3 Point Action Plan To Improve our victory ratio.

Crewe beat us deservedly they soaked up our pressure and hit us on the break. Classic away performance. We lost because we deserved to we weren't unlucky we didn't miss chance after chance.

We are still tippy tippy but now after an indeterminate amount of time passing in our own half we hoof it in the general direction of the wing.

 

Did I say that? No. I said that tippy tappy was a mis characterisation of how we're playing. But don't let the facts get in the way.

 

Last 3 games I've seen have been the last 3 home games. No complaints at all about the Gillingham and Swindon matches. We won, so there are rarely complaints when we do, but they were enjoyable games, decent performances. We also won against Burton and that really was dull.

Against Crewe the problem wasn't tippy tappy football, it was a poor final ball, poor finishing, not enough players getting forward, and Johnson bringing on a second striker far too late.

I think Johnson is making a number of mistakes, but I don't think he sends his team out to play tippy tappy football. He likes his team to keep possession, but he likes them to move it forward, not necessarily directly, but quickly. The problem is, they're not good enough.

If a team is wide open, like Swindon, or a poor defensive side, like Crewe, we can do it, but if they're a well drilled, physical unit, we can't. We can't make the space for ourselves, we can't find the pass, so we end up playing it sideways or backwards. What people are perceiving as poor tactics is actually a lack of quality in our players. I think the quality of our players has been massively over exaggerated and they're nowhere near as good as many believe. We can't change tactics either as they don't have the physical presence to mix it up.

I reckon we'll continue to get results against teams who want to play football and play an open game. We're OK and we rarely meet a team better than that at this level. But if the opposition want to stop us playing, we'll struggle as we're just not good enough to get through them. This will be seen as tippy tappy football rather than a lack of quality of the player on the ball to make a forward pass or a lack of awareness of the intended recipient to make space for himself.

All imho of course.

 

I think the major problem is playing two defensive midfielders (because neither are good enough to do the job on their own) which means against the more defensive sides we are completely outnumbered up the pitch. Pearson gets the ball and he passes 2 yards to scowen purely because that's where scowen is. They have nobody to pass to because the few players we have in attacking positions are all marked so they pass sideways again or backwards or even worse hourihane drops back to receive a pass and now we have 7 players behind the ball and those up the pitch are even more outnumbered so the only option is another sideways or backwards pass and that's where the tippy tappy stuff comes from. I don't think he sets out to play it but his poor team selection causes it against teams who don't come out and attack us

 

This pretty much exactly matches how I view things. Great analysis.

We aren't getting the ball in dangerous areas often enough, and when we do its usually let down by a poor quality end product.

My own view is that the centre mids play a big responsibility in this. They're not good enough to keep the ball high up the pitch under pressure, or play an incisive killer ball after keeping possession - which explains why as soon as a team is organised we struggle.

I personally rate both Scowen and Pearson but I think having both of them in there doesn't work. They're both more ball winners than creators. This would be OK if the front four were of good enough quality that they could do all the creative work themselves. That's what happens when premier league teams play with two ball winners - but out front four cannot and aren't that good (though I do like them all)

I think we're desperately missing someone in the centre who consistently carries the ball and drags people out of position. We'll only start scoring goals consistently if we can find a way to drag teams out of their rigid defensive formations and therefore create the space that we've already shown we are good at exploiting.

I don't think it's any coincidence that some of the best performances I can remember in the last couple of seasons are when we've had that dynamism in the middle of the park - when Williams played there, or the game that O'sullivan did. It adds an extra player into our attack but also frees up more space for Hourihane and others.

If this means sacrificing a bit of defensive stability then I think it's worth it to get the team more balanced.

 

I agree. Was typing pretty much the same at the time you wrote this

 

I agree with you and Jay. The only thing I would say is you can potentially play with two more defensively minded players IF both full backs push on consistently for 90 minutes, with Pearson dropping in to the centre of a back 3 when we have the ball. This allows the wingers to form more of a front three without sacrificing width. But generally I agree that Scowen and Hourihanne need to be much further up the pitch (or replaced with someone who is)

The other issue in the current formation is playing Winnall as a lone striker. The way you get the ball forward is by playing it in to the striker who drops deeper, holds the ball up allowing midfield runners to get beyond, and pulling the centre halves out of place. Winnall just doesn't do this (that's no criticism of him, its not his game). The best player at doing this we've had was Andy Gray. It meant playing our goal scorer Craig Davies on the wing, but this also allowed him to cut in and shoot. I haven't seen enough of Smith yet to say whether he can be the lone striker we need (hopefully he is a bit Oliver Giroud-esque), but I would try that and play Winnall on the wing. Give him freedom to cut inside with the ball with a full back bombing on outside him and let him form a front two when the balls on the other flank. I'd say he's more than capable of that.

Or just sack the manager and start all over again for the millionth time.

 

Definitely summat in that and what eastlondontyke said.

 

My action plan :

1. Stick with the manager BFC bigged up when BFC appointed him - appointed after what I assume were detailed discussions about his philosophy and approach, and much research on BFC's part and that of BFC directors and advisers into his background and character and because he was in BFC's mind better than the manager just sacked, and a better option than the 2 caretakers BFC appointed. If less than 12 months ago he was the right man for the long term then stick with it through a bad spell and the resultant disquiet from some of the fanbase. Because if he isn't the right man now, after Paul Hart, Andy Ritchie, Simon Davey, Mark Robins,Keith Hill, David Flitcroft - then what does that say about the judgement of BFC ?

 

1) attack
2) attack
3) attack

With the alledged ability of our squad a constant wave of attacking pressure. Flooding the box etc will ocer whelm majory of teams in this league.

They get a corner we leave harris and winnall up front.

 

I was trying to bring a little smile to people, hence the little smiley face, but keep on being a miserable bugger then !

 

Did you not see the little smiley face ? The one that was put there to make people smile , No?
its people like yourself and other with the pompous arrogant posts that are sucking the fun out of the BBS !

 

Haha. I'll always be a miserable bugger but in my defence I didn't see it because it didn't show up properly on my phone, and I'm not good at Internet nuance at the best of times. My full apologies my friend. Guess I just got that used to the backbiting on here I was automatically on the defensive

 

Excellent points and really great observation jay and eastlondontyke. There's a lot of sense in those comments. If we must play a defensive midfielder I would prefer it to be scowen. That is his natural role and why we bought him in the first place.
When Pearson ran the show against us in that pre season friendly for man Utd he played much higher up the field and on the rare occasions he's done that this season he's looked good.

 

It's at this point I'm reminded when Paul Ince got lambasted for his notepad that contained just that one point.

He new summat at least