Altrincham V Chester FC MATCH THREAD

Twitter says Halls has been "taken off" rather than sent off. Could just be that he's taken a knock and we've used all our subs

Altrincham penalty saved by Mitchell.

Harry White has saved us. We are off to penalties now. Hope it doesn’t end similarly to Hyde last year.

If you're talking to me, all I was doing was correcting people saying Halls had been sent off.

Lost 7-6 on pens

Makes me laugh. People got what they wanted in a team of bit-part players amd youth teamers, yet still berate them when they lose!

Gutted about that to be fair. Coming from the commentary we deserved the defeat, which is our second exit at this stage for 2 consecutive years. I know that this competition isn’t massive, but I still wanted us to give it a good go and go quite far this year. It’s not good enough to lose to an Evo-Stik team.
However, the league is far more significant and I’m looking forward to the trip down to Bromley on Saturday. Come On Blue Boys!

Meaningless match. Only positives are that it sounds like a few youngsters got some valuable experience and a couple of fringe players got some minutes under their belt. Disappointed about that Archer injury though....thats the risk you take in these games. Stupid to play Dawson IMO, absolutely need him fit and injury free.

Think you get fined if you just put the kids out, even in this. Certainly wouldn't have involved Dawson or Archer though.

Joyce, Bell, White, Davies and likes I can understand.

Ignore the result. But the performance was pretty poor again tonight. Not as bad as the preseason game there, but still poor.

We were outplayed early and went a goal behind after 18 mins, from a long range shot which dipped late but went directly over Mitchell.

They went down to ten men after a two footed challenge on Rowe-Turner. That evened things out a bit.

Second half was mostly us. Bell slotted home and we looked like we'd go on and win. Loads of pressure and a couple of decent saves from their keeper.
Start of extra time we took off Dawson and brought on Marsh-Evans. Looked like Halls also went off, leaving us with ten men too.

They were better now things were evened up and took the lead. Mitchell then saves a penalty, and they had a goal disallowed for offside. White then prodded in a cross from Davies to give us a surprise equaliser. Then the penalties.

MB probably learned tonight what we learned preseason. Our squad players are not good enough.

Plus points were scarce. Halls did well and took responsibility on the ball. Rowe-Turner did ok. Helliwell tried really hard and did ok. Rainer looks ok as a wing back. Nothing special but ok. Bell looked ok until he was moved left in extra time for some reason. Durnan did ok when he came on for extra time.

Negative points. We looked less capable then them. Their movement was really good. Been impressed with Phil Parkinson's teams. Joyce and Davies played as you'd expect. Tried hard but not up to it. Harry White looks as bad as Rapley to me. Can't be fit, watching him try to run.

MB made loads of positional changes, not all of which helped. I can see why he'd try things out in this game, but he seems a bit of a Burr type of tinkerer to me. Playing a 3 3 3 formation is strange. More so when Bell is the left side striker.

It's concerning that we still haven't found a formation that suits our strikers. Hannah can't really play in the hole, neither can Akintunde. So why do we keep trying it? Helliwell played there tonight before moving to the right wing. We would have started with Archer, Bell and White tonight. No idea who'd play where with those three.

I'm not overly surprised we got knocked out. The CSC is a leveller - their players would be keen to put themselves in the shop window and some of our fringe players probably realise that they are about to be shipped out.

That said, I thought we'd sneak it, which is a shame as the CSC is an opportunity for Academy players to get a taste of mixing it with the first team.

Just proves our fringe players are simply not good enough, sooner we get rid the better.

The Alty fans we talked to said they'd made a few changes for the game. Didn't look to be any kids in their team. Looked a similar side to the one we played preseason to me. 

MB was sat in the perspex dug out on his own for parts of the game last night. Didn't look happy.

The general view of the small number of Chester fans there, was that it was really poor. It just confirmed our opinions. Couldn't fault the effort from the players. They looked like they wanted to win. We didn't look like a National League team though.