The amount of times our strikers, Cosgrove in particular, was offside was bordering on ridiculous Jon stead is at the club and I would have thought one thing that is quite teachable is holding your line. It’s inexcusable at this life, and pretty much fundamental to an attackers game. if you look at the best strikers they’re brilliant at it. Their primary focus is very often holding their line. See Vardy, Owen etc. This is all the more important for someone like Watters who has pace. Set pieces. I’m right in saying we have someone whose job it is to work in these. Well it’s not going too well so far. there is a total lack of invention and creativity. as an example we had one late on around mid way between centre and box, towards east stand. Everyone piled into the box. Lofthouse, who appears to have a footballing brain started to move quickly into the acres of space in the edge of box to east stand. What did we do? Yes that’s right lob it into the box which was about as successful as it had been all day. A total waste and there is no evidence at all we are doing anything much different at all from set pieces.
We've found a lot more consistency with our set pieces. We can float the ball into the hands of the keeper from a corner, without him having to move, every time. If that's what we're trying to do, we're very good at it. If that's not what we're trying to do, I can't work out what the plan is.
It frustrates the hell out of me. it’s the lack of invention over anything else. If something isn’t working then trying something different. Keep hold of the ball etc, mix it up.
I hadn't realised we'd got a specialist coach in for set pieces. It's early days for Clarke, he's trying to bring in his own style of play, so I just assumed he'd concentrated on more pressing matters. When he's more happy with the balance of the team then he could put more time into working on set-pieces. As such, I'd just ignored that they were so uninspiring. But if we're paying a bloke specifically to work on that area, I'm not sure we're getting value for money. I'm sure Clarke has some better ideas.
Think when people say about a specialist I think they are referring to when our DoF said Conor is working with players on set pieces. Personally I didn’t think that meant routines etc but the execution. Clearly still issues with some of the execution mind.
Whitehead is set to focus mainly on the team’s off the ball work and set pieces, Jon Stead – who will stay on under Clarke – will focus on their on the ball work and player/coach Conor Hourihane will work individual players’ skills. Martin Devaney will be Clarke’s assistant and James Bittner is goalkeeper coach.
Imho....its early days but we lack so many things at the moment. I agree set pieces are poor. We look poor all over the pitch.....our midfield, which is our engine room lack composure and the ability to pass efficiently. I would argue on paper we have a strong midfield for this division. I'm prepared to give this team loads more time to get in some half decent strikers (no doubt that will be 5 mins before the deadline finishes) but I'm seeing nothing from this team at the moment....we have been very poor in our first 3 games.
They stand offside deliberately imo. They know they aren't fast enough to beat a defender to a long ball if they're onside and not good enough to actually dribble a ball past a player either so they stand offside and hope that they get away with one. It's a **** tactic employed because we have **** strikers.
Thought that the Northampton defenders did a great job of linesman yesterday as every time he raised his hand the linesman agreed with his decision.
The Ponty End seemed to be aggrieved by some of the offside calls but they all looked correct to me. Cosgrove got it wrong several times
Agreed but I don’t think defenders should be asking for the decision rightly or wrongly it will be influencing a linesman to consider someone being offside when they might not have been.
Difficult to see from behind the goal, but a couple of them looked very tight. Others were just plain careless.
There was one though where Cossie was behind the defender, but another was playing him on but he still got flagged. Most decisions where correct though from my seat in ESL.
