Anyone seen the goalkeeper?...

My last missive on my beloved Rovers brimmed with enthusiasm for our chances of outright promotion. I talked of our inventiveness and dedication to the cause, our superb away form and sense of optimism. Now though I’m writing the night after a fourth straight defeat, and a near complete collapse of the season, our morale was last seen legging it down Borough Road with all of it’s cases packed swearing never to come back.

We have plummeted from table toppers to sixth in just ten days, any reasonable Tranmere fan will now tell you automatic promotion is highly unlikely and the play offs represent our only hope of salvaging a season that has promised so much. Optimists might point out that the top of the league has concertinaed so much that if results go well on Saturday we can actually go back top, realists will point out the teams we are being forced to field at the moment are simply not capable of taking us into the play off zone.

Against Swindle Town last night we could of been 4 down by the interval, they were much the better side. We have seven players out right now who were in our primo primo side at the start of the season, and here’s the rub, we won’t get the opportunity to play that side again this season.

Saunders (as a favour to Doncaster perhaps?) is keeping our best goalscorer Jake Cassidy at Wolves, so that’s a major blow. It’s been confirmed today that James Wallace is out for the rest of the season, you can’t over estimate how much this damages our chances.

Gibson, Akpa Akpro, Palmer, Holmes are all due to drift back after injuries and suspensions but without the spine of Wallace and Cassidy it still looks grim.

The splendid early season form of Fon Williams, our Cambrian wonderboy, in goal has dipped noticeably of late too. The aforementioned problem of a severely depressed morale may well account for this, the stone age old cliche of winning being a habit hanging over us like a Mersey storm cloud.

I really can’t blame the lads who have come in and even after our fourth straight defeat I can’t get angry with the team, Ronnie’s fragile side of loan stars combined with injuries has done for us. Crawling in at 6th and having some play off fun is something I’d bite your hand off for right now.

On a lighter note the Swindon game provided us fans with a comedy moment we won’t forget. As we were pressing for an undeserved late equalizer our goalie Fon Williams went up for the free kick, the ball was immediately cleared and fell to Blacky, our full back, on the half way line... he then passed it back to the goalie... who of course wasn’t there.

IAN PROWSE ||