Battle of the O's - Orient v Oxford

[The Terminator]

Referee was OK start with but deteriorated later. No way shoudl Slocombe have been booked for time-wasting. Orient should have been penalised for failing to provide ball boys. It is not the GK's job to retrieve the ball from the crowd.

I agree with that, booked a bit too early for me as well. He was a bit of a homer ref as well, very picky. But he played a very good advantage leading to your second goal!

 

[ThisTinpotLeague]

Thought Oxford threw it away myself, they were excellent in every department in the first half and will no doubt be in the top 7 this season. We were awful in the first half, by far the worst we've played all season. Clearly it showed today that we're a team built on the 4-3-1-2 formation, because 4-4-2 in the first half we offered nothing and our wingers Cox and expecially Turgott offered very little.

This pretty much sums up how I felt. I might have taken a point before the game, but we controlled the first 45 minutes and I am still trying to work out how we made so many mistakes during the 15 minute break.

We sat deep and were begging you to score. I assume that we were trying to see the game out, and that we might have had a different plan once you scored (which failed to materialise with the sending off). EIther way I thought we lacked a bit of professionalism as we gave the ball away far too easily during the second half, and we deserved to be caught out.

In the end, we were lucky to hang on for a point despite the good saves from the Orient keeper.

Awful sending off by Jordan Graham, utterly stupid and cost his team, no reaction from the Oxford bench at all told the story itself, stupid 2nd yellow card to get.

I'm not sure it does tell the story. Our bench had lots of things to react to yesterday, and we got absolutely none of them right.

I'm not sure if Hylton was injured or if he pissed in somebody's cornflakes, but there has to be a reason that our hardest worker was left on the bench when we went down to ten. Taylor didn't turn in a bad performance but he is playing a completely different game to the rest of our side - dropping deep to win headers that flick on to absolutely no one. I don't think he has even looked close to scoring this season - we are using him wrong. Hoban up front as a lone striker with long-balls being smashed out to him, he had no chance either. Bizarre choices by Oxford.

With the sending off, I didn't really notice him kick the ball away - but he apologised, so I'll assume he did something. Either way, getting a (second) yellow and a goalkeeper yellow within a couple of minutes for the amount of timewasting that we did... I have never, ever seen a referee take that line. It's our fault for giving him an excuse - we usually benefit from other teams giving the referee an excuse, so the boot is on the other foot.

What adds to the frustration is that, if Orient should take a 2-1 lead at the Kassam later in the year, they will be able to get away with far, far more time wasting and not see any punishment at all.

To their credit Oxford defended well after that and may well have scored a third but for some great goalkeeping from Cisak - He had two things to do all the second half and he kept us in the game, but Oxford were again undone by another long ball to Palmer whos knock down found Kashket to score his first ever career goal..

This is all far too kind on us.

I've tried not to say much on Orient because of the tone of this whole thread. The one thing I really do have to bring up is how well Cox played. I kept an eye on him as he spent most of the first half a few yards from me. The difference between Cox and myself was that I did nothing to affect the game, while Cox hit a corner straight out for a throw in and got himself booked. He hit a 40 yard pass back to his goalkeeper. I think that was it. For an entire half.

I am not surprised that the Rifle guy has already tried to bluster his way out of an embarrassing comparison.

 

[E10rifle]

Hmm? Cox was utterly woeful. So was Roofe, his three yard tap-in aside. Two very good players for this level who had a shit game. Not sure what's bluster about that.

Baudry, Sercombe, Graham (until he got sent off) and Payne were the best performers on the day, with Sercombe being the pick of the bunch.