Don’t Blame Donaldson

Earlier today, as many of you know, we lost to Sheffield Wednesday in what was targeted as a six pointer. A game that if we were to win, would cement a great opportunity to be in the Premier League next season. As it stands, we are only 3 points adrift, which is a lot closer than you’d think listening to some fans after the defeat today.

When a crucial game is lost, we tend to look for a scapegoat. Someone to blame regarding the loss of 3 points. Today, was no different as many people targeted Donaldson as the man who lost us the game. Now, he scored the goal that put us 1-0 up. If you do your job properly, at 1-0 up, it should be easy to shut the opposition out. This is often done by keeping the ball and attacking on the counter. But we as an entire team failed to do this. It doesn’t matter if Donaldson misses 100 chances, if he scores one and we do our job well enough, it will finish 1-0.

Yes, he missed what many people are regarding as an easy chance. But it was just one opportunity that we may or may not have scored. Buckley missed a good chance from 4 yards out but he was not blamed for the loss? Why? Do we expect too much from Donaldson and put too much pressure on him? I honestly do not know, but what I do know, is that fans are too easily wound up if he misses. I think he had a decent game other than that one miss. He scored, he worked his socks off and he defended from the front. This is to be admired.

The other usual scapegoat and this case was no different, are the officials. The referee should have given us a plethora of penalties according to some. Maybe this is correct, but maybe we should have settled down and switched on then we wouldn’t have been desperate for goals and opportunities. We were on top for the first half, if we had shut up shop or maybe scored a few more, then not much emphasis would have been put on the penalty appeals. We were desperate.

The main thing that lost us the game today was our concentration. When we conceded the first goal, you have to regroup quickly and either go for the win straight away or accept the draw. A draw today wouldn’t have been a bad result even though our performance in the first half may have deserved more. So if we had taken our time to regroup and be more defensive for that 5 minutes after the goal, then we may have got something from the game.

I identified Gary Hooper as the man to watch this game. He’s been nominated as the player of the month, so why we gave him so much time, I will never know. We just didn’t switch on when it counted.