Good spot, Wivel!
It is indeed young O’Sullivan. I must admit that I too felt a little sorry for him when he was substituted to the sound of cheers and jeers from the Popside on Saturday - and he was almost certainly one of the “younger players” who according to Gary Owers were suffering with the reaction from the crowd - which he brought up in his post match interview on the OS!
Well, Gary, can I suggest that you sit young O’Sullivan down - and the rest of the team for that matter - and see perhaps just why the crowd reacted like they did - you might just learn something!
Although its not shown in the highlights package, it was O’Sullivan that gave the ball away cheaply (not for the first time!), higher up the pitch which eventually led to Bromley’s third goal - then witness the “effort” he made to track back and recover the situation!
What I wasn’t aware of at the time, was the quite frankly pathetic attempt(s) that he made to win the ball in a tackle, not once but TWICE, for their all important first goal!!! Watch the video back and you will see what I mean .... despite all this, he barely breaks into a jog (again) to try and redeem himself.
O’Sullivan also allows Bugiel an uncontested header at the near post - which Clarke makes a fine save from - and all this from just the brief edited highlights package!
There are others too - see how easily Balatoni is beaten early on and the lack of pace he shows - with only a fine save by Clarke denying an early goal for them. Likewise, he is also poor in the build up to their third goal.
And then there is young Reece Mitchell, see how easily their wide man sweeps past/through him, before he pulls the ball back for their fourth goal.
Up to this game, I had been largely supportive of Gary Owers but when you hear him blaming “the recruitment made last summer” for all his woes .... and then you see THAT error strewn performance! You are right Mr Owers, the 4-0 hammering was down to “individual errors” but unless my eyes are deceiving me - far too many of those are coming from players that YOU have signed these past few weeks.
One final point, has he (Owers) honestly given any thought to how it must affect dressing room morale, when he clearly infers that poor recruitment last summer is at the root of our problems (I don’t disagree with that) but how must those players (signed by his predecessor(s)) feel when they are being blamed for performances like we have witnessed recently when clearly we are leaking goals brought about by errors from HIS signings. Not only that but these players are signed by him and immediately preferred to those he didn’t sign, and the likes of Lathrope, Keating, Gowling, Klukowski and Gosling (for a time anyway) are frozen out.
Still early days you might argue - but unfortunately for TUFC time is fast running out - these “signings” made recently by Owers may come good over time, but we cannot afford to wait. We needed any players brought in to “hit the ground running” and so far the likes of O’Sulivan, Balatoni, Mitchell, Barnes (? Seriously what was the point!) and young Fletcher have not been able to do that and have actually weakened the team at the most crucial of times, and there is only one person to blame for that!
The one exeption is Elliott Romain, based on the little we have seen so far, but as for the rest, you might as well send them all back as far as I am concerned - they appear to have been a waste of our precious budget! Signing young kids (in the main) from fresh out of Academies seemed like a flawed strategy to me at the time, given our desperate situation, and given what we are seeing now ..... not only is it not what was needed, but it really isn’t fair on these “kids” at this stage of their fledgling careers to be thrown into this sort of situation and into the understandably toxic atmosphere at Plainmoor at this time. That said, even if they lack ability, as an absolute minimum you would at least expect any one of them to give it their all .... but we aren’t even getting that from some of them it would appear!
