The defence for the defence?

Exactly. We make things so difficult for ourselves. Duff was a great appointment and there were plenty of coaches with similar experience of the lower leagues that would have jumped at the job.

 

This is an excellent post and tantamount to saying, correctly in my opinion, that the coach is not good enough. The comparisons with Duff are obvious. I thought after about 7/8 games that the team would not be getting any better but unfortunately they've got worse. It seems like Collins has also undermined confidence to me. I've said it numerous times on here but the entire team, defence, midfield and attack are not playing with any fluidity whatsoever. Its all knee jerk, reactive unsure football all the time. No clear pattern going forward except for the occasional lucky punt and no clear consistent tactic when going forward except relying on the occasional goal out of the blue. Very very poor stuff and its all down to coaching. Worse teams than us play better as a unit because they're well coached. We're not well coached, we're badly coached and Collins therefore needs to go no later than the end of the season. He's poor.
As an aside its incumbent on the board to make sure that when Collins does leave they pick someone who knows what they're doing at this level or above and don't shop around in poundland Europe or anywhere else where the overall competitiveness of the football is not the same as the EFL. Its a false economy if they look for a cheap coach to save a few quid. The coach is the most important signing the board makes. A good coach makes average players look good.

 

I disagree about the point of the level Kitching was at at the start of last season. He'd had a poor season, like everyone else, the previous year. But the attributes were there. Height, pace, strength, and played left back, left of a three and central in a back 4. I'd say he was better at the start of last season than any of our defenders at the start of this season. Never known so many goals or chances conceded because a centre back had done something fundamentally basic wrong, and a collective defence lacking both pace and physicality.

That said, questions need to be asked of Collins on how the wheels can come off how they have since the Bolton game.

 

We’ve no players currently who can come off the bench and make an impact (which is why I think Kane has been benched to extent - to finish a match rather than start it).

We’ve no formation change that actually makes an impact. Other than sometimes when McAtee dropped into the 10 role.

I equally blame the players and the coach. We haven’t played ‘pretty stuff’ all season, but we have ground out results. We’re having a blip where we are still not playing ‘pretty stuff’ and losing. It’s not great, but I do think we’ll still get in the playoffs.

We’ve seen many teams play crap football over the years, but get promoted. Hopefully this is our turn. And let’s not forget we did drop results the end of last season too (but we’d cemented the playoffs then).

Regardless of what happens in the summer, I’d probably give Collins until Xmas at least. We need stability, we need a good transfer window, and we need someone who knows the squad in preparation for pre-season. We’ve missed that for a number of years now, which costs us.

 

I am to golf what Cosgrove is to hold-up play.

 

My take on it is that we weren't expecting Kitching to leave, however once he started pushing for a move and given the money involved we had no choice but to sell him. The board have been accused of "cashing in", and out of the three players who left the Kitching transfer is the one where this is may have a slither of truth given the leverage we had, but the fact of the matter is the Club is losing money. The fact that we have four first choice players leaving for nothing also runs contrary to that accusation.

I think we recruited with the intention of having Williams and Kitching in the back three, that's why we brought in O'Keeffe to be first-choice RWB. MDG/Lopata were brought in with the first team in mind, and I don't think Shepherd was meant to be near the squad, he'd be the defensive version of Oli Shaw but then Kitching left, he got his chance, and did okay. I think perhaps the biggest issue with the defence is that neither Cundy or McCarthy have been effective, while the injuries were unfortunate, both of those were signed for the first team and if we're pointing the finger at recruitment both of those are bigger misses than Lopata and Shepherd.

Losing Kitching meant we lost experience and pace at the back and those have been the biggest weaknsses. That said, it's hard to see how it has improved over the season and ultimately that's down to the coach. We're desperate for a good pre-season with early recruitment and a good clear out.

 

We outshot Cambridge 17-7.

 

That may be so but they scored two of their 7 shots and some argue they should've had a third goal as well.

We also had 10 shots in total more than them but managed to have 1 shot less then them on target. We also had 0 corners all game.

They did a number on us that night and that is largely down to the coaching staff.

 

If you read their forums, they think they were very fortunate.

 

A ball kicked in the somewhere between the two corner flags at 0.000001 mile an hour may be a shot on paper but in reality we all know it means absolutely nothing

 

Hey that's quite an opening post Gordon, but I stopped reading it after the first sentence lol.
But seriously, are you saying Collins is to blame here ?.

 

The effort and time it took to compose that post. The writing, reading, tweaking and re-reading and you expect me to summarise it all in one word? Well that’s charming…but okay then, yes!

 

Just looked at the league table and we've got 74 points while Cambridge have got 45 but there's an argument being put forward that they're doing better than we are. I'm clearly missing something but I'm f***ed if I know what it is because it's that nuts that I haven't got the mental gymnastic capabilities to cope with it.