Best performance I've seen from us under Johnson

I thought both lads played really well and with Smith & Jackson as back up, our options up front aren't too bad.
Also, I think today proved that any claims that Hourihane & Winnall can't play together successfully in the same team are made of the same stuff I put on my roses.

 

Forget it.

This is the last time I shall respond to a post of yours.

I posted that I favoured Watkins through on goal more than Winnall.

If you can prove more than that I'll give you your tenner.

But the tone of your responses can be saved for others.

 

Me, too, old mate.

 

Thought so rent a gob too scared to put their money where their mouth is. Well wriggled out of. I like the fake high moral ground very convincing.

 

I'm definitely guilty of judging a game to be better if the second half is better than the first, like today, rather than the other way around. Poor memory I suppose. And the 'best performance under Johnson' could well be seen as damning with faint praise as I've not been very impressed up to now. But I did think the final 60 minutes today was significantly better than the first half against Shrewsbury.

While we could and probably should have scored more than our one goal last week, we scored three in the final 50 minutes today and also missed three further chances that were equally presentable. I realise Swindon had chances of their own and were guilty of over-playing, trying to score the perfect goal rather than taking a shot, a criticism that can usually be levelled at us, but we ripped through them with ease at times and I will be surprised if many other teams do that to them this season.

It wasn't the perfect performance by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a vast improvement on much of what I've seen since Winnall was injured last December. Having been starved of entertainment for so long, it feels good to be able to praise the manager and the team for some really good football even if we weren't consistent with that over the 90 minutes.

 

What made the difference - having fkd up and given Swindon the lead and fearing Johnson's wrath at half time our lot forgot their cautious tip-tapping/ passing game and went for it - with an excellent result -
In a nutshell our team was frightened of losing.

 

But can we accomadate Hourihane and Crowley ?

 

Yes, I don't see why not.

 

I think you both should donate a tenner now to charity. Seems that either sides positioning of the bet would be impossible to measure. How the hell can you tell if a player is playing in a central role or not when he scores a goal. All semantics. So i decree both pay a tenner to your own given charity. That will sort out either sides ability to back their talk....... Just helping adjudicate like

 

To be honest, it only occurred to me after posting that 'best performance under Johnson' might not actually be saying much. And having tried to think of a better performance, I think you might be right. Maybe there was one last season (can't remember who against) where he brought on a 2nd striker and we thrashed them 2nd half, but other than that there isn't much competition. I'm also perhaps not giving much credit to the quality of the opposition.

Really hope we can string a few together now.

 

Walsall was the game. We took off Lalkovic and Pearson, brought on Bailey and Winnall, went with two up front and suddenly looked a decent side. Second half v Rochdale was fun too, although by the time the 3rd went in Rochdale gave up completely. I also enjoyed the Preston game and the Everton match was obviously very entertaining. Other than that, win, lose or draw we've played slowly, methodically and, to be brutally honest, it's been like watching paint dry. Either we'd get on the end of a Hourihane set-piece and we'd win, or we wouldn't and we wouldn't. Attrition football I've heard it called and if every team on the planet played that way there wouldn't be a football industry in 10 years time as people would simply stop watching.

If you're fighting for your lives in the Premier League, up against a squad of players whose weekly wage is more than a lot of us have earned in our entire lives, then I can understand it as there is honour and a real sense of achievement in beating the odds. But to play like that when you're mid-table league 1, when there should be nothing at all to be frightened of, completely loses sight of what the beautiful game should be about.

It wasn't a brilliant performance on Saturday (although I thought Hourihane got close to that) but I thought it significantly better than the vast majority I've seen under Johnson and I was definitely entertained.

 

Having listened to LJ's post match interview - where he gave the way Swindon play as a reason for his starting XI I was and still am seriously concerned by his reasoning. I see what he's trying to achieve but putting us on the back foot from KO is not to my liking.

I thought it was a good job Swindon were a mirror image of us.

If when he has a full squad to choose from I hope his approach changes.

 

I liked the way we played second half. Hourihane just off Winnall, Harris and Watkins pushed forward on either wing, closing them down in their own half without the ball, getting it forward quickly when we had it. That's the way Johnson talks about playing, but I hadn't seen it until yesterday.

We'll not get the same kind of space against many clubs at Oakwell, who will be more concerned about stopping us playing rather than taking the game to us, but we should have a lot of joy playing that way away from home.

If we are playing one up front it's got to be Winnall though. As good a finish as it was by Watkins, Winnall covers more ground, he can win the ball in the air and he gets on the end of crosses. And he showed on Setdi he can easily play in the same team as Hourihane.

 

It's a fairly easy bet to make when Winnall will spend 80% of his minutes on the pitch playing as a striker and Watkins will spend 80% playing as a winger. So of course Winnall is going to score more goals played as a striker. You'd need to judge it by minutes per goal when played as a central striker for it to be fair.

 

Provided Hourihane is allowed to get that far up the pitch then I agree about him & Winnall.

 

It's the fact Johnson said "and it worked" in reference to him dropping Winnall, that's what bothered me after the game. Just hold your hands up Lee and admit you ****** up. I really like listening to the bloke and I do think he's going to prove to be a decent manager (with us, hopefully) but don't try and pillock me. We were as bad as we were at Rochdale, first half hour on Saturday, and it only got better in the second half, when laikers behind Winnall actually closed the gap, linked with him, Hourihane especially and the likes of Harris, Watkins and Scowen started to press the opposition. First 30 we stood off them and allowed them to play. Thankfully, they weren't much cop and it took a massive keeping error to give them their lead.

First half - *****. Second half - almost brilliant. The performances of Hourihane, Smith and Winnall - quality.

 

That whole interview worried me. Hope he was being a bit tongue in cheek

 

I only listened to it this morning when out walking the mutt. Wish I'd listened to it before doing that podcast thing because he gave me some right pearls to go at. But I do like him. He's just making it a challenge when he tries to convince himself that he was right. Because he's the only one who saw that game on Saturday who must think he was right dropping Winnall.