Rovers v Bees

DONCASTER ROVERS

 - V - 

BRENTFORD

Do you ever wonder why you bother with football sometimes?  For me these last weeks have been a case in point.

First of all for the second week running, a few brainless pillocks who tag along with the Rovers traveling support embarrass the club by not being able to behave themselves at a football match.  We then get treated to the spectacle of a nation who appear to have a larger minority of brainless pillocks treating the youngsters of England's U21s to a hate-fest.  The country's FA shows how much they intend to do about racism in their national game by denying everything and blaming the main victim of the hatred.

Surely the football authorities will do something about this?  I mean, they give you every confidence by the way they manage a seemingly straight-forward matter of terrible weather causing a postponement.  What an absolute farce.  A pitch that is so obviously unplayable that even the ITV football team are able to instantly call the postponement correctly is inspected not once but twice by a referee.  Between the inspections the weather worsened, the roof of the stadium wasn't closed (irony of ironies, they couldn't close it because it was raining too much!) and nobody, apart from two body-surfing fans did anything to change the condition of the pitch.  Why were there pitch inspections?  To buy time to allow people who cannot decide between plain or pin-striped suits to make decisions.  These are the people who run our game.

So why do we bother?   Because if we didn't bother. THEY WIN.  The brainless pillocks win by keeping us good people away and the people who run the game think what they are doing is good enough.  Its not, so keep writing on forums, writing blogs and telling them that their paying customers aren't happy.  

You never know, if we do this, we may get more of the only action of the Poland v England farce that made me smile about football again.  The FA covered extra costs and ticket prices of the 1200 or so England fans able to stay in Poland to watch the postponed game.  Well done FA for realising who the customers are.

DONCASTER ROVERS

I think last week's Rovers performance kinda set the footballing tone for the week.  Against opposition that, on paper, seemed weaker, we did enough...just.

We’ve only conceded three goals from open play all season.  - Dean Saunders

That's a really encouraging stat from Dean and of course, during Saturday's match, we only conceded from the penalty spot.  Saunders described the penalty decision as "terrible".  I'm not so sure.

Shelton Martis and Paul Quinn were both holding Steve Howard as the throw came in.  Its true that you see the similar holding on every corner or long throw into the box.  But it is, strictly speaking, against the rules of the game.  All that is needed is a striker of Howard's experience to make it look as if he is being impeded slightly more than he is impeding and you have a ref making "terrible" decisions.  For me, it was a 50/50 decision and Rovers were on the wrong end of it.

Iain Hume - On the mark for Canada

But something that is good about the Rovers so far this season is their ability to come back.  In fact, so far we have the equal fifth best record on this statistic.

Against Hartlepool, it was Captain Fantastic himself, Rob Jones who crashed home a header after being pushed forward as a makeshift striker.  Another piece of good news, only one yellow card in this game, for Shelton Martis who allowed himself to be wound up by Howard.

Into this one and Rovers will welcome back Iain Hume, who scored for Canada during the week.  Unfortunately, the goal will be the only happy memory he brings back from his latest international appearance as Canada were on the wrong end of an 8:1 thumping in Honduras. 

BRENTFORD 

If the stats are anything to go by, Brentford should provide good entertainment at the Keepmoat on Saturday.  The Bees have taken an average of 14.33 shots per game, two more than the next highest team in the division.  At the other end, only 5 teams have had fewer shots taken against them (one of them being Doncaster).  So Uwe Rosler's philosophy would appear to be "attack is the best form of defence".

Watching their last three lots of league highlights and you see straight away why the Bees make so many chances.  Rovers will be subjected to an onslaught of pace, which if I'm honest, is the only form of attack that they may find troublesome.  

When they win possession, Brentford are always looking to get the ball forwards quickly, not so much through the long ball, but through a whole host of players who are obviously more than happy to run with the ball.  

Its great stuff to watch and very effective.  It would of course be more effective if Brentford were better at converting their many opportunities.  Only 23% of those shots end up in the net.  Compare with Donny who make 37% of their goal attempts count.  Combine Donny's accuracy and Brentford's gung-ho running and it would be "move over Tranmere, Donnyford are coming through!"

At the other end my advice to Donny would be "what is good for the goose..."  Run at Brentford - they looked shaky when Shrewsbury did this.  Press the defenders too, from what I saw, there are mistakes  just waiting to be forced out of the back 5.

To an extent, the stats show this too.  Brentford don't have many shots taken against them, mainly because of the policy of setting up camp in the opponents half.  But when shots do get taken at them, they tend to be on target more often than not.  True, they are far from the  worst at conceding goals, but I don't think many teams have had much chance to really press them.

Prediction  

Entertainment all the way in this one.  Donny will edge it 3 : 2, with Hume getting on the score sheet.