Stockport County 3 Darlington 4

Trying to be positive about County is damned hard work these days.

Scoring three at home and losing to a very average Darlington side who are poor away from home is just not good.

Starting at the end, their winner was a belting strike from Taylor 5 minutes before the end. Can’t argue with that but in my eyes we should have not conceded the other three so meekly.

What has happened? We can suddenly score. Chadwick who looks poor for long periods is actually doing it for us to a degree (still room for massive improvement). Goal scoring had been the missing ingredient – we should be climbing up the table now, but no. We have suddenly forgotten the art of defending.

So frustrating and I can see fingers beginning to point at our rookie, lets not forget that, manager.

County lined up like this;

Glennon, Holden, O’Donnell, Bounab, Edwards, Jon Nolan, Sheridan, Miles, Chadwick, Elliott, Paton

On the bench were Ormson, Blackburn, McCann, German and Whitehead.

So we were missing Piergianni who is becoming an absolute key player for us in defence. Remember too we also were without Fraughan, Rowe’s,Routledge and McConville. It is almost half our strongest XI.

Also our style of football although not incisive enough is at least half-decent to watch in the middle third of the park.

Last night though our defending cost us. Apart from their winner I thought Glennon was at fault for at least one of the goals, punching a ball out tamely which led to their third. Overall our back line also seemed to be too slow and poorly positioned.

The BBC stats say Darlo had 5 efforts on target and scored 4.

Oh, and I think our gate of 2,671 was the lowest since 1991.

All out of positives now. Two wins from 15 games. Three points above the bottom four. Leaders Wrexham away on Saturday.

Trying hard to keep faith and courage. Please leave your comments below. I think there is a swear filter installed…