They looked poor goals to concede both at the match and more so on replays. The first goal was from a weakly hot shot from the right hand side across the goal and the both the defence and the goalkeeper were at fault. Infact even the goal scorer looked surprised went it went in. As for the second goal, well the defence had chance to clear but it bobbled around til it fell to their player who reacted quickest and poked it home. Very, very poor defending but becoming the norm. It's about time the head coach and his team of coaches all pointing and shouting at once from the bench did the work on the training pitch and not through the course of the match-a case of too many cooks and no recipe. Nine games in and no pattern of play or formation setting in.
I thought he got isolated with no right back cover. He's not blessed with pace, so once an attacker is beyond him, they are gone. I think this is the problem with this 'system' with these players. Cotter is largely our only outlet and only ball carrier. But that exposes De Gevigny all the more, so when we're gifting the ball away, it's all the more dangerous.
We played with 4 centre backs at time non of which are blessed with pace and the Nous to block the cross coming in. Pines seems really slow now, whether the injury from last season has taken its toll I don't know but wasn't Gent signed as a left back and Loft house used to play right back? Cotter has the pace but is not a natural defender. Plus are the days gone when the wingers swopped places if they were having no joy. Cotter faded after a bright start so why didn't he and Lofthouse swop places and see how that went?
I'm aware of this. Hence why I said there was no right back cover. Cover for the right back. Not that the right back wasn't there. As we saw on the other side, they often doubled up on Cotter and provided cover after he'd nutmegged and roasted defenders.
IMHO Things that need to change Cotter needs to spend time on crossing the ball (his delivery is poor) Goalkeeper needs to come off his line and collect the ball Josh Earl is not a full back Neither is Giverney Connell and Craig are playing the same role Cosgrove(well where to start), Get off the ground and head with purpose, stop falling to the ground and bully the centre back, take the ball on the chest and bring it under control, react faster etc DKD Get in the game Philips (as above) Lofthouse(as above) Jalo/Humphrys /Benson get fit asap Gent - give him a game Watters/Marsh not up to it.. imho Apart from that we are ok(tee hee)
I'd add Goalie to stop lumping it unless he can improve his accuracy. 90% of his kicks just come straight back as they go to the opposition
What about the 50% that go straight into touch, somewhere near the half way line? His throwing is actually better than his kicking so he should do more of that. Heinz Muller was good at bowling it out to a red shirt. These are much easier to control than a high bouncing kick