Broadfield Stadium, Saturday 3rd March 2012, 3pm.
Broadfield Stadium, Crawley
Firstly I just want to say welcome to my nice, shiny new blog, where I’ll be talking about life as a Torquay United fan. Regular match previews and reports will be the usual blogs, aswell as other blogs as and when I feel like I want to say something. Anyway, onto the real reason for this blog, Torquay United.
The Gulls travel to Sussex for a clash with fellow-promotion chasers, Crawley Town. As we all know, the contrast between ourselves and Crawley is a big one; we’ve managed to get to where we are on a reduced budget compared to last year, whereas Crawley have spent thousands of pounds to get firstly into the Football League, and now the Red Devils are trying to break into the 3rd tier at the first time of asking. Steve Evans’ charges are looking to emulate Stevenage and complete back to back promotions, and he has been backed to do so.
TEAM NEWS.
I’ll start with our hosts. It has been a busy few weeks at the Broadfield Stadium. Both Matt Tubbs and Tyrone Barnett have left the club, to Bournemouth and Peterborough respectively, which has brought the club nearly £2 million in transfer fees, which is a phenomenal amount for a League 2 club. Their replacements came in force, with Billy Clarke, Karl Hawley and Shaun Batt joining the club, with only Clarke signing a permanent deal with the club. Another loanee recently brought into the club is Watford goalkeeper Rene Gilmartin, who came in due to Scott Shearer picking up an injury. Another January loan signing was Sanchez Watt, the Arsenal youngster dropping to League 2 after spells at Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday earlier this season.
Onto ourselves then. Brian Saah will definitely miss out after his 90th minute dismissal in the defeat at Gillingham, so it is looking likely that young Reading loanee Angus McDonald will make his first ever professional appearance. Taiwo Atieno has been away on International duty with Kenya, where he made a 5 minute cameo appearance, but it is unknown whether he’ll be available, so we may see the out-of-sorts Rene Howe lead the line once again, hoping he can re-discover his early season presence.
HEAD TO HEAD.
20/08/11 – Torquay 1 – 3 Crawley
Crawley started life in League 2 well, and took the points from Plainmoor with a clinical performance.
29/01/10 – Torquay 0 – 1 Crawley
Matt Tubbs scored the only goal of this FA Cup 4th Round tie to give Crawley a trip to Old Trafford in Round 5.
11/04/09 – Torquay 0 – 2 Crawley
Goals from Dannie Bulman and Robbie Matthews gave the Red Devils a comfortable victory at Plainmoor.
23/08/08 – Crawley 3 – 1 Torquay
A goal by Jon-Paul Pittman, followed by successful penalties from Thomas Pinault and Jamie Cook give Crawley an easy victory, with Roscoe D’Sane scoring Torquays only goal of the game.
26/04/08 – Torquay 1 – 2 Crawley
Crawley won the penultimate game of the season thanks to goals by Ryan Hall and Jamie Cook, with Tim Sills scoring a late consolation.
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So, as you can see, from the previous five games, Crawley have won every one of them. We did win the first two encounters, which came earlier in the 2007/08 season, but that was as good as it got for us in this fixture. The FA Cup game in 2010 still haunts me, but I won’t go into that, as I’m sure most of you are trying to forget it!
THE FORM TABLE.
A quick look at the form of the sides over the last six league games;
Crawley – DDWLDL
Torquay – WWWWLL
A quick look at those suggests we’re still in better form than our hosts. We enter March on the back of successive defeats, after our spectacular run started back in October. Crawley however, as you can see, have stuttered a bit since New Year. Excluding their FA Cup run, where they beat Championship sides Bristol City and Hull, they’ve only won one in their last 6. Two draws at Plymouth and Bristol Rovers were followed up with a big 4-2 victory against another promotion hopeful, Cheltenham. However, that is their last victory as defeats on the road at Swindon (3-0) and Shrewsbury (2-1) have sandwiched a 1-1 draw at home to mid-table Morecambe.
We’ve ended our 7 game winning streak, but now we need to get back to the sort of performance levels we reached during that run, as we haven’t been at the races in the games against Bradford and Gillingham.
HOW THEY LINED UP.
This is the Crawley squad that travelled to Shrewsbury on Monday night;
Rene Gilmartin
Charlie Wassmer, Pablo Mills, Kyle McFadzean, Dean Howell
Dannie Bulman, Josh Simpson, Hope Akpan
Billy Clarke, John Akinde, Sanchez Watt
Subs; Karl Hawley, Shaun Batt, Michel Kuipers (GK), Scott Neilson, Sergio Torres
I’m surprised to notice that Sergio Torres was an unused substitute for this game, I can only guess that’s down to an injury. A very attacking line up, and bench, with two strikers, a winger, an attacking midfielder, and finally a keeper.
THE MAN IN THE MIDDLE.
The man with the whistle for this fixture is Simon Hooper. Mr Hooper has officiated 22 games this season, dishing out 63 yellow cards with 6 reds. The last Gulls game he refereed was the 2-0 victory against Stockport at Plainmoor just over 12 months ago.
The Wiltshire-based referee is in charge on Saturday
PREDICTION.
It’ll be interesting. Neither side are on their best form, but I can’t see us getting anything from the weekend. I expect around 300 Gulls to make the journey, but I think we’ll come home emptyhanded, unfortunately. We’ve looked weak up front recently, and Crawley will want to bounce back after their defeat on Monday, so for those reasons I’ll say..
2-0 to Crawley.
allthingstorquayunited 