Were our best 3 players by a country mile on Saturday. One of them gets 20 minutes tonight and the other 2 are ignored. What am I missing? I think I’ve officially run out of patience tonight.
Very harsh. I’ve been very critical of him in the past but He showed a massive improvement in October and won player of the month. He then disappeared without trace until his cameo on Saturday when he looked a real threat. O’Keeffe had been horrendous the last 3 or 4 games as well.
O'Keefe whilst better defensively than Cotter is a sack of 5hit going forward. Unfortunately Cotter is a sack of 5hit defensively. It's an unwanted conundrum. I say spend some money and buy some full backs. We need a proper midfielder. (I'd have rather had Scowen back than long tall Sally). Up front too much is made about Jalo, Humphrys, Killer Dunn, Cosgrove, Watters and Marsh. Easiest position on pitch and no job other than scoring goals. Problem in the inner workings. For all the faux pas the midfield aren't working hard enough.
And so he should. For the last few years we've had midfielders and defenders who can only pass the ball to the right and have set up in a way that means we predominantly attack down the right. Gent isn't an attacking player at all, he's essentially a left back and before him it was earl who is usually a center back playing there. Go back to last season and we had cadden standing waving his arms begging for the ball every week. Let's not forget that Barry Cotter playing in the same position in the same team in the same league has the same minutes per assist as O'Keeffe 377 minutes per assist for both of them. O'Keeffe having more assists is a product of our setup not his abilities.
Jalo needs to start up front with Humphrys in my opinion. Either Phillips or DKD can start from the bench as even though they both like a goal, they also spend large parts of the game anonymous. Not saying Jalo will come in and get involved with everything but just something different and someone to run at players. Nwakali does seem to be getting the raw end of the deal. Seems to play well in games and then be back on the bench. I wonder if he’s not showing it in training? With Cotter I’m not sure what’s happening. I’ve never been his biggest fan and his defending still scares me but he was good this season up until the Donny pizza cup game. Pretty sure he’s still top of our player of the year on here and he hasn’t played in weeks. O’Keeffe I guess is a standard league 1 player. He will put in an excellent ball over and get an assist but then his next 5 crosses will go 20 foot in the air, not beat the first man and into the stand. He was probably our worst player last night I thought.
I wonder with nwakali if we are still managing his injury issue that we signed him with Clarke alluded to in a recent interview however I do think he would have got overran in that midfield yesterday as it was a very physical contest and I would say that’s his downside he’s not a physical player (but neither is Russell tbh) O keefe is really poor he can’t control simple passes, makes random passes to the other team and loves a header into no man’s land. Sadly we fell into the “Wrexham” show and didn’t actually go there to try and win the game just nick a point. My son was distraught when their goal went in, poor lad is the only Barnsley fan in his school living in North Wales & with loads of fake Wrexham ones since R&R took over so was dreading the crap he was getting off them about the result sadly we never gave it a real go at trying to win and got all we deserved.
O'Keefe would be a decent squad player dipping in and out but I just don't think he has the athleticism or skill for a wing back role every week, Jalo for some reason gets ripped by everyone on this forum but when he plays he isn't scared to run at defenders and cause problems something we are massively lacking with this very slooooow team, I've not seen enough of Nwakali to judge good or bad yet
How the eck do you come to that conclusion? Scoring goals is the hardest part of football, hence why there's so few goals in relation to time played. Striker is such a nuanced position. Why do you think the top dollar is spent on strikers? You couldn't be more wrong Stephen.