Mancini Magic

Despite the absence of Dieseruvwe and Umerah, Oxford City played a back three and suffered as often Pools have with that set-up this season. As Grey the lone striker preferred to receive passes on the floor, two centre backs stood ready for a physical battle that never materialised, with space outside of them where Pools easily created an overload. Within 10 minutes, wing backs Lumeka and Coyle had swapped sides in an effort to stem the tide, but it could easily have been 3-0 by the time Ross Jenkins went to a back four and the visitors were able to double up against the various threats of Ferguson overlapping Cooke and Crawford moving into space on the right.

The game's outstanding player was of course, Mancini, and it's no disrespect to many other performers in the Pools team (Stephenson, Wallace) to say that the man-of-the-match verdict wasn't even close. Behind the tireless Grey, he went pretty much wherever he wanted, finding space between the lines (centre backs reluctant to step out and close), moving left and right to exacerbate the overload. For the first 15 minutes of the second half, before Lennie Lawrence sensibly cut short the fun (on his first start since injury), we seemed to be watching Mancini gliding past defenders on an endless loop, the jovial leader of almost every Pools attack until finally Crawford and then Grey tapped in. Oxford's efforts to plug the gaps only made things worse; moving to a 4-4-2 to defend wide areas left their two central midfielders hopelessly exposed. Mancini enjoyed his impromptu lap of honour when substituted, as the famously lackadaisical hero of another rain-soaked Victoria Park evening surely would have.