I am all for competition but Tony Thompson is not the problem here. I'm struggling to attribute any of the recent goals conceded directly to him? You could make a case for some of the crosses, and his pass to Hampson for the second yellow was a bit suicidal, but I would say we simply need to defend much better than we have done. We very much did last night.
On crosses - the great Stuart Coburn was susceptible to this at times. If we had a keeper who could shot stop, command every cross and ping 60 yards consistently, they would not be here long.
So, on kicking - Thompson is not Ederson. There is always going to be an erraticity to what he does, and on the whole I think his distribution is the best I've seen so far at this level. The confidence he has to continually do what is asked of him by Phil and Neil, even if one or two don't go to plan, is commendable and he finds his man way more than he doesn't. This only ever seems to be questioned when we're on a bad run, convenient.
By all means put Matt Gould in on Saturday but when Bromley (who Conferenced the life out of us last time out with a high press) press us and one of our defenders has to go backwards, they're going to expect Thompson to be there. There's an understanding that has been developed and generally, our distribution out from the back has been excellent as a unit.
I do think Gould deserves way more minutes than he has had, though. He should have started in the Trophy and in a normal season we may have had a couple more Cheshire Cup games by now. I'd be all for him coming in if I felt Tony was losing us points but I just don't see how anyone is coming to that conclusion?