Players as upset as the chairman

FORWARD THINKING - By ROBBIE SIMPSON

IT ISN'T the first time that chairman Simon Corney has got his feelings off his chest about a performance.

After the Bury game, it was obviously something that he wanted to say.

Essentially, he felt the same disappointment as the players. Last week was a great opportunity for us to put together back-to-back wins, starting against a struggling Bury side.

To not take anything from that game was particularly disappointing for the players, too.

In venting his frustration, I am sure the chairman wanted to get a reaction as he has in the past.

I wouldn't have gone as far as to call the team "gutless", though.

I know of at least four or five players who had to play through the pain barrier against Bury.

I do think the comments made to the Chronicle had some effect.

Not that we wouldn't have reacted anyway, against Tranmere, but there was a spring in the step and though they had three chances to score just before half-time I reckon we shaded that first half.

A sloppy start followed after the interval. And though we came back towards the end to finish the stronger, we didn't manage to get anything from the game.

Not only did we lose to Tranmere, we also picked up suspensions for both our captain Dean Furman and our vice-captain James Wesolowski.

I was in the main stand and midway through asking Neil Joy about the yellow cards situation when Dean clattered into their right-back in the first five minutes.

I looked at him and he nodded and said, "that's one gone". It is that time of the season when suspensions will kick in and it was unfortunate that James was also booked later on.

I'm on three bookings — so at least I'm safe from a ban, for now.

It will certainly be a difficult game for us at Bournemouth on Saturday.

Eddie Howe did a fantastic job there in his first spell in charge, which netted him the move to Burnley.

After moving back to Bournemouth for family reasons, he has picked up where he left off.

He is a young manager who has his teams very well organised.

They are difficult to break down and what really stood out for me from playing against them twice last season was the quality of their set plays — both attacking and defending.

They are very inventive from free-kicks and corners and we need to be aware of that danger. Particularly, given the nature of the goal we conceded to lose the Tranmere game.

Bournemouth have a big budget for this division and I tipped them at the start of the season to end up in the automatic promotion places. Nobody will argue at the moment that they can still get there.

But our manager has said to us that we have to remember what we are capable of.

If we perform as we can, then we are a match for anyone — as we proved in an equally-difficult trip to Sheffield United, where we got a point and possibly deserved more.