Pre-season promise in short supply

Photo: PICTURES by ALAN HOWARTH.

HEADING FOR A TUMBLE . . . Connor Brown gets the better of a Rovers opponent.

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Athletic 0, Blackburn 2

IT IS premature to be too worried at this stage, but Athletic are not rich with pre-season promise at present.

This two-goal defeat to another Championship outfit followed a similar pattern to the one to Bolton four days earlier.

Blackburn were missing major players but had enough firepower to come out on top, thanks to an badly defended goal by Nathan Delfouneso and a well-taken effort by Craig Conway after 84 minutes.

Both those strikes came in a second half in which Athletic faded badly after a slick opening featuring good looking passing moves.

Rhys Murphy, the lone striker, forced Jason Steele into a sharp low save while the energetic Lee Croft – easily the best performer in pre-season so far – saw his drive deflect narrowly over the bar.

Croft was replaced at half-time by the ineffective Alen Ploj, whose continued presence is as much of a mystery as the reason why a swarm of bees descended on the ground prior to kick-off.

The same is true of former Exeter City man Jimmy Keohane, a neat, tidy and diminutive attacking midfield man with more substitute appearances for the League Two Grecians than starts, who provides the answer to a question nobody has been asking.

It may not necessarily be the case, but if Ploj and Keohane are blocking the pre-season progress of players who will contribute to the cause in 2015-16, then there is a serious problem.

Another trialist, Gavin Gunning, looked a lot better here against his former club than he had on Tuesday night. His passing was accurate and he might have scored with a header from a corner he couldn’t quite turn on target.

That said, Rovers played the first half with a midfielder, John O’Sullivan, on his own up front, while Delfouneso’s 58th-minute goal illustrated a collective defensive sluggishness which was replicated when he almost netted an identical effort minutes later.

As an attacking force, manager Darren Kelly was hamstrung by the absences of Jonathan Forte and Dominic Poleon.

Athletic sought to counter-attack quickly but lacked the legs, while the system featuring one man up front was crying out for Jake Cassidy, whose calf problem means he won’t be seen until Carlisle on Saturday.

George Green cut a frustrated figure on the left after the break, as Rhys Turner chased down long balls as a lone striker.

Steele wasn’t tested at all after the interval, other than to stop a free-kick that lacked power.

The return of key attacking players can’t come soon enough for Kelly.

twitter: @Matt_Chambers_