Harrogate Town opinion: Simon Weaver is damned if he does, damned if he doesn't but has played a blinder with defensive reinforcements

Running down the stairs on Tuesday morning, I’d just managed to rescue the post before the dog sunk her teeth into it for a second time.

Normally I’d just throw the semi-chewed bills and junk mail on the table for my wife to deal with, only opening anything vaguely record-shaped, but nestling amongst the envelopes this time was one addressed to me from Harrogate Town.

Feeling a pang of curiosity, I ripped it open, only to see my season ticket card fall surprisingly onto the table in front of me. I must have dropped it in the ground on Saturday, adding to a long list of things I’ve lost over the years including more than one debit card, a new pair of slippers, ‘The Locked Room’ (the eighth in a series of ten mystery novels, thus preventing me from reading the last two) and a set of marbles (literally not metaphorically, although my wife tells me that’s debatable).

Most bizarrely, none of the three latter items have left the house but seem to have disappeared into total thin air.

I even rolled my eyes when someone turned up at our door recently to return my daughter’s driving license, having found it on the tarmac in Knaresborough. ‘What’s she like?’ I retorted in a condescending fashion, despite the fact I know exactly what she’s like because she gets it from me.

So I’d like to thank the person who found my season ticket, rolled their eyes and handed it in, whilst realising that I’m not exactly in a position of strength from which to criticise Town for dropping anything.

Yet the manner in which the players let a two-goal lead slip at home to a seemingly down-and-out Crewe side on Saturday was particularly galling.

If the first goal was as soft a penalty decision as you’ll see, awarded by a referee wearing the same colours as the visiting team’s blue and black, the 89th minute equaliser came as a result of Town not following through when another clearance was lumped once more into the away half.

Rather than being forced back towards his goalkeeper, a mopping-up visiting defender was gifted time and space to turn, pick his head up, move towards the halfway line and play a long ball forward under no more than a delayed, token challenge from the newly-introduced and fresh Sam Folarin.

There was still a lot to do from a Crewe perspective, but closing the defender down at source would have changed the course of the game. Thus 82 minutes of hard work was undone in an instant.

In truth, four substitutions in quick succession upset the balance of a team that had been managing the game well up until then.

Whilst we’ve been grinding out valuable points in a wholly unspectacular fashion away from home, this was an altogether more authoritative performance against a team that has been sliding down the league in recent times, and it should have yielded three points.

For a manager that’s often been criticised for seeming reluctant to make substitutions, preferring rightly in my view to stick with players that are playing well in such circumstances as Saturday, it seemed a touch out of character.

The irony of Simon Weaver being denounced by many of the same critics here for making too many substitutions wasn’t lost on me. You're damned if you do and damned if you don’t, but there has to be a middle ground somewhere.

Either side of Saturday's disappointment, Town have found themselves winning two decent points on the road with solid defensive performances.

If the Crewe draw felt like a loss, then the previous Tuesday night’s late conceding of a goal still felt like a point gained against a tough opponent in Salford.

And thanks to a superb, last-gasp Mark Oxley reaction save, in what was his best display in a Town shirt since signing, we frustrated Grimsby, made sensible substitutions and avoided conceding late for the third match running.

As pleased as I was with the point from Blundell Park, which just proves that the manager’s played a post-Christmas blinder by bringing in Anthony O'Connor, Tom Eastman, Matty Foulds and Toby Sims across the back, it proved to be an extremely uncomfortable watch.

Our 53 percent pass-completion rate in the first half shows how much we're trying to play 'percentage football', and badly at that. Think about it. That’s nearly one in two passes going astray.

The players now just need to work on nudging that percentage up in order to take the pressure off the extremely capable defence. Let’s not wear it out too quickly.