Sam Ovett
The New Manager Bus
If Hughton started with Skalak he might have played a killer ball in the first minute that Hemed got on the end of and we could have picked Boro off as they pushed for an equaliser and been 3-0 up at half time.
Without the Dale sending off we may have won, we equally may have lost (quite a few people have commented how much better we played after the sending off - we managed to not only compete, but looked stronger after the sending off). We don't know. What we do know, is there were still ten men and a coaching team able to affect the outcome of the match.
Did it make us less likely to win? Possibly. We played better with 10 men. We came back from 1-0 down to draw after going down to ten men on Monday. So we can't say for sure.
Again, I'm not saying the ref's decision doesn't have an impact on the game. I'm saying it isn't the deciding factor.
You clearly don't agree, or perhaps it's just that it's against us, and the failure to go up automatically stings too much right now, and in a neutral match you'd agree. I don't know, but it's clearly pointless to continue this discussion. We're just going round and round.
If Dale had finished the match we would have won