in League One, the Football League’s highest. During that 14 game run, they’ve lost by three or more six times.

One explanation is their relatively inexperienced defence – the back four against Brentford were aged 22, 21, 26 and 21, and three of those four have been regulars this season, with 20-year-old George Ray also playing a significant number of games in defence.

As a result of Crewe’s policy of giving young players experience early in their careers, all five of those players have a significant amount of Football League experience – none of them are in the first dozen games of their careers. But even 26-year-old Adam Dugdale has less than 100 Football League appearances. Being so committed to the next generation can mean that there isn’t a grizzled voice to guide the talented but inexperienced youngsters.

Manager Steve Davis has identified a lack of fighting qualities as a problem, saying “It’s going to be a real battle this season. They’ve all got to work harder and keep fighting for the cause. If they’re with us we’ll stick with them. The ones that aren’t will get left behind and replaced.”

Crewe’s admirable dedication to developing their youth may have to be tempered in the next few weeks.

Wimbledon 4-0 Portsmouth

There was another big result a division lower, as Wimbledon defeated Portsmouth.

Pompey keeper Trevor Carson gave away and impressively saved a penalty and then a follow-up effort early on. But Carson softly padded down a weak close range header into the path of Andy Frampton, who opened the scoring – Frampton later doubled the lead from a corner.

Although Wimbledon have similar experience of learning how to run their own club, the difficult learning experience Portsmouth are currently going through, their sympathy didn’t extend to mercy on the field. Sammy Moore spectacularly chested down then volleyed from the edge of the area, Michael Smith later held off a physical defender before firing into the roof of the net.

Having won, drawn and lost five times each in the league, Portsmouth now lie in 16th place, six points between both the playoffs and the relegation zone. There’s currently debate over the suitability of Guy Whittingham as manager – given his honesty about the team’s failings in recent weeks, there’s plenty of room to blame the man at the top for standards getting that low.

The idea that Pompey would walk to the title (which seems to have been put forward mainly by the lazier national journalists) was always nonsense. But there seems to be enough quality in their strongest eleven at least, that they should be challenging for the top three spots.

Though they’ve gotten through the nightmare of Portpin, Portsmouth’s board of fans may have difficult decisions to make.

Gillingham Out of the Cup

It’s a cliché to say that football can be a cruel game, but it’s still true. Under the management of Nigel Clough, Sheffield United have been climbing the table, collecting three wins and a draw from their last five matches, all against League One opposition (with the defeat including a first half red card). So, apparently the Blades are getting back on track.

So Gillingham’s weekend win, courtesy of two scrappy and hard fought goals, was an admirable result despite Gillingham being higher in the table before the game.

Unfortunately, a respectable upset is always going to be overshadowed by defeat to a club most fans haven’t heard of. (Sorry Brackley.) It looks to have been an open game, with Brackley shooting 14 times, Gillingham 23, though the quality of those shots was woeful with just five from each side being on target. As a result, a deflected first half shot was enough to settle the tie.

Peter Taylor rotated his squad, with only six of the players who started against Brackley playing more than 70 minutes at Bramall Lane (Gillingham had made two early changes against the Blades). In theory it looks a good combination of new energy and the club’s strongest players, but collectively the side selected wasn’t good enough.

Peter Taylor seems to be more of an organiser than a man-manager, a manager whose successes have generally came from putting together a tactically solid unit, rather than getting the best out of players. But the Brackley game was one where the players needed to be indoctrinated with the mental skills to deal with the pressure of coming from behind in a game where anything but victory would make them a laughing stock.

With Taylor being an unpopular choice as manager, defeat to Brackley will probably stay in the memory longer than victory at Sheffield United, and won’t help him win over the fans.

Just In Time For the Christmas Compilations

One sure fire way to deal with your own team’s failings is to laugh at the failings of others. To that end, as Bury were chasing an equaliser against Bristol Rovers, the ball was played in to Shaun Harrad, standing un-marked in the middle of the goal three yards out when this happened:

It’s the kind of miss that doesn’t make it easy to argue that there’s good footballers in the lower leagues. Harrad’s overall record for Bury has been poor, scoring one goal in 14 games this season and two goals in 22 since he arrived at Bury in summer of 2011 – though he grabbed eight in 20 on loan at Cheltenham last year, so there’s a reliable goalscorer somewhere inside him.Bury later scored an equaliser, so Harrad’s miss wasn’t quite as costly as it might have been.