Tuesday 8th February 2022

[Agombar stool]

Not surprised to hear that at all, strongly suspect he’ll be playing his football in non-league next year.

Yep, see where you are coming from.

 

[Alain]

Went to Harrogate on Tuesday evening and like most of our supporters stayed overnight - this was us as supporters our first visit to the stadium - first observation was that no alcohol served in the ground when we asked where the bar was - just as well we had already has a few at the Weatherspoons in Harrogate itself - that is an amazing place.

The floodlighting is just about passable - very patchy in places, the pitch is also very narrow and the bounce of the ball is deceiving - a couple of time it bounced over the top of the defenders. You can see why they generally play route one football.

That apart we probably played the best 90 minutes of football this season away from home - high energy and certainly should have scored more that the 3 we did, especially in the first half. Harrogate did have a few chances which they took one when equalising after Oteh had put us ahead - then Tom Nichols came into his own - one assist for Tsaroulla to hammer home at the back post, then a great strike from the edge of the area that gave the keeper no chance - then we managed not to concede like we have for the past 3 matches in added time that have cost us points. Whether we can make a push for the play-offs remains to be seen but we do have 5 of the next 6 at home and we have to play the bottom 11 sides at home but that said we have to improve our home performances from now on.

 

[leedsvaliant]

Not great in all honesty. He looked handy enough against a pathetic Colchester side (that we managed to conspire to draw with, when they had 9 men - reminded me of the only time I have been to the Valley as it goes!) but missed an absolute sitter, whacking it against the keeper when he had time to pick a spot anywhere in the goal. Then he got injured (hamstring trouble) and I still don't think he is totally match fit. He looks alright but missed another simple chance on Tuesday, heading wide. The whole team have been a car crash recently so difficult to lay blame but he's a severe downgrade on Tyrese Simpson, which was to be expected. I really want him to come good, but I suspect he won't.

What's happened to you? You looked handy against vale not that long ago and ran out comfortable winners (albeit against 10 men for a half). I thought that was going to be your catalyst for top 3 but you seem to have fallen off a cliff since then. Mckirdy looked confident and in form, are you missing Simpson?

 

[Koumas’Right-Boot]

What's happened to you? You looked handy against vale not that long ago and ran out comfortable winners (albeit against 10 men for a half). I thought that was going to be your catalyst for top 3 but you seem to have fallen off a cliff since then. Mckirdy looked confident and in form, are you missing Simpson?

Weren’t you down to 10 for most of that game?

Swindon’s back four aren’t great on the ball but insist on trying to play out from the back, so a high press causes them all kinds of issues. Imagine it’s not possible to do that with a man light.

 

[valefan16]

Weren’t you down to 10 for most of that game?

Swindon’s back four aren’t great on the ball but insist on trying to play out from the back, so a high press causes them all kinds of issues. Imagine it’s not possible to do that with a man light.

Half of it, we were awful that day, first league game in 5 weeks and looked miles off it to be fair. If we’d high pressed the way we did FGR then it may have been a different game… but we will never know.

They did look decent but may have been down to the space we gave the likes of Williams.

 

[Stringy]

Mansfield 2-1 colchester.

You’ll never a see a more 1 sided game won by 1 goal, absolutely battered them.

9 home wins in a row for the first time since 1973

We should have got a second goal much sooner. It was a good end to the game though when they got one back. I thought for a split second we might mess it up at the end. Thankfully their player delivered a shocking cross at the only time you absolutely cannot deliver a rubbish cross.
Judge is a good player.

 

[Agombar stool]

What's happened to you? You looked handy against vale not that long ago and ran out comfortable winners (albeit against 10 men for a half). I thought that was going to be your catalyst for top 3 but you seem to have fallen off a cliff since then. Mckirdy looked confident and in form, are you missing Simpson?

Simply put it feels like we have been found out. Our form since we played Man City in the cup has generally been dreadful. I think it's 3 wins in 15. One of those was an odd game against Northampton when they were just back from Covid and I'm not sure 5-2 was an accurate reflection as they looked dead on their feet for the last 30 minutes or so and the 3-1 win against Port Vale was partially due to the keeper getting sent off and partially for Darrell Clarke not playing a pressing game. Mansfield and more recently Tranmere played us perfectly. Adopt a high press, play aggressively and wait for a mistake.

We are a bit of a one-trick pony really. Garner loves to play the 'total football' way but we don't play with nearly enough tempo and it's really easy for an organised opponent to play against. Also, 2 of our season long loanees, Kessler Hayden and Tyrese Simpson having been recalled have killed us. Kessler Hayden was inconsistent but he was good on the ball, direct and quick and would give left backs plenty to think about. Rob Hunt just doesn't have anything like the same danger in his game. Simpson was excellent generally. A big, strong forward with good feet (shocking in the air) and also gave defences plenty to think about. He has been replaced with a loan forward in Davison that is a huge drop down in quality. Better in the air than Simpson but doesn't have much else about him based on the 4 games we have seen so far.

Other factors are missing players, which is key with such a small squad. First half of the season we had very few injuries. Recently we've had Conroy, Lyden, (Out for the season with an achilles rupture) Reed, (Stupid suspension for getting red carded for abusing the ref AFTER the full time whistle in a game he didn't play) and Jack Payne (massively missed) out of action as well as having to be in new loanees. To be fair the defensive loanees in O'Brien from Palace, Cooper from Swansea and Tomlinson from Peterborough do look like good players. But they need time to gel given we are choosing to try and play football the most complicated way possible.

We do have a team of good footballers, i'm just not convinced the style that Garner has adopted will win out against properly organised sides. Confidence is low at the moment and sometimes it takes a need to go back to basics a bit to turn around a bad run of form. I don't think that's in Garner's manual unfortunately. If we don't beat Scunny on Saturday, the natives, who are already restless will be more revolting than usual!

 

[BRFC_Gas]

Weren’t you down to 10 for most of that game?

Swindon’s back four aren’t great on the ball but insist on trying to play out from the back, so a high press causes them all kinds of issues. Imagine it’s not possible to do that with a man light.

We try to play the ball out from the back too and I friggin hate it. Usually ends up with the opposition pushing and either;
a) win the ball
b) force us to put it out of play
c) we hit it long

I know the idea behind it, but this is L2 ffs, with L2 standard players. I dont recall many instances where we have benefitted from this style of play, it just inevitably leads to our defender in possession facing his own goal almost having his cheeks clapped by an opposition forward.
Its a simple game, keep it simple. Sutton are the masters of this.

 

[Casey]

I don't know if anyone watches the Premier but Leicester stopped playing the ball out from the back v Liverpool last night as they were being caught in possession all the time.

If they can change why can't we?

Casey

 

[Valeite]

I can understand it for teams at the top of the prem, it brings the opposition out of their defensive half and they can make their superior players tell. In league 2 we all know that if you keep whacking it up to some big youth up front the defence will cock it up at some point so why bother?

 

[Essex2Wessex]

Once we got rid of Mark Cooper (for all the good that he really did do for us), we finally got a grip, and understood that sometimes it makes good sense to play out from the back, whereas at other times, as he had not appreciated, the thing to do is to boot it and be generally more aggressive up front instead of eternally maintaining possession and playing lots of neat backwards passing triangles firmly in our defensive half that has a certain aesthetic appeal but doesn't result in any goals and is ultimately also boring to watch and ultimately tedious and sometimes fruitless.

We then went on to employ an artistic director (geezer from Massive Attack), although I think his chief contribution so far has been the various ecologically themed statistics put on the LED advertising boards in front of the main stand during games. Maybe that appointment went with the sense it was OK to stop being inappropriately arty on the pitch. Maybe other clubs can follow this example. We can't be the only league club with an artistic director, surely....

 

[valefan16]

It’s the Pep factor, everyone wants to be a Barca or Man City, problem is they don’t have a fraction of the ability at our level so is always a gamble. We’ve always looked great when playing the high press, in fairness Askey in the covid season got that spot on, if you press high at league two level they will make mistakes.

Mix it up and it’s good, but I find the slow paced pinging it around the back boring… I have to be honest though I found Barca and Spain boring to watch. It was so slow and patient.

Rather than ping ping ping goal. Teams who get the ball forward. Make things happen.

 

[Soup Ladle]

Yeah that was a big Dave Challinor thing. His sides always passed it out from the back.

At National League level it worked great as players don't have the intensity to press it for 90 minutes. Fitness levels are a bit higher here and we just kept on getting caught out, one reason we have a single away win all season.

Lee came in and he immediately stopped that. Initially it was just bang it up to Mark Cullen and it was horrible. Now he's trying to mix it up which at this level is clearly the better way ahead.

At Palace we did try to build up from the back in the first half and it was kind of embarrassing as we never got outside our own box. L2 teams are too predictable and limited technically to pull it off successfully.

 

[BRFC_Gas]

I can understand it for teams at the top of the prem, it brings the opposition out of their defensive half and they can make their superior players tell. In league 2 we all know that if you keep whacking it up to some big youth up front the defence will cock it up at some point so why bother?

This is it. Sutton have a beast up front and tricky speed merchants on the wings...and midfielders who are bypassed. As long as your defence is solid that should win more games than it loses.

 

[GTFCfish]

I can’t be arsed to post the link but if you want to see why lower league footballers should never play it out from the back then type Grimsby 1-1 Carlisle into YouTube and have a look at Carlisle’s equaliser.