On this home straight, everyone involved in the playoff stock car race is going to encounter bumps in the road. They're going to run into potholes too, that was us today as we rolled into one deep enough to warrant a phonecall to the council.
To tell the truth I thought Newport deserved the win. Firstly they scored what was probably the best goal I've seen at PL this season, then they got the second and dogged it out when we got up a head of steam.
Fair play to them, but they were helped along the way by an astonishing refereeing performance. The refs errors were by no means exclusively in Newport's favour (I still can't believe he missed a blatant first half trip from Armani Little) but of the many mistakes he made, the biggest was not sending off the defender who was adjudged to have fouled John Kirmani-Gordon.
I was level with the incident and wasn't convinced it was a foul at all at the time. The ref blew for it though, and at that point the red card should have been insta-brandished. A yellow card was a nonsense, our man was in on goal. That incident hurt us badly.
I thought the crucial nuance of the game was how good Newport's front two were. The pace of Evans along with the physicality of Zanzala meant we often needed all of our back five to contain them, because of that we struggled to get any dominance further up the pitch. Lee Brown in particular was a big loss for us going forward.
And then when their 8 (Morris) had it rolled back into his path, he drilled it into the corner from 20 yards. When we had two similar opportunities, we drilled them into row zed. On such details games are won and lost.
Anyway it is what it is (or was what it was) and we move on. Had we won here we wouldn't have been close to a guaranteed playoff spot. Now we've lost, we're nowhere near guaranteed to NOT get one either.
And of course those of us who have a sense of destiny know that in actual fact, we ARE certainties for the playoffs. How do I know? Well because I can feel the inexorable magnetic force pulling us together. MK will be 4th, we will be 7th. There is an inevitability about us meeting them over two legs in a do or die playoff semi-final.
Today changes nothing, we WILL get into the playoffs. COYD
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