Rovers’ best run of season ends with narrow defeat to Peterborough

Feb 21 2011 by Nick Hilton, Liverpool Daily Post

TRANMERE’S best sequence of the season ran out of legs on Saturday but there was no reason to believe they left any confidence behind in the mud of rain-soaked London Road.

Les Parry’s team could feel genuinely hard done by to be narrowly beaten by the most talented and prolific attacking side in League One.

Peterborough claimed the three points thanks to a disputed strike by Grant McCann on 53 minutes and an Enoch Showunmi own goal on 70 minutes, after Rovers had led at the interval through John Welsh’s 24th-minute effort.

If Tranmere had taken more than a single goal lead from a strong and assertive first performance, they might have gone on to secure a fifth away win of the campaign. Their performance over 90 minutes was good enough to merit a point

They had opportunities to inflict further first half punishment on a Posh defence that invariably offers the opposition some encouragement. But they did not take them.

The visitors also regretted backing off in anticipation of a fired up response from Peterborough at the start of the second half. The backlash duly arrived and led to a an equaliser within eight minutes.

From that point on Tranmere had to work ever harder to suppress the talents of Craig Mackail-Smith, George Boyd and Lee Tomlin as the Posh became more effective for putting aside their pass and move philosophy in favour of a more direct style.

Manager Darren Ferguson confessed afterwards that he picked a lineup around his best ballplayers on Friday afternoon – before 15 hours of incessant rain turned the London Road pitch into a quagmire.

The two managers agreed that referee Grant Hegley made the right decision in allowing the game to go ahead. The heavy rain ceased just after 1pm, leaving conditions that made it difficult to move the ball across the surface – but not impossible.

Peterborough had most difficulty in adapting during the first 45 minutes. “We could not play with the tempo we wanted,” Ferguson said. “We want to play in a particular way to win games but you sometimes have to go away from that philosophy.

“We tried to play too much football in the first half. But we showed we have players to win games in any conditions.”

Peterborough were also unsettled early on by being pressed at every turn by Tranmere. The visitors often looked more confident than the home side in moving the ball in sharp, direct counter attacks during the first half.

Diminutive front man Lateef Elford-Alliyu was able to find better traction on the mud than many of the home side’s ballplayers.

The teenager’s pass into the box on 12 minutes invited centre forward Showunmi to turn sharply on a shot from a tight angle, forcing goalkeeper Joe Lewis into a smart low save. The goalkeeper then had to save with his legs after Lucas Akins seized on a similar chance seven minutes later.

Tranmere goalkeeper Tony Warner made an even better save at the other end, stretching instinctively to keep the ball out of the bottom left-hand corner after a 25-yard shot by Charlie Lee took a deflection off a defender standing near the penalty spot.

Tranmere’s goal was a gift from the kind of sloppy defending that has dogged Peterborough’s promotion ambitions throughout the season and given them a goals-against tally of 59 in 30 games.

Centre-back Ryan Bennett simply did not spot the 6’5” frame of Showunmi bearing down on him as he dallied over the ball deep in his own half. Showunmi nicked the ball off him, charged into the box, spotted Welsh’s run through the centre and laid an accurate low pass into the path of the skipper to finish from 15 yards.

Five minutes later Showunmi created an opportunity to double Rovers lead by powering past two defenders on a run down the right. The centre forward’s deflected cross ran to Akins, who fired high and wide from 16 yards.

Tranmere’s defenders felt the referee missed a foul by Mackail-Smith on Ian Goodison in the buildup to the equaliser. Mackail-Smith was able to knock the ball down into a rare pocket of space on the edge of the Tranmere box, from where McCann guided a cool, accurate finish into the bottom corner. Goodison’s vociferous arguments did him no good.

Alfred-Alliyu and substitute Zoumana Bakayogo skied fleeting half chances to put Tranmere back in front before misfortune struck the visitors in the 70th minute.

It was a cruel irony that the hard-working Showunmi, once again one of Tranmere’s most effective performers, put the ball into his own net as he attempted to deal with a devilish, inswinging corner from McCann.

Parry admitted: “The second goal was down to the quality of the ball in from the corner. When you put quality into the box like that and someone gets their head on it, it can go anywhere.”

Tranmere’s last hope of salvaging some reward from the afternoon disappeared as substitute Andy Robinson’s first time shot curled over the bar in injury time.