I have worked maintaining golf courses all my life so the pitch is one of the first things I observe and I too could see how much it had deteriorated since the Burnley match. I don’t know for sure but the first thing I thought was that there was leatherjacket damage, it’s the eggs that hatch from crane flies. The grubs eat the roots causing bare and damaged turf. The insecticide that used to control this got discontinued about 3 years ago and football pitches weren’t granted a licence for the new insecticide that was brought onto the market which isn’t as good as the older product anyway. Madness in my eyes that with all the money in football the pitches are in danger of going back to the old days. I feel so much for the groundsmen but it isn’t there fault. I could go on and bore you further but just my thoughts.

Thats interesting , from a golf course view the pitch did look like it had undergone a periodic hollow tining . Im keeping an eye on other pitches now to see how they are coping

We were commenting on the pitch before kick off. On the corner between Holmesdale and AW it was looking like someone had given it a really bad haircut. Virtually no grass and flooding when the sprinklers were on. Either the mowing person was out of it and cut it way too short or it was all part of the plan. There were track marks across the goal mouth. But I’m not grumbling. We got a fantastic result.