Based on what I saw when Sheffield Wednesday played us down here in March, I'm not surprised by the result last night - in fact, full credit to our lads for running them so close despite being down to nine at the end.
On that subject, until recently you could easily count on the fingers of one hand the number of red cards you would see if you watched a season of Academy football - in fact, it was probably more likely that you wouldn't see any at all, but now they are commonplace (I think I'm right in saying that it's the second time Dan Griffiths has been sent off this season). Nothing I have seen leads me to think that the game at this level is dirtier than when we had the likes of Ledley, Jerome, Blake, Gunter, Matthews, etc. in our side, so I can only assume that referees are stricter than they were. It wouldn't be fair for me to be critical of last night's ref when I've not seen anything of the match, but, looking at the Twitter reporting of it, there seems to have been an awful lot of bookings in the game so I hope the ref wasn't one of those who thinks everyone has turned up to watch him (e.g. Clive Thomas back in the seventies).
With Bellamy, if you just look at results when he was there and when he was on his "sabbatical", I'm pretty sure you'd find that they were a fair bit better earlier in the season when Bellamy was there.
Any review of our season at Under 18 level would have to include some reference to the amount of pretty long term injuries we had to important players, but I believe their impact was much the same in the time Bellamy was there and the period when he wasn't because there were members of the squad missing for weeks or months virtually from August to May.
In last month or two, I've formed the opinion that there is a good chance that there will not be a Mueller Report style announcement of the findings of the club enquiry into the Bellamy allegations - I feel that, especially if the verdict is unfavourable towards Bellamy and the club, that it will be more like what we saw at Newcastle with Peter Beardsley.