Of the ten outfield players who finished the game

Over the years I've read a lot of your posts Jay and agreed with lots but the only part of this I can agree with is concerning Hammill.

There's some good players in this squad that will go on to better things than us, just like what's happened previously, but they're a young squad who will have off days throughout the season. Hopefully as the season goes on they're learning continuously and the off days are less frequent.

Against Villa we had lots of the ball but lacked any real goal threat. If we're playing Bradshaw up top on his own then the midfield need to make runs and support him. Pretty much like what they did against Sunderland (particularly Potts and Moncur).

It still took 2 mistakes from us to give Villa the half time lead and considering the ridiculous amounts of money they're spending, I don't quite get the slating on here.

 

think it needs to go back to 2 up top , like to see thiam get a run in team with either ugo or bradshaw , its no good floating long balls into the box with bradshaw on his own up there, also when is isgrove back? hammill and McCarthy looking like a good partership down the right if we can get yids and isgrove doing the same down the left we will be much more of a threat going forward

 

I think it's gonna be a long season - we've started pretty well, far better than I ever expected us to, but nothing changes my view that if we stay up with the squad we have today comfortably then Hecky will be the manager of the year & we should have a decent chance next season of consolidation.

Can't fault attitude we've got in there - we know we're always going to get that - but we have to be realistic. We're not going to judge ourselves against the likes of Villa but the squad still has plenty to do to get better. The hope is that they do as they stick together.

 

Was it you i saw at the match yesterday wearing that 'Maceo Rigters is better than Pele' T-Shirt?

 

No, I had my retro 'I'm Wilde About Roger' t-shirt on yesterday. I thought my first man crush might have shown his face yesterday when the past players rocked up.

 

Honestly no positives in McCarthy, Williams & Lindsay? I like the look of all 3

 

In the first half yes, Lindsay played some lovely long passes, McCarthy had plenty of energy and Williams looked suited to playing in front of the back four. In the second half, not really, Lindsay's passing began to go astray, McCarthy no longer overlapped the winger and Williams didn't have nearly as much time on the ball after moving further up the pitch, which more often than not resulted in him doing pirouettes and playing the ball sideways or backwards.

We appeared to try to attack as a team in the first half with full backs overlapping and central midfield at least attempting to get forward. After going to 4-4-2, without the protection of the holding midfield player, the full backs and central midfield held back. We didn't have the confidence to break forward.

I don't think there were any terrible individual performances second half, everyone was bang average, but there was no spark from anyone other than Hammill, resulting in the team being completely ineffective. My biggest worry was I couldn't see any potential spark from the rest.

There's no one I think is crap, they all seem to work hard, they can pass the ball well enough, cover the necessary ground, and when we play five in midfield all that will allow us to compete with most teams in this division. If a team turn up at Oakwell and aren't prepared to put in the effort, like Sunderland, then we'll beat them. Although I think we'll compete well enough, I'm can't to see us winning a lot of games as I think we'll struggle to break down opposition defences, while at the other end we always look capable of an error or three.

Having said all that, we're still without McGeehan, Isgrove, three of our four full backs and, yesterday, Gardner. They may produce the skill required

 

Sorry I didn't realise you meant just the second half. Agree it was disappointing, a bit of a non-event with no positives for us

 

I didn't see owt to alarm me tbh just as I didn't see owt to think we could challenge for top six against Sunderland .
I thought they played ok without a sting in our tail tbh.
They seem to be improving game by game with touches of brilliance and crapness along the way.
I thought Villa punished us for our mistakes and most teams haven't the quality to do that as they did.
We'll be ok this season imo we won't go down if we competing and that will make up for the lack of quality/experience .

 

Unless it's some sort of wind up I am astounded by some of the negativity in this thread. To my mind this is a hugely promising bunch of players. Of course they're not going to be consistent - they've been together a matter of weeks. That Hecky could pull out performances such as the ones against Forest, Sunderland and Derby from them speaks volumes about their potential. I think the opening few home games have been enormously entertaining and I think we have some future stars in this squad, given time. People need to get back down to earth.

 

I think that the realistic ones are already here down on earth.

As an earthling it seems to me that we will be bottom six. At best.

Unless we teleport in a proper hold up forward.

 

There's "nothing there" in any of our other players and we're "abmsyal when playing an attacking line up". I take it you weren't there on Tuesday?

Why such a damning verdict when you admit you don't know about them as footballers? Talk about gut reaction.

 

In terms of Tuesday to be fair I'd expect our first team to be able to beat Derby's reserve team (expensively assembled or not).