As predicted Tilly kept the same side as he picked for Oldham but making the positional change of Osei Sankofa playing central defender and Simon Francis returning to right-back.
Clever move with little ex-Blue Charlie MacDonald in the middle for Brentford and giving us some much needed width in attacking positions, not that we did much!
Unlike Saturday though Blues actually scored this time, without actually finding the back of the net!
In the 9th minute a free-kick by Francis from 25 yards out was curled into the box and picked out of the air by Bees keeper Bull, he then took a couple of steps backward and the linesman decided he'd taken the ball back over his own line!
1-0 Blues and sadly about the closest we came to scoring bar a Moose chance in the second half.
That was about it for the game, big Steve Mildenhall in the Shrimpers gaol made a couple of good stops.
The midfield put in some good tackles and played some neat football without actualy looking like creating anything.
Lee Barnard and Roy O'Donavan ran about a lot without actually ever looking like scoring.
The home side had some nice touches but never looked dangerous. Ex-Blue MacDonald in Barrett's pocket, literally.
No, 0-0 it was. Except we were 1-0 up. Oh well, I'll take that.
Enter referee Wright, who had to spoil things.
At the opposite end to both decisions it's always dangerous to speculate but the first; maybe, Sankofa went in feet first to Weston, the Bees striker going nowhere. Kevin O'Connor smashed home.
The second, when a third of the crowd had aready left, saw Moussa making a well-timed tackle on the Bee Bean, who again was going away from goal, but not clean enough for the Cambridge official and up stepped O'Connor again.
'Bet he puts it down the middle this time' said the guy next to me at the top of the steps, as both of were about to leave thinking a point was better than nothing.
Of course O'Connor did hit in down the middle, but sadly Mildenhall hadn't heard us and dived to his left. (I hear that's 14 penalties in a row he's let in, for a bloke his size, you'd think by sheer law of averages he'd get in the way of one of them!)
So nothing is what we, and the team, ended up with.
Somewhat unfairly there's no doubt, boring as this is starting to sound, yet as Tilly says, we just have to get on with things, and a day trip to sunny Stockport is all you could ask for!
Southend Player Markings: Mildenhall - 6, Francis - 6, Barrett - 8, Sankofa - 6, Francis - 6, Grant - 7, Christophe - 6 (Sawyer 89), McCormack - 7, Moussa - 6, Barnard - 6 (Freedman 74 - 5) , O'Donavan - 5 (Laurent 73 - 6).
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