Poor Second Half Performance in Friendly Draw

Daniel Reeds writes on Saturday’s 1-1 draw away at League Two Rochdale.

There are two halves to football, two sides to every story, but on Saturday there were definitely two completely different performances when Blackpool met Rochdale in their fifth pre season friendly at Spotland. In fact the match was that boring that the most exciting thing was enjoying the discussion of Rochdale’s choice of hot oxo instead of Bovril, playing the guess the trialist game and of course looking forward to listening to more Nightwish on the way home.

Ollie fielded a pretty much full strength squad with Chubs in goal, a back four of Coid, AJB, Evatt and Crainey, midfield of GTF, Vaughan, Southern and Clarke with Burgess and Euell looking to be the forwards.

The first half was exciting with both sides making chances. Rochdale called Chubs into action early when a well struck shot from the wing came in and made the American shot stopper save well. Unfortunately 12 minutes in Danny Coid was subbed with what appeared to be a knee injury after going for a header. The signals from Horner were clear that Coid’s day was over and he made way for Manchester City trialist Curtis Obeng (Not Oblong). The pacey trialist certainly looked good. Southern saw his effort blaze over the bar in the 18th minute with Burgess a couple of minutes later hitting the post. Crainey made a last ditched challenge on Will Buckley who cut inside the pitch well and unleashed a good strike only for the ball to bounce of Crainey’s legs for a corner.

Action came again in the 44th minute when Billy Clarke produced a well struck shot and made the ‘Dale keeper Kenny Arthur produce a good save. The resulting corner produced Blackpool 1st goal as IAN EVATT met the ball with his head to fire Blackpool into the lead. However the lead lasted all of 2 minutes when CHRIS DAGNALL gathered the ball from the obstructing ref, went past AJB to easily and fired the ball beyond the helpless keeper into the bottom corner to level the score at half time.

HALF TIME – ROCHDALE 1-1 BLACKPOOL (Evatt 44th, Dagnall 46th)

The second half lead to only two shots on target for Blackpool who replaced Vaughan, Clarke, Euell, Burgess and GTF with Ormerod, Martin, Nardiello and two new trialists – Ishmel Demontagnac and Emmerik DeVriese.

It was Demontagnac who played the second half well with a jinxing run through the Dale defence and produced a well struck shot that unfortunately went straight to the Rochdale keeper. The former Charlton man looked sharp and can run with the ball – lets hope we see him perform at Carlisle on Tuesday. The Belgium midfielder DeVriese looked quite good on the ball. He can get into good positions and provided good balls but can get caught in possession easily.

Rochdale ended the last 15 minutes well with Adam Rundle finding the side netting and Dagnall Blazing over with 12 minutes to go. David Vaughan returned for Crainey which saw Martin switched back to left back and Vaughan partnering Southern who didn’t have a good game today. Joe Thompson ended the game when his shot bounced back off Ian Evatt to result in the whistle being blown for full time

FULL TIME – ROCHDALE 1-1 BLACKPOOL (Evatt, 44th, Dagnall 46th)

Of course pre season is all about the performances and introducing new players and trialist but certainly today’s performance wasn’t going to win games in the Championship in less then 2 weeks time. Holloway must get key players in now and work in gelling the team together.