Bristol Rovers 0 Brentford 0 - Hanging on the telephone

BBC coverage now online at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_div_2/8992323.stm

A slightly embarrassing moment after the game on Saturday.

I left the ground with Brentford manager Andy Scott who was not travelling back on the team bus and as we were walking along he asked:

“Where are you parked?”

I then offered to give him a lift and gave a long rambling description of where I usually parked my car that went on for a good fifteen seconds. It was only when I paused to draw breath that I realized he had his phone to his ear and wasn’t even talking to me. He must have thought I was a bit of a nutter – then again, he would’ve been right I suppose.

My clipping from this morning's copy of The Sun
The Sun’s football website: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/football

Scott’s side played well, as did Rovers, but neither got the goals they deserved.

In the first half, the Rovers midfield of Chris Lines, Stuart Campbell and Jeff Hughes seemed to find space wherever they wanted it and Lines, in particular, was picking out the front two of Jo Kuffour and John Akinde for fun, but the ball didn’t run for the strikers.

Akinde is on loan from local rivals Bristol City and was making his full debut. The Gashead faithful gave him a warm welcome - setting his background to one side - and he rewarded them with a display that was full of effort – if not end product.

Akinde is a big lad and has a great deal of pace, but is obviously short of match practice and, understandably, will take time to build a partnership with the smaller, gutsy Kuffour.

Jo has built a good reputation at Rovers and never tires of running. He’s also not afraid to stand up for himself and probably came off best in a fairly physical battle with Brentford’s skipper and central defender, Karleigh Osborne.

Two Reading loanee keepers were on show in Mikkel Andersen for Rovers and Ben Hamer.

In the first half Hamer made a good low save from Kuffour and, while he didn’t really have any other saves to make, showed good levels of concentration (and how aware he is) by clearing his lines and dashing from the box to thwart a Rovers attack.

In contrast, Andersen made four excellent saves in the second half that should have seen him pick up the man of the match champagne.

Brentford wingers Nicky Adams (twice) and Myles Weston both had goal bound shots saved by the Danish U-21 international as did striker Gary Alexander with a point blank headern from 10 yards. Afterwards Adams said:

“We all knew how good Mikkel was before we got here and so no-one was surprised.”

The Rovers sponsors gave the man of the match award to the excellent Will Hoskins ten minutes after the striker had been substituted and swapped for midfielder Wayne Brown.

Rovers defender Gary Sawyer had just been sent off for a second booking and when Hoskins number was shown the Rovers fans showed their disapproval by booing manager Paul Trollope’s decision. There’s no doubt that Hoskins had run his socks off and played well, but I couldn’t help but feel that the sponsors decision was a dig at Trollope’s.

Frankly though, when you lose a defender and go down to ten men, one of the strikers has to be sacrificed. As Trollope said:

“I don’t know a manger anywhere in the world who would carry on playing with three strikers after going down to ten men. Will had run himself into the ground and put in a good shift and so I took him off.”

I guess you could argue that Akinde could have been brought off, but even with ten men, Rovers were still looking to win the game and Trollope probably thought he was more likely to trouble Brentford’s central defenders than Hoskins – and as mentioned above, Kuffour was giving Osbourne a hard time of it.

For me, Trollope made the right decision.

All in all, a draw was a fair result, although both managers felt they could have won it and I’ll post their thoughts on here tomorrow’s blog once I’ve reviewed my recording of their interviews and made sure they were talking to me and not someone else on their mobiles!!