Wednesbury Athletic 2–1 Pendle Athletic: the rot stops

Match report

The tables before kick-off told their own story: Wednesbury 11th, Pendle 19th. Their earlier meeting this season finished 1-0, which is the kind of statistic that suggests a tight affair. This one was not, at least for the first hour.

Look, I'll be straight with you: the opener came on 12 minutes. Muhammet Yılmaz, who scored against Hitchin on 16 August and Acton on the 3rd, took Sebastian Frobisher's pass and finished. It was not a goal of extraordinary invention, but it did something more useful: it let a nervous home side exhale.

The second was the moment that mattered most. Frobisher again provided, and Baltasar Lecuona rose on 37 minutes to head in from close range. Lecuona has a habit of scoring at specific moments: the 39th against Wigston last week, the 78th against Stepney the week before, the 90th against Hitchin in July. The 37th, it turns out, suits him just as well. A goal on the edge of half-time is a particular kind of cruelty, and Wednesbury went in two up without ever having to work especially hard for it.

Honestly, Pendle had spent the season drawing everything in sight, which is a result of sorts but not a healthy one. They finally produced a defeat with a flourish on 77 minutes, Ciro Fabiani-Petacci converting Mortimer Dewhurst's through ball. That gave them ten minutes to turn the thing into their ninth stalemate of the campaign. They could not.

Wednesbury stop the rot, and Pendle continue their curious habit of making every game feel like a coin toss. Neither side has time to ponder this, which is probably for the best: Matchday 26 comes round on Thursday, and there is no room in this league for anyone to stand around admiring their own work.