Harrogate Town opinion: Time to ditch the back-three and revert to our tried-and-tested formation

Seeking to bounce back from another demoralising defeat, this time at the hands of Bristol Rovers at the aptly-named Memorial Ground this weekend, Town had the misfortune to come up against referee Darren Handley in Birkenhead on Tuesday night.

If the players were doing well to subdue the home team without presenting much of a threat going forward themselves, whatever goal threat they did possess promptly vanished in the space of three insane first half minutes.

Out of nowhere, Luke Armstrong saw red in the form of two yellow cards for two innocuous challenges with Tranmere’s Peter Clarke.

The second of these clashes saw him routinely jump for a high ball pumped forward, something he’s been doing all season to varying degrees of success, whilst being wrestled to the ground by Clarke.

The hapless Handley immediately strode over and flashed his yellow card, presumably for a non-existent elbow.

I could be wrong here, but I genuinely think he hadn’t realised he’d already booked Armstrong until Warren Burrell appealed the decision.

We were then treated to the spectacle of the referee belatedly pulling his red card from his pocket, long after he’d put the yellow away, before waving it in the general direction of Armstrong’s back as he’d already departed, head shaking in disbelief.

The rest of the first half then proceeded to turn into a game of attack versus defence, with the hosts enjoying three quarters of the possession and Town sitting deep inside their own half.

We know how this normally works out when we’ve 11 men on the pitch, so it was shaping up to be a very long evening indeed.

If Town did brilliantly to keep the score to 0-0 in the first half, whilst doing nothing to help my spiralling blood pressure, they bowed to the inevitable four minutes into the second.

It’s then that Simon Weaver changed formation, taking off an isolated Mark Beck and one of our three central defenders, in favour of two pacy attacking options in Jack Muldoon and Calum Kavanagh.

If the improvement on the pitch was instant, with Town suddenly showing newly acquired attacking menace, we shot ourselves in the foot by conceding a penalty shortly afterwards.

I tried to blame the referee for this too, but replays show there was a pull on the Tranmere player’s shirt before he hit the ground in front of the bank of home fans.

Mind you, applying his warped logic with the Armstrong incident, he should have booked the Tranmere player for being pulled to the ground and given the free-kick to Town.

The team could have folded at this point, but we were instead treated to the spectacle of a home side, 2-0 up with a man advantage, forced into committing professional fouls and seeing their goalkeeper booked for time-wasting as the Harrogate players took the game to them in a spirited, albeit fruitless, fightback.

Jack Diamond could have pulled a goal back immediately following the penalty, the linesman ruling his dink over the keeper hadn’t crossed the line before being headed away by, yes you guessed it, Clarke.

Fair enough, I thought, until the same linesman staggeringly flagged the wrong Town player offside later on and I suddenly began to question his eyesight in hindsight. If that had gone in, and indeed it might have, Tranmere would have been panicking.

Mr Handley then restated his incompetence by letting yet another professional foul, together with the subsequent frustrated kick-out by Diamond towards the Tranmere player, go unpunished. Maybe he realised he’d already done enough damage by then.

Remembering some of the truly dreadful decisions we’ve seen at the likes of Hartlepool and Swindon this season, I’m going to float a theory here that a small number of officials we’ve encountered in League Two should be promoted to the Premier League.

Not as a result of any competence on their part mind, but solely because VAR would be there to cover for their incompetence. And maybe we could see referees of the calibre of Jon Moss officiating at Town games instead.

I thought I wouldn’t be able to learn a lot from the peculiar circumstances of Tuesday night, sometimes you just have to write a game off to bad luck and nothing else, but the formation change after half-time told its own story.

Firstly, you couldn’t fault the application and commitment of the players, especially with Josh Falkingham, Lloyd Kerry, Will Smith, Brahima Diarra and Lewis Page all out. George Thomson, especially, was immense in the unfamiliar holding role.

But what shone out most clearly amongst the rubble of a Birkenhead Tuesday night for me, is that one of the three central defenders needs to be ditched.

The failed experiment of 5-3-2 isn’t preventing goals being conceded, as Bristol Rovers on Saturday proved. It forces us onto the back-foot more often than not and the players seem to be confused as to who they should be picking up on the edge of the area.

They look much happier playing in the 4-4-2 formation we’ve had so much success with in recent times and, as much as I’m beginning to sound like a stuck record, it’s all about a positive mental attitude in making the opposition worry about you.

Whether Tranmere took their foot slightly off the gas is debatable and, even though we lived slightly dangerously on occasion, you could see the aggression and the confidence flood back into the Town players after half-time once they had an attacking focus.

With a bit of ruthlessness in front of goal and a bit better luck against a vulnerable home side, we could have emerged with something.

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To this end, both our homes games this coming week are winnable, let’s approach them as such. I’d personally start with both Muldoon and Kavanagh up front again. As much as

Kavanagh received criticism for his late misses a week ago against Hartlepool, at least he was sharp enough and keen enough to be on the end of the two crosses that came his way. I like that in a player and it was an attribute we sorely missed at Bristol Rovers.

To this end, both our homes games this coming week are winnable, let’s approach them as such. I’d personally start with both Muldoon and Kavanagh up front again.

As much as Kavanagh received criticism for his late misses a week ago against Hartlepool, at least he was sharp enough and keen enough to be on the end of the two crosses that came his way.

I like that in a player and it was an attribute we sorely missed at Bristol Rovers.