I Donny like the performance.

Today as we woke up we could see that we were going to be greeted by miserable weather as the Lofty Heights crew took to the road for the long trip to South Yorkshire as Doncaster Rovers played hosts for the day.

The Crew consisted of 5 members today. Jenson was the driver as Lofty, Sam, Justin and myself took to the road without PK due to his work commitments.
We had a pretty smooth journey up the M1, apart from the roadworks at Nottingham, and promptly arrived at the Keepmoat at around 2pm.
Lofty and I indulged in a few pre match beers, for tasting purposes only. Lofty also checked out how the football famous chicken balti pie, as made by Hollands, which has been awarded by Lofty as "the best pie of the season so far." Once that was polished off we took to our wet seats just behind the goal as the rain poured down in Doncaster.

Jim Magilton made 4 changes from the 2-1 win at Sheffield Wedsnesday two weeks ago. Tommy Williams and Steven Reid came in to make their debuts at the expense of Peter Ramage and Adel Taarabt. Matt Connolly and Alessandro Faurlin took the place of the injured duo Gavin Mahon and Fitz Hall.



The first half was a very poor and scrappy affair with no real chances to note and caused no excitement at all for us in the visiting end.

As the 45 minutes dragged on it was time for half time. The queue for another drink was unbearable so we didnt brave it at all so decided to stand around and view the half time scores and checking the various accumulators that had been bet as well as checking the scores for our in car score predictions throughout the league.

We got back to our seats a few minutes before the start of the second half, which made a change, and witnessed the first Rangers sub of the day. Adel Taarabt entering the fray at the expense of Faurlin.



The substitution instantly injected some much needed urgency at the top end of the field and we looked a little more dangerous.
Three minutes into the half and Rangers had there first real chance of the half. Taarabt played in Simpson who was through on goal and just outside the Doncaster 18 yard box. Rather than take a touch and advance into the box, the Arsenal loanee instead hit the ball first time and pulled his shot harmlessly wide.
Minutes later Taarabt ran at the Rovers defence as space just seemed to keep appearing in front of him. He got to the edge of the box and created the opportunity to shot but refused it and ended up over playing and the chance was wasted.

Disaster soon struck!
Doncaster with their first telling attack of the half ended up having a shot deflected wide for a corner. From that corner the R's defence fell asleep and allowed Rovers to take it quickly and advance so easily inside the 18 yard box. The cross was delivered and who else but Billy Sharp got on the end of it to score against the club he just loves scoring against.

Rangers seemed to be gettin on top of the game before the goal but found themselves a goal behind.
Five minutes after the goal Magilton decided to put all his eggs in his basket and made a double sub. Agyemang and Pellicori came on for the out of sorts Buzsaky and Simpson.

Before we knew it Doncaster grabbed a second.
Dean Shields was allowed to run through the midfield and hit a curler from 20 yards out which slipped past Cerny and was well worthy of winning the game.

Doncaster continued to play their passing game and on 75 minutes they managed to string together around 30 odd passes and were really starting to take the preverbial out of the visiting team.
This was enough for us and we uncharacteristically left the ground with 15minutes of the game left to play.


This was a very bad day at the office against a Doncaster side that did keep the ball on the floor well and made us look extremely poor. We once again lacked leadership in the centre midfield and with Mahon and Rowlands on the sidelines for a sustained period of time we really do need someone to stand up and be counted and rally the troops when we need it.

Lofty's Man of the Match would remain vacant for this game but the contribution by Adel Taarabt when he came on was hard to ignore and therefore has to be awarded it.
Watson and Williams didnt enjoy good games at all and will need to buck their ideas up in time for the next game at home to Coventry.