Is that even worth celebrating?

He has terrific hair too.

 

He's definitely just Hemsy.

There's no chance either him or Hemsy have any friends, even each other.

 

Christ, you’re all a bit soft on here aren’t you - 4 pages of a barrage of abuse.

Did anyone see that last 30 minutes like I did? I’ve watched the highlights back and yes Benson did intercept the ball for the 4th goal but what else did he actually do? I don’t blame him though, the club have actively & publicly tried to get shut of him in January, failed - let others leave & now we’re stuck with him because we haven’t got any option from the bench. He just doesn’t seem interested.

A couple of positives having time to reflect, Humphrys - looked a lot fitter, competing for the ball in the air & basically setting up 2 goals, his best 2 games in a long time.

All I’m saying is when you’re 4-1 up, see the game out - control it. We’ve won 5 home games all season.

Bristol Rovers - lost control early 2nd half before Phillips’ winner.
Rotherham - the only game I felt comfortable.
Wrexham - zero control in that 2nd half.
Crawley - 3-0 up & cruising before Kilip had to make some decent saves.
Yesterday - 3-0 up & 4-1 up before a mental 10 minutes.

Let’s not forget about the games we’ve thrown away, Wycombe, Charlton, Reading etc.

I get that DC didn’t have much of a bench yesterday but he still has to be doing better, we’re 3/4 of the way through the season now & I’m still seeing the same mistakes, that’s got to be down to the coaching….

 

Top of the league in the first half table and 19th in the second half table tells you everything you know about the ability of the coaching staff to manage the game out.

That said, they were severely lacking in personnel yesterday after they made changes.

 

Maybe we should put you in charge. I'm sure the jerk store can do without you for a while.

 

Perhaps he should play the same 11 every week and make no subs...

 

This is a really measured and balanced post - a lot of which I agree with.

Scott, you're clearly a passionate guy with a lot of interesting things to say about BFC. I don't want to come across as patronising or anything, but have you thought about refraining from posting about a match until the day after, once your initial emotions have subsided? I just think if this had been your OP yesterday it would have triggered some worthwhile discussion, rather than rubbing people up the wrong way.

 

Out of interest mate, what would you have done.

I do think it’s a bit of both by the way but I’m struggling to think what else he could have done yesterday. The standard of depth on the bench is quite frankly embarrassing and a sad indictment to the people responsible for player recruitment

 

Thing is everything is black and white with you, it's always we should be doing this, we should be doing that, your very good at saying what we should or shouldn't be doing.
There's absolutely zero realisation that we are a 3rd division club trying to get our costs under control and remain competitive in a tough league, instead of constantly moaning maybe accept where we are at the minute and try and get behind the team for once.
Sorry to say but you are absolutely deluded in terms of where we are right now, I'm convinced you are stuck in the 1997- 2000 years.

 

Genuine question.

How does the management team see a game out? What do they do from the sidelines that stops the lads on the pitch from shitting themselves in the last 20?

 

I’ll cut DC some slack from yesterday, I had totally forgot we had the Charlton game on Tuesday - so I get it that he wanted to save his best players when we’re 3 zip up. The recruitment……

What I would say though is too many times this season we’ve fell apart when making subs’ in the 2nd half, we had a much better bench against Crawley than yesterday and we still seemingly tried to throw it away.

Maybe I do need to take a step back from posting straight after the game, so I will say that. Anyways, on to Charlton….

 

I'm a supporter of Clarke but I also acknowledge that he's got a fair bit wrong as well during the course of this season. We have made hard work of the home wins! However, when Scott and the like say he should have done this or that they'd be criticising him if he did do it. I suggest Clarke is on a hiding to nothing with certain posters because they never wanted him in charge and will pull him apart a every opportunity.
As a HC he's got to trust his substitutes to slot into a system and do the basics but sadly most of them can't. Is that his fault that they can't do the basics?
The options off the bench are awful. He made the changes he did because we have another 2 games coming up this week and I'm sure he wanted to give some players a rest. Yes the last 20 minutes was a little disappointing but we've won and move on.

 

There's such a huge misunderstanding about this.

If you're the best performing team in the division in the first half of games you don't have to go out and win the second half because you're already winning. If you're winning 2-0 at half time you can even afford to lose the second half 1-0 and you'll still win the game.

The first half/second half stats are not entirely useless but almost.

 

I actually agree with you that at times we haven’t seen the games out well enough & some of Clarke’s subs have been questionable but I think you have to cut him some slack yesterday.

Only 4 of the team that finished yesterday’s game are first choice when everyone’s fit & a couple ended up out of position due to injuries.

There’s no way Clarke’s telling Dexter to turn back inside & play us into trouble or for Rodrigues to just kick the ball back to them rather than sprinting as close to the corner flag with the ball he can get.

 

It's a proper conundrum. As a non-expert in footballing matters, I'd guess it's a combination of experience, cohesion - so number of games played alongside each other, and organisation. The first two are out of the management's hands, the last one is very much down to them. I also think that ball retention (or lack of it) throughout the side is a big factor. Our midfielders are all technically very good players at this level, but the big problem I've seen time and time again this season is that our movement off the ball when in possession has been very poor. Slow and predictable. Whether that comes down to management instructions I really don't know.

 

I most certainly agree his subs have unnecessarily lost points mate, I guess yesterday probably wasn’t the best example of that.

the recruitment really could cost us dearly unfortunately

 

While that's true, the number of points we've lost from winning positions is inexcusable.

 

This is the first half table that everyone keeps talking about



And this is the actual table. We've dropped 7 points from our position at half time.

 

Soft ,man you really are a angry individual. We were down to the bear bones yesterday no MDG Connell Pines Feruggia Gauci but we still won. We made some bad individual mistakes yesterday no doubt but enjoy the win because if not there seems little point you investing your free time doing something that fetches you no pleasure.

 

Whereas we've dropped 17 from winning positions overall, including games like Birmingham where we took the lead after half time but failed to win. I realise we've picked up quite a few points from behind as well. But overall our game management has looked poor, and a big reason why we're not top 6.