Moore aims to pass FA Cup test with wingers’ help

Nov 9 2007 by Chris Beesley, Liverpool Daily Post

TRANMERE manager Ronnie Moore has called on his side to get “back to basics” and cut out the long balls in tomorrow’s FA Cup first round tie at Chesterfield.

Rovers suffered a second League One defeat in four days on Tuesday when they were beaten 1-0 at home to Moore’s former club Oldham. Ironically, Moore revealed before that game that he felt that he had failed to win the hearts of many Latics fans because they accused him of employing tactics that were too direct during his time in charge at Boundary Park.

But Moore knows that at Football League level a fine balance must be achieved and with Chris Shuker having made his comeback from injury against Oldham, lining up on the opposite flank to Kevin Cooper, he now has two wingers in his side and Rovers need to start playing the kind of football that will utilise their wide men’s talents.

Moore said: “There’s not a great deal wrong I just think that we’ve got into long-ball.

“We’ve got our results by starting at the back, pass the ball and keeping it on the floor but we’ve gone too direct in the past couple of games – and that’s not us.

“If we go direct on Saturday we’re going to play straight into Chesterfield’s hands so we have to get the ball down and pass it.

“I think we’ve just gone away from the easy things and we’ve complicated things a little bit.

“The lads know that they haven’t performed well over the past couple of games but it’s a matter of getting them going again.

“But it’s the FA Cup and you’ve got to be able to get going for the FA Cup as it’s so special.

“We have to get back to the basics – compete, work hard and pass it, that’s the most important thing.”

During Tuesday’s match with Oldham, the visiting supporters taunted Tranmere players with shouts of “hoof” on each occasion that the ball was played long and Moore knows that a more cultured style of play must be adopted, especially if his side are going to get the best out of Cooper and Shuker.

He said: “It was desperate. I was disappointed for Chris Shuker and Kevin Cooper. We haven’t really hit them with the ball as much as we should have been doing. I was crying out for Shukes to be fit for Oldham because I know that he can be the match-winner for us.

“I hope that he’s off and running now and can be our saviour. We put a lot of pressure on Shukes because we know that teams will make it difficult for him so we need to have more than one little ace up our sleeve.”

Chesterfield are unbeaten in their last seven matches and Moore acknowledges that the trip to Saltergate is a potentially tricky one. He said: “They’re probably the form team in their division with MK Dons but I know Alan Knill the assistant manager really well and Rico (Lee Richardson) the manager so we know they’re flying.

“They’ve got Jamie Ward and Jack Lester up front so there are people who are scoring goals and creating chances.

“We’ve got to defend better than we have over the past two games and if we do that then we’ve got enough to go there and get ourselves a result. There will be a bit of cup fever from the both sides and our club have done really well paying for the supporters to go there.

“We said at the start of November that this was going to be a one hell of a month for us and really tough and we’ve started with two defeats so we’ll have to make sure we finish with three wins.”