Shakers horror show

It's early days of course but make no mistake too many performances like Tuesday night's abject display against Cambridge and it's a knocking bet the Gigg Lane men are in for another season of struggle.

The visitors hadn't won a game on their travels since the season before last - 16 months and 25 matches - and any half-decent Shakers display should have stretched that sequence further.

But for some unfathomable reason they managed to turn Saturday's promising, if eventually fruitless, performance at Oxford on it's head in depressing style.

Their passing was woeful, they were outrun, outfought and outthought by a side that ought to have been low on confidence themselves after a home defeat on Saturday.

It was the worst possible advertisement for a club who are desperate to get attendances up and joint chairman John Smith's heartfelt appeal for more support in Tuesday's Bury Times was unceremoniously thrown back in his face.

Manager Andy Preece was nonplussed at his side's Jekyll and Hyde display but vowed there would be plenty of hard work to ensure no repeat.

"That level of performance is just unacceptable," he declared.

"Everything we were doing right on Saturday we did wrong and we let Cambridge dictated play from almost the first whistle.

"They were sharper, quicker and stronger than us and that was without Paul Wanless who is very important to them."

The influential Wanless came off the bench late in the second half to huge acclaim from the 146 U's fans that made the trip.

They probably couldn't believe their luck that their favourites looked to have the game in the bag well before that.

The only goal of the game arrived eight minutes after the restart just when Bury looked like getting their act together.

A fine long pass from midfielder Luke Gutteridge was raced onto by the alert Omer Riza and the West Ham striker - on loan at Cambridge for the duration of the season - knocked the ball round Glyn Garner and slid it into an empty net.

Preece refused to make a big issue about the decisive goal but, when pushed, said that the striker admitted using his hand to take the ball past the Shakers 'keeper.

"It did look like he handballed it but I'm not going to moan about it," he said.

"Lee Unsworth spoke to him later the lad admitted it but I'm not making that an excuse."

There was little to get the careworn Shakers fans excited in a weary first half that only Cambridge looked up for.

The only incidents to concern U's rookie 'keeper Shaun Marshall was a half chance from Abbott that he did well to save low in the corner and a mini-goalmouth melee just before half time that was eventually cleared by former Shakers trialist Stevland Angus who must be one of the few players in the Nationwide League named after Stevie Wonder!

The Shakers looked brighter early in the second half but the goal knocked their confidence and even when they did get the ball into advanced areas the combination of Jon Newby and Pawel Abbott, so effective on Saturday, too often failed to make a great impression on a depleted Cambridge defence.

Nevertheless, Abbott did test Marshall with a powerful drive after a mazy run to the edge of the box and a header that the 'keeper pushed over the bar but despite a flurry of corner kicks the Cambridge goal looked unlikely to be breached.

"It was just not acceptable. We knew all about the way they played because we'd worked on it in training but we just couldn't handle it or impose our system on them.

"For some reason we started launching long balls up front. If that's what we're going to do I'll pick myself and bring another big lad in and we'll go back to the days when we'd get eight behind the ball and try and nick a one-nil win."

Bury fans were streaming to the exits long before the final whistle and they weren't to be blamed. In the words of Mr & Mrs Angus's hero the points appeared to be Signed Sealed and Delivered from the kick off!