Another Jeckyll and Hyde performance costs Daggers.

Daggers came into their Friday night match against Exeter City on the back of a good 2-0 win over York City.  The hope around Victoria road was that the Daggers could pick up from where they left off and start to put a decent run of results together in the process.

The Daggers started this game on the front foot, and Jamie Cureton in particular was pulling the strings as is becoming par for the course lately and it was the diminutive striker who gave Dagenham the lead with a trademark finish on 11 minutes.  Daggers were on top for the most part of the first half, playing some nice stuff on the floor, Cureton involved in all that was good.   The former Exeter man nearly doubled daggers lead against his old club but his effort just went past the far post.  The daggers lead 1-0 at half time and all was looking good for a second home victory on the bounce.

Cureton scores again.

The second half and The Grecians began quickly as the Daggers would have expected, normally when a team is behind at half time they come out fighting and for a good 10-15 minutes the leading team need to be strong and soak up the pressure for a bit, but not in this game Daggers had gone from being totally the dominate team to being completely under the cosh, as the game wore on the Daggers began to retreat more and more into their own half, creating hardly anything in attack and struggling to string two passes together as they reverted to going long at every opportunity.  Panic had certainly started to set in and with the panic came the sloppy mistakes, the same old mistakes that keep rearing their ugly head, the ones that have always cost the Daggers dearly in the past.  As the pressure increased and the panic intensified the Daggers started to pick up silly bookings and give away silly fouls in silly areas.  Somehow after receiving 6 bookings from former Premier league referee Keith Stroud (who was shocking by the way) and giving over position all over the place miraculously the home team still lead the contest.  Then in the 8oth minute the pressure finally told when Alex Nicholls who appeared to be going out wide was fouled in the area by Matt Partridge.  The resulting penalty was put away and from that moment on there was only going to be one winner, and in injury time it came, Aaron Davies headed home and the capitulation was complete.

How can a team be in total control for 40-45 minutes of a game and then just completely not turn up for the second half, to be fair if Cureton scores his chance in the first half and we go 2-0 up it is game over and even at 1-1 Doidge had a chance that if it had gone in may well have taken the wind out of the visitors sails, but for whatever reason this didn't happen and our Jeckyll and Hyde performances just continue.

Another Jeckyll and Hyde performance.

I can't put my finger on why this keeps happening but I am sure it is not due to the quality of the players we have at the moment, maybe it is a mental thing, I am afraid I don't have the answers and I just hope that Wayne Burnett does.

 My friend Dr Monkatron had an interesting theory though which I thought was inspired.  He suggested that when we were under the cosh and losing all the key battles why not play a few little mind games, why not get our Olympic high jumper Dalton Grant to run up and down the touch line as if warming up jumping up and pretending to head the ball.  Now if I was an opposition defender and I saw out of the corner my eye some really tall skinny bloke jumping about twenty foot in the air I don't think i could get the thought out of my head, just imagine if one of those defenders is distracted even for a split second, with the quick brain of Cureton it could make all the difference.   I personally thought it was a great idea as long of course as he didn't start "Fosbury Flopping" all over the gaff.

Get out there and warm up Dalton.

The positives from this game other than Cureton, has to be that at least we have seen that we are capable of playing football and pressurising teams albeit for one half, but surely do that at some point is better than not doing it at all.

Last night saw the Daggers take on Leyton Orient in the JPT this fixture is one we always seem to win, although as I walked over to Viccy road I couldn't say I was brimming with confidence.  The fact that I wasn't optimistic about our chances meant I would probably enjoy the game a bit more as I didn't expect nothing so anything positive would be a bonus.

The first positives of the night were that Billy Bingham a midfielder I rate as our best passer of the ball was back in the starting line up, also back was Scott Doe and up front was Christian Doidge.  Another positive was that we played two up top it was just a shame that Cureton didn't play up along side Doidge but at the age of 39 it was always a game he was going to sit out.

Leyton Orient are a far better side than the last time we payed against them, they finished last season nearly getting promotion to the championship, and even though they rested a few of their players it was a very strong side they put out and the gulf in class was obvious to spot within the opening 15 minutes.  Orient are a well drilled, strong and disciplined side who can knock the ball about.  Although this was going to always be a tough game it was the perfect game for Wayne Burnett to test his tactical nous and see for himself how far he has come as a manager.

It took only 5 minutes for the O's to take the lead and in a first half that the East Londoners dominated and where the home sides chances were always going to be at a premium.  It was going to take a bit of something special to even get a goal in this game but other than a tidy turn and show of pace from Ade Yusuff  which resulted in a shot going over the bar their wasn't really anything else to write home about.  Billy Bingham had a good game though and he played a couple of Joe Colesque type 30-40 yard passes right into his team mates feet.  Doidge showed he could win the ball in the air  and put in a decent shift and Bradley Goldberg showed glimpses of good movement in the limited time he had.  On the negative side captain Abu Ogogo was very poor.  Abu is a strange one for me and I think I may be in the minority when I say I don't really see what he gives us in midfield, he has all the will in the world but really what actual attributes does he have as a midfielder, he scores goals now and again but when he doesn't score he doesn't really offer much, it seems he takes too many touches he doesn't talk, he isn't a great tackler and he isn't very good at passing.  He reminds me a bit of  how Glenn Southam was at the end of his time for us.  People will probably shoot me down in flames but I just have never got the hype about him, I have always thought there were better midfielders in this team that offer more.  As a right back he is the best we have ever had but as a midfielder he is way down the pecking order.

Anyway the game finished 2-0 to Orient both goals coming from Jay Simpson, who alongside Darius Henderson caused us problems all night long.

My biggest gripes about last night would be the way that one of our former players, and not just a player, a player who in our brief stay in league 1 was probably our best player Romain Vincelot was abused by some of our supporters.  Yes he fouled one of our players, but he used to foul players when he played for us but for someone to call him a French C***  for being fouled and it was a blatant foul sums up why I think some of our supporters need to take a long hard look at themselves.  The treatment he got from that minority was just in my opinion disgusting.

Some supporters weren't too happy to see Vincelot.

My other bug bear has nothing to do with the game it is the PA system at the ground.  What is the point of making announcements when you can't understand what the fuck the bloke is saying, he sounds like a cross between Norman Collier and someone with a bath plug stuck in his throat.  Maybe it is just the bloke to blame for that and not the PA, but after a big campaign to get the walkout music changed there seems no point when you can barely hear it through the sound system we have and then it gets talked over and then faded in and out.  Completely pointless you may as well have the team walking out to fucking YMCA for all it matters.

Hep, hup,buck buck.
Sort the PA out Collier.

I can't say I am that bothered we are out of the trophy as I think it is a stupid competition with stupid rules.  A competition were you have to have 7 or so players in the squad who were in the squad in the last league game and only 5 substitutes, and of course it regional so you play the same team every year with absolutely no chance of reaching a final if you are a club like us.  In a time where the FA are moaning that not enough English youngsters come through the ranks surely the sensible thing would be to let teams field whoever they want and have 7 subs if  7 subs can be named and surely this would give those youngsters a chance in competitive football that would help their development.  Top teams can field whoever they like in the League cup but when it comes down to the teams in the harder leagues with the more fixtures and the smaller squads the FA impose ridiculous rules.  If they made it a proper cup then a couple of season's ago we could have been playing Wolves or Sheffield Wednesday at home instead of Colchester or bloody Peteborough yet again.  The argument is that because it is midweek then making it regional may increase attendance, so what take a chance you could pull a big tie, granted we could end up with Hartlepool but at least we would have a chance of progressing.

Anyway on to the next and hopefully Wayne and the boys can learn from the last 2 games and give us a performance away to Accrington on Saturday.

Come on you Daggers!!