Stockport at Home

Craig Alcott missed the game after being injured in last week's match. He was replaced at the back by Terrell Forbes moving out from centre back and Stefan Stam coming back into the team.

Gavin Tomlin replaced Sam Williams up front.

Nathan Smith was replaced by Andy Welsh on the left wing with Nathan Jones staying at left back. While JP Kalala made his first start of his new spell at the club in the middle of the field.

In the end a draw was possibly a fair result although not an encouraging one against an average side who are favourites to go down. The course of the game was set on its way early on when, after a decent effort by Andy Welsh went just over the bar a Stockport attack brought the first goal of a busy and generally entertaining afternoon.

Perhaps I was biased but I saw it completely differently to the referee. The incident started, after just 20 minutes of the game, with a through ball which I thought found a Stockport player offside. The linesman kept his flag down which to be fair to the referee was not his fault. The subsequent fould happened very quickly, as these things do, and could have gone either way. I would have said it was a dive but the ref thought otherwise. Having given a foul it was clearly a penalty but with a defender right next to the keeper, I felt it was harsh to adjudge him the last man and send him off. The referee disagreed however. The final surprise, for me at least, of the incident was that Skiverton then chose to substitute Welsh, surely one of our best attacking players. Having said that, I was not sure who I would have taken off.

Carl Baker, who earlier in the week had lost his brother to leukemia, took the kick and scored making it harder to begrudge Stockport their goal even if it made the referee more of a villein.

Gavin Tomlin did equalise within a fairly short space of time, only for Baker to score another relatively soft goal just before half time. It was Ryan Mason, playing rather strangely again out of position on the right wing, who created both goals. So maybe not such a bad decision to play him there! The second was a deep lying cross which found the head of Sam Williams, who had replaced a tiring Jon Obika, for a good goal and a creditable point under the circumstances.

Stockport had three ex Yeovil players, David Poole, Liam Bridcutt and Michael Rose in their starting eleven.

The attendance at only 3,500 was perhaps even more worrying than the result.