L1: Yeovil 1 Southend 0

The Glovers bounced back from last week's FA Cup disappointment with a 1-0 win over Southend United on Saturday. Your humble scribe unfortunately missed what by most accounts was a very good performance, but I did have a reasonable excuse for my absence - 24 hours earlier I was having a rather large collection of stones removed from my bladder at Yeovil District Hospital. Keyhole surgery has much to recommend it - it meant I could have the procedure in the morning and be home by 6-o-clock that evening - but on the other side of the coin there are some holes that one would rather not have surgical instruments inserted into, even under a general anaesthetic. I'll draw a veil over the precise details and the aftermath, suffice it to say that it was an experience.

Anyway, I was fully intending to go to the Southend game but in the event didn't feel up to it. Why do we always play well when I can't go? By most accounts we thoroughly deserved the 3 points and indeed were unlucky not to score 4 or 5 more than the 1 we managed, but the curse of the returning ex-keeper nearly struck with Steve Mildenhall putting in a man-of-the-match performance to frustrate both crowd and players. That was until the return of Dean Bowditch, nearly a month ahead of his injury schedule, who scored with the proverbial deflection off his arse. Well, his shoulder really, but that doesn't sound quite as apt, even if it was the shoulder he injured at the start of the season that provided the goal.

It was interesting to read the respective manager's comments after the match, both of whom appeared to have been at different games. For Southend boss Steve Tilson denial is evidently not just a river in Egypt. Taking a leaf from the Sir Alex Ferguson school of constructive criticism he accused the officials of "ruining" the game by sending off Shaun Morrison when a yellow card was all that was justified (it wasn't) and gifting the Glovers the winning goal by awarding a free-kick that wasn't (it was) and adding insult to injury by allowing Bowditch's goal when he clearly handled the ball into the net (he didn't). All this after "Yeovil had run out of ideas". A fine display of sour grapes from a manager doing an excellent job of deflecting attention away from the fact that in 90 minutes of football his side didn't manage to get 1 effort on target.

Skivo by contrast was not unnaturally rather more upbeat, and why not? After 16 games his side now lies comfortably mid-table, in 12th position and on 21 points. Cup disappointments aside, things are looking pretty rosy currently in the Huish Park garden, at least on the pitch. Despite that it seems that not all in the home crowd understands and appreciates what Skivo and the team is trying to do. As he put it: "I think that sometimes our supporters don't realise the way that we are trying to play football. We're not just going to lump it in the box and go long. We're going to play a technical game, which is to move people about, and when that final ball is ready, it will present itself. We're not going to try and force it."

To ram home the point Skivo added: "There were a few people shouting put two strikers on. That's not the way we play. We're going to play my way and if we keep doing it my way and it works, then fair enough. If it doesn't work, then we're still not going to change it! People will have to lump it! But that's the way that we play, that's the way that we stay in games, and that's the way that I feel we create our best chances. It's also the best way to have someone like Ryan Mason playing in the team, who if I'm not mistaken got the man of the match."

So there we have it. We're going to pass the ball until it kills us, or at any rate it kills those in the crowd who get impatient unless the ball is in the opposition's penalty area, or at the very least in the air and heading towards the opposition's penalty area. For what it's worth while I applaud his general sentiments I hope Skivo isn't going to be too dogmatic about our style of play. When it works, as it evidently did against Southend, then it works, and to change would be crazy. But if it ain't working, as it equally clearly wasn't working against Oxford the previous weekend then not to change would be just as self-defeating. As Emerson put it: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Muffwatch: The good folk of Weymouth have found the answer to their self-inflicted wounds. Having been brought to the edge of extinction by one property developer they're now going to be saved by another, you guessed it, property developer! And a property developer whose spokesman is an undischarged bankrupt at that! What could possibly go wrong? You just gotta love the Muff.