Saturday 30th July

[Stringy]

Clough isn't a great manager though, is he? Every time I've seen his teams play, admittedly that is sporadically, there is a distinct lack of conviction of what they are doing. You must have played well at times last season but you bobbled your way through that playoff semi and somehow came up against an equally inept Northampton. The amount you spunk on players, you should be getting more out of them from what I've seen?

I read that he believes in things like staying lively and switched on in the box as the principles, rather than a style as such. It's probably why there doesn't appear to be conviction in a big idea, with random team selections and formations, and no established patterns of play.

Tbh I thought some of our best football was when he stuck to a diamond with Maris at the base of midfield. You could see what we were working on e.g. the centre midfielders going wide and helping to create overloads against the opposition full backs.

He's flawed but he's created a feel good factor around the place. He's one of the better managers we've had.

 

[Son of Cod]

I read that he believes in things like staying lively and switched on in the box as the principles, rather than a style as such. It's probably why there doesn't appear to be conviction in a big idea, with random team selections and formations, and no established patterns of play. Tbh I thought some of our best football was when he stuck to a diamond with Maris at the base of midfield. You could see what we were working on e.g. the centre midfielders going wide and helping to create overloads against the opposition full backs.

He's flawed but he's definitely one of the better managers we've had.

Fair enough, you know better than me. Wasn't dissing him for the sake of it, more of a general query. I guess he has a philosophy then, it might just be that perhaps L2 isn't always the landscape to explore that. I'm a big fan of a diamond if you can get the right players in and full backs that can attack and defend. You just need to get a full team of players that bust a gut to make it work I think. Like you say, you need CMs that run and run.

Out of interest, who would you say has been the best manager for you in your supporting life?

 

[Who Needs Mourinho]

Back down to earth with a bang. County were absolutely abysmal first half, though got to give credit to Barrow who won everything and played it around nicely, that front line of Gordon/Waters/Whitfield were excellent, they played like a proper Pete Wild side and will surprise a lot of you on here this season. We were anothe abject however, and it was largely the new guys who were worst.

Camps was anonymous in the middle, but perhaps it was him being asked to do an unfamiliar role and the sooner Croasdale is back holding, the better. Wootton was woeful, my mum could beat him to a header and she has osteoarthritis. (Mind you nobody else was winning anything either, it's like we were made of paper). Lewis, bloody hell, the way he was getting turned inside out was horrible and he's directly responsible for that third, he showed no awareness all game.

And Mark Kitching should have a court order forbidding him from going within 500 yards of the LCB position again. Anyone who saw him give Bolton those goals last season would know that.

A couple of changes at half time and we are least looked like we had a shape for the second half, could have nabbed a pint but I'm reluctant to say if we'd have deserved it. Stonewall penalty ignored late on when their lad flipped MSH over, the ref did give a pen shortly after but the liner had flagged for offside well before then. Paddy MOTM unsurprisingly, in fairness I think Horsfall had a good 'un and was the only new face to give a good account of himself.

I agree with most of that apart from I thought Wootton was okay and while Lewis was terrible I’m not sure how you’re blaming him directly for any of the goals.

 

[BlackCountrySaddler]

We were fantastic today, team that with a poor Hartlepool and you get a result like that.

Peter Clarke was fantastic, exactly what we have lacked. A proper old fashioned CB who reads the game extremely well. Next to him you have two powerful and pacey defenders, we won’t concede many if Monthe, Clarke & Daniels perform week in week out.

Hutchinson was exactly what we have missed going forward, fantastic work for our second goal.

Johnson up front was superb up front, his work rate was first class & deserved all three goals.

It was the most complete performance I have seen since we dropped into league 2. Long may it continue.

 

[Meadow]

Pleased with that. Us and Gillingham seemed to be pretty evenly matched but we took our chances and they didn't. We defended well and I was so pleased to see Jack Currie score on his league debut.

 

[PaulHaddock]

Think Orient deserved the win but 2-0 was flattering. From my POV the penalty was very soft. The second goal was lush. Very even first half in terms of chances but we did nothing in the second, Orient had us figured.

Think we got tired and there was too many poor performances. Defence was actually ok but the midfield and McAtee were really poor today. We need another striker, doesn’t matter what style. Can only judge a season properly after 10 games anyway.

Hopefully Orient finish at the top end of the table. Tom James was excellent all game. However, lots of poor timewasting and enabled by a terrible ref.

 

[Cas]

We've seen that script before. All of the ball but final ball not good enough against a team playing for a point from the first minute. Very clearly a team who are still gelling as it was far from free flowing and too static even against eleven men.

Donny were dreadful, even before the red. I've seen some anti football in my time at VP but that was up there.

I think we'll improve our attacking play as the season goes. Oliver isn't quite there yet in terms of sharpness - he's not had as much of a pre-season as he would have hoped. We just need to perform better against teams that don't have any quality and instead rely on theatrics and time wasting. Though to be fair I'm not sure many clubs will actually come here to do what they did. A different test next week at Barrow, who will be much more of a challenge.

 

[loz]

I’m not going to condone Tomlin or some of the feigning. I can’t agree from the first minute both sides were trying to find their way. The ref was utter shite and had zero control all game. What I will say is if Bradford had gone down to ten with a half to play they would have done the same or you would have played blue murder. My first thought on the Ravenhill tackle was a straight red having seen it in slow mo, he won the ball well before making contact but the follow through is probably a red although hard to clearly see. Finally you can whine as much as you want but one of your defenders was man of the match which is probably why you are still in League 2

I'm sure Tranmere fans can tell you how we play when we go down to 10 in the first half. The leg breaking tackle should rightly have been a straight red. Reckless and dangerous as the consequences showed. Our defender was mom as none of your front men could get past him on the few occasions they tried and when your goalie went long to your carthorse, he dealt with those also. At the other end, none of our front men could hit a cows arse with a banjo so mom had to be a defender. The reason we are in div 4 is simple; for the previous 5 years we have been crap. We hope as the season develops that will change. For it to change, we will have to do much, much better than today and deal with teams who park the bus. Our slow build up and lack of width made it easy for you guys today. I have to say I was disappointed with Donny today. You showed a surprising lack of ambition even with 11 and time wasted right from the start. Again, as the season develops, that may change but I think you are going to find goals harder to come by than us.

 

[Cas]

I'm sure Tranmere fans can tell you how we play when we go down to 10 in the first half. The leg breaking tackle should rightly have been a straight red. Reckless and dangerous as the consequences showed. Our defender was mom as none of your front men could get past him on the few occasions they tried and when your goalie went long to your carthorse, he dealt with those also. At the other end, none of our front men could hit a cows arse with a banjo so mom had to be a defender. The reason we are in div 4 is simple; for the previous 5 years we have been crap. We hope as the season develops that will change. For it to change, we will have to do much, much better than today and deal with teams who park the bus. Our slow build up and lack of width made it easy for you guys today. I have to say I was disappointed with Donny today. You showed a surprising lack of ambition even with 11 and time wasted right from the start. Again, as the season develops, that may change but I think you are going to find goals harder to come by than us.

Lack of ambition summed up by them having a corner in the last thirty seconds and opting to keep it by the corner flag instead of trying to seal a win. A little strange when you consider the only thing they had in that team was height.

And yes, the last two times we've been down to ten men (Sutton and Tranmere?) we haven't adopted any sort of time wasting tactics.

 

[Stringy]

Fair enough, you know better than me. Wasn't dissing him for the sake of it, more of a general query. I guess he has a philosophy then, it might just be that perhaps L2 isn't always the landscape to explore that. I'm a big fan of a diamond if you can get the right players in and full backs that can attack and defend. You just need to get a full team of players that bust a gut to make it work I think. Like you say, you need CMs that run and run.

Out of interest, who would you say has been the best manager for you in your supporting life?

Best football played was that half season under Flitcroft. That half season was genuinely excellent.

Evans won plenty but lumped it a lot rather than playing football and disappeared after half a season.

Everyone else seems to fade away into nothingness. It's difficult because noone has really been successful. Paul Cox delivered. His team was very honest and good without the ball when we won the Conference.

Some of the earlier ones I didn't fully understand what I was watching but I remember them playing good football 01-02, 03-04.

Clough is up there at the mo.

Paul Cox wins on seeing the job through?? If we are not going too far back in time

 

[BarraMatt]

Had a few hours to gather my senses after a bit of a rollercoaster of a game to come up with some reasonable thoughts about ourselves.

It's taken us two years to get going but this league is a fucking piece of piss.

 

[Son of Cod]

Best football played was that half season under Flitcroft. That half season was genuinely excellent.

Evans won plenty but lumped it a lot rather than playing football and disappeared after half a season.

Everyone else seems to fade away into nothingness. It's difficult because noone has really been successful. Paul Cox delivered. His team was very honest and good without the ball when we won the Conference.

Some of the earlier ones I didn't fully understand what I was watching but I remember them playing good football 01-02, 03-04.

Clough is up there at the mo.

Paul Cox wins on seeing the job through?? If we are not going too far back in time

Cox was the one I was thinking of but probably because I saw loads of you on BT Sport in that era. Halcyon days.

 

[hellogregory]

Seen highlights on itv.

Doncaster should be fining the fuck out of Lee Tomlin for that. Fucking idiot, I’d be fuming if one of our players got themselves sent off for that.

And the “tackle” on the Bradford player early on should have been a straight red all day every day. How both the referee and linesman who was nearby didn’t see it for what it was is staggering.

 

[Strawberry_Jam]

not one to defend lee tomlin, who was the little s*** who stood on his foot? that was also embarassing, deliberately trying to get a reaction when someone's lost it and was under the red mist.

 

[DearneValleyRover]

I'm sure Tranmere fans can tell you how we play when we go down to 10 in the first half. The leg breaking tackle should rightly have been a straight red. Reckless and dangerous as the consequences showed. Our defender was mom as none of your front men could get past him on the few occasions they tried and when your goalie went long to your carthorse, he dealt with those also. At the other end, none of our front men could hit a cows arse with a banjo so mom had to be a defender. The reason we are in div 4 is simple; for the previous 5 years we have been crap. We hope as the season develops that will change. For it to change, we will have to do much, much better than today and deal with teams who park the bus. Our slow build up and lack of width made it easy for you guys today. I have to say I was disappointed with Donny today. You showed a surprising lack of ambition even with 11 and time wasted right from the start. Again, as the season develops, that may change but I think you are going to find goals harder to come by than us.

We had 6 defenders on the pitch, you created next to nothing. We had 2 good chances even with our lack of ambition , yes I agree we should have gone for it from the corner as the boos from our fans told the players. You’re defender had a good game but he had no one to mark. Think we will have less problems than yourselves if I’m honest. After last season that clean sheet will do the team a power of good

 

[DearneValleyRover]

Seen highlights on itv.

Doncaster should be fining the fuck out of Lee Tomlin for that. Fucking idiot, I’d be fuming if one of our players got themselves sent off for that.

And the “tackle” on the Bradford player early on should have been a straight red all day every day. How both the referee and linesman who was nearby didn’t see it for what it was is staggering.

Tomlin was an idiot no excuses. I thought it was a red all day, I’ve seen it in slo mo from another angle and Ravenhill won the ball but the follow through took the player out, ref bottled it but basically caused everything else that went off

 

[GTFCfish]

"Dad, it's a nice day, can we go to Cleethorpes"
"Maybe later son, i've got to put this Scunt in his place on the Internet"
"Can you pop out to the shops to get me this love"
"in a few minutes love, i'm on Scunt Twitter telling them how bad they are"

Ok sweet cheeks, enjoy your trip to Dorking.

 

[loz]

We had 6 defenders on the pitch, you created next to nothing. We had 2 good chances even with our lack of ambition , yes I agree we should have gone for it from the corner as the boos from our fans told the players. You’re defender had a good game but he had no one to mark. Think we will have less problems than yourselves if I’m honest. After last season that clean sheet will do the team a power of good

Time will tell. What I will say however, we will approach all away games by trying to WIN with attacking football and not time wasting straight from the kick off. We have a new team and today was only game 1. The first games always include distorted results for instance, do you think Harrogate will finish higher than Swindon?

 

[Boz]

I've little to add to the comments already posted on Rovers v Stevenage. First half we were as bad as I've seen since the season opener v York, when we ended up dropping out of the FL. While there may have been handball for their opener, wasn't convinced their early 'goal' should have been chalked off for offside. Stevenage deserved the win, but hard to evaluate them as a team because of how poor Rovers were.

 

[BarraMatt]

I've little to add to the comments already posted on Rovers v Stevenage. First half we were as bad as I've seen since the season opener v York, when we ended up dropping out of the FL. While there may have been handball for their opener, wasn't convinced their early 'goal' should have been chalked off for offside. Stevenage deserved the win, but hard to evaluate them as a team because of how poor Rovers were.

Just watched the ITV highlights. Top prospect Kyle Jameson nearly curling a pearler into the back of his own net.

 

[EricSabin]

Just watching the highlights and that Carlisle kit is not a Carlisle kit

 

[AdamStag]

It was just a weird team and tactic selection. Barring the worst injury and suspension crisis imaginable there's really no excuse for a professional football team to line up like that. When I saw the team selection I couldn't get my head around what he was thinking.

there was some real bother in the away as those not clapping weren’t proper fans /
apparently

 

[Conker]

Clough isn't a great manager though, is he? Every time I've seen his teams play, admittedly that is sporadically, there is a distinct lack of conviction of what they are doing. You must have played well at times last season but you bobbled your way through that playoff semi and somehow came up against an equally inept Northampton. The amount you spunk on players, you should be getting more out of them from what I've seen?

I like Clough being our manager, and at times like at Northampton in the play-offs, he gets it absolutely spots on and we did a job on them but just like any L2 manager he’s got flaws and today they showed up because he’s the reason we lost today with a ridiculous starting line up.

We need to actually spunk some money on players, we’ve brought in five players, three are loans and two are goalkeepers. The squad needs a commanding centre back and a forward player, but Clough is making out we are only after the latter now.

 

[WilsdenBantam]

I don’t actually think Donny have a bad squad and have them for top 7 in my prediction, but forget the red they wasted time from minute 1 even the lad who broke out players leg walked slowly off the pitch and that was minute 15. I believe their manager is in his first job, personally I think their fans and board will get sick of him pretty quickly. Very Bowyer esk. Tomlin was useless as well, I’d rather the lad who should have got sent off got red carded not him as he was the ultimate spare part except for one ball through. He’s like Akinfenwa without any muscle and makes Andy Cook’s body look like Mo Farah.

 

[saddler78]

I don’t actually think Donny have a bad squad and have them for top 7 in my prediction, but forget the red they wasted time from minute 1 even the lad who broke out players leg walked slowly off the pitch and that was minute 15. I believe their manager is in his first job, personally I think their fans and board will get sick of him pretty quickly. Very Bowyer esk. Tomlin was useless as well, I’d rather the lad who should have got sent off got red carded not him as he was the ultimate spare part except for one ball through. He’s like Akinfenwa without any muscle and makes Andy Cook’s body look like Mo Farah.

Tomlin cant be arsed anymore just playing for a contract that pays him a wage which he has got glad we did not give it him and let him go has quality beyond this divison but too idle to use it.

 

[Kauto Star]

Stevenage should have been down to 10 men and their first goal was a handball, but it’s still our fault for not playing better.

If you just look for excuses in this league you’ll end up doing it every game because the standard of officials is that poor.

My point is that I and the majority of Bantams don't look for excuses. I've said earlier in this thread we were not good enough yesterday. My main point was condemning Donny's approach to the game which was anti-football and I hope I never see my team resort to such tactics

 

[Kauto Star]

I’m not going to condone Tomlin or some of the feigning. I can’t agree from the first minute both sides were trying to find their way. The ref was utter shite and had zero control all game. What I will say is if Bradford had gone down to ten with a half to play they would have done the same or you would have played blue murder. My first thought on the Ravenhill tackle was a straight red having seen it in slow mo, he won the ball well before making contact but the follow through is probably a red although hard to clearly see. Finally you can whine as much as you want but one of your defenders was man of the match which is probably why you are still in League 2

Not one Bradford City fan has whined that we should have won the match or our performance was good. We are all just condemning Donny's tactics. Your team clearly did not set out to win that game right from the off and clearly not interested in entertaining your support who travelled in good numbers.

You got 2 corners in the last minute of injury time and had no interest in trying to snatch a win, instead messing about in the corner with it, pathetic, and I don't think your fans were happy with that at all.

I hope you swap places with Scunny at the end of the season if that's how you are setting your stall for the season like that

 

[Ninety Per Cent]

@

 

[BogDaddyO]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1553521625898917897

Early goal of the season contender from Tom James yesterday, what a strike.

 

[Boz]

Just watched the ITV highlights. Top prospect Kyle Jameson nearly curling a pearler into the back of his own net.

While I never described him as that, he certainly isn’t!