Beware the balti pies at Vicarage Road. I tried one last night and to my surprise you don't get given a little fork like you do at Nottingham Forest. So you have to try and eat the whole thing without getting any of the pipping hot filling on fingers. I nearly succeeded but just as I was getting down to the critical last few mouthfuls I accidentally squeezed to hard and got 120 degree chicken goo on my little finger. The pain was so intense I forgot where I was for a while and didn't really recover until about 10 minutes in to the game. The experience was similar to that of trying to eat a McDonalds apple pie.
By the time I did come round I was told we had had our one glorious early opportunity. You know the one that seems to happen at every home game where for a few seconds afterwards you think 'wow, we are going to slaughter this lot, we look really good'. And then nothing similar follows it for the next 90 minutes.
True to form thats just what happened and worse still Plymouth (who looked worse than us all evening) then scored a nicely worked goal.
Again I found myself thinking that it is really unfair of the rest of the team to expect Tommy Smith to do everything even though he tries so hard. Similarly the rest of the team must realise that using Lloyd Doyley as an attacking tool is futile. I love Lloyd, I really do. He tries very hard and is a great defender, but he doesn't possess the skills to be a wing-back and gives the ball away far more often than he gives it to someone in a yellow shirt.
Priskin showed again that he could really do with some of the Smith and Doyley work ethic especially when challenging for 50/50 balls, as no-one, least of all Priskin himself, believes that he is going to win them. He shows touches of individual brilliance, and these obviously work for him on the international stage, but he just doesn't look like a man who is going to score in the scrapping of the Championship.
By half time the only truly entertaining thing that had happened was the welcoming on the big screen of the 'Wet Pups of South Africa'. Honestly. The mind truly boggled (and is still boggling now) about what the Wet Pups could be. I would've come to the conclusion that the the club had started entertaining touring lap dancing troupes had it not been for the fact they were at the ground in conjunction with a local school (unless schools these days aren't what they were when I went).
You'd think we'd have come out looking desperate to score at the beginning of the second half but that only really happened once DeMerit gave away a penalty for putting his hands in the air and we were 2-0 down.
Hoskins, on for Priskin, looked eager and prepared to have a go in the way that the man he replaced never does and he also outshone Ainsworth who made an appearance late on. Whilst Poom wasn't at fault for any of the goals he certainly had his first dodgy display of the season which must have cheered Richard Lee.
John Joe got one back courtesy of Tommy Smith kicking the ball at him and Hoskins then scored a disallowed goal late on but we'd given ourselves far far too much to do.
So our good start has now become an average one. And it doesn't bode well that we've been beaten by Plymouth who were in the bottom three, and Nottingham Forest who now are. The fact we lost 2-0 to Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday and they then lost 6-0 to Reading who we face on Saturday doesn't really inspire either. Starting the next game with Hoskins up front, whether because of Priskin's injury or Aidy wielding the axe would certainly make me feel a bit more hopeful.
