Match Discussion: Game 7 - The Gills (H) Live

[Fozzy]

Quite frankly, we have seen some bad officiating over the last few years, but that has to be up there with the very worst I have ever seen and in the past you would definitely think a brown envelope had been passed to them sometime in the week prior. Bad decisions started from the very first minute with their left back clattering into Abbot and only getting a “talking to”, Abbot then decides to take his own retribution a couple of minutes later and challenges said left back whilst in full “Roy Keane” mode, on another day he could have been off.

Tsaroulla could have had a hat trick in the first half, first was good work by him but a weak finish, second he ran onto a great cross from Macari but decided to blast it into the stands with his wrong foot when all he had to do was keep in down, or even take a touch as he was in loads of space. Third was an unforgivable miss and I still cannot believe how he didn’t score from the save of JJ, the least said about Abbott’s attempt the better.

Gillingham goal looked a yard offside from the replay, but he took it well to be fair to him, and that was probably their last decent chance of the game. 

Still cannot understand how Austin’s goal was disallowed, especially when it took the linesman around 8 seconds to put his flag up. I’ve still not heard an acceptable reason as Brown didn’t touch the ball and he was definitely onside when the ball was kicked.

The most worrying part of the day for me is how long JJ will be out for, we can hope for the best but it doesn’t look good at all, and I’m hoping it’s not ankle ligament damage.

Thought we got a few things wrong today. Abbott wasn’t comfortable playing that far forward and probably had his worst game so far, maybe it would have been better to play Crowley there from the start as he was playing too deep to hurt Gillingham. Grant (edited as originally named the wrong player) struggled all game and probably should have been changed at half time, he needs to offer more than he is doing at the moment, appears to hide a bit too much and has little off the ball movement, I feel that Austin offers more than him (except defensive height).

Not too disheartened with the result because if Jatta was available we would have won, but I am a little concerned at our mounting injury list and really worried if Jodie is out for three or four months. Hopefully get Robbo, Jatta and Scott back in the next couple of weeks as we will need them against Port Vale.

[Joshua]

I think we should have played Jevani Brown from the start. He might not have made much difference on goal, but there is every chance that he could have worked well with David McGoldrick. How poor at times was Didzy on the ball? He almost got us punished before Gillingham had scored. It wasn’t his best performance, and I feel it shows why he can’t play week in and week out. Although, we didn’t have many options, and it reinforces the belief that we need more support in the attacking department. I think our passing at times wasn’t all that good, which Gillingham capitalised on. I don’t think they were class, just a very good team that defensively hung onto a lead I don’t think they deserved. I do feel their goal was offside, but what can we do? There was no need for the Gillingham players to confront the assistant who later flagged Sam Austin’s goal as offside. The officiating was that poor, I wouldn’t blame people for thinking some sort of match-fixing was going on, but I don’t think it was that. I think the officials crumbled to everything Gillingham wanted and went against us when given the chance. Some odd calls throughout the game, but Austin’s goal was perfectly fine.

[NottsCountyKev]

It was a good game. Gillingham countered well but looked quite limited in their attack. Defensively, I thought they were superb and blocked several chances that could have caused their keeper issues. Even he pulled off some good saves. Notts just needed a bit of luck, which didn’t come. We can complain we missed clear chances, but that is football. I think the offside was the wrong decision, but again, some days you have good officials and then you have what we had yesterday. I don’t think if we scored from open play, the referee or assistant would have found something to disallow it. They were just very poor, rather than corrupt.