Best gaffer since Wilson

Spot on mate. Everyone's down due to the natural tendency to hand one's self the points after looking at the league table. In that process forgetting there's 11 w@nkers still got to go out and get them. It's a lovely thing that paper football.

Well done Morecambe.

 

See, that's the rational take. Which I fully accept.


The irrational part of me says we've not looked remotely like scoring in our last 3 games and I've just travelled 2 and a bit hours to see us barely even try against what was the bottom side. Why the inconsistency? We can be much better than this as proven at Ipswich/Wednesday, why be so poor and lacking in ideas today?

 

Million dollar question and so frustrating.

 

The more we practice in training, the worse we get.

 

Hard work pays you back. Think we started to believe we just had to turn up.

 

Same as the Exeter match.

 

Midfield never functioned today and MD didn’t change it early enough. I liked that he recognised the system wasn’t working against Exeter and made an early change, ok we still lost but he tried to change it. Something similar needed today, Kane and Aitchison needed to come on much earlier than they did.

 

The problem today was he could only make a maximum of five subs and nine could easily have come off.

If Robbie Cundy can make a career as a professional centre back than I’ve still got a chance, at 39, 20 stone and a knee that is so knackered I can’t walk some days.

 

Our issue is that we have no forwards capable of playing and scoring regularly at this level. Until we address that there will be more downs than ups.

 

I thought that with a squad of players that were signed mainly to play in the championship and such a fantastic manager as Duff that we wouldn't struggle and would be challenging for the top 6.

 

It may be my own naivety and clearly having been to every league game so far I don’t go to enough games but I actually refuse to believe that at training Duff and his staff coach the following:-

1) Kitching – “Liam, every time the ball’s anywhere near you, son, whack the **** out of it, ideally firing a long, diagonal, cross field punt to the point on the pitch farthest away from anybody in a red shirt. Make sure that you smack it hard enough so that even if there is a team-mate vaguely in that postcode, it’ll go out of play anyway. If you can’t knock it long, just blast it as hard as you can at the nearest red, point-blank.”

2) Philips – “Adam, we’d like you to jog gently round aimlessly in a kind of no-man’s land where nobody can pass to you and you will be by-passed by the opposition when they have the ball. If the ball does, on the off-chance, happen to come your way then have a look up and see which flank Devante’s lurking on, then belt the thing straight down the middle, straight to their ‘keeper, regardless. If you get a bit bored, have a chat with Kitch and arrange a side-bet as to which of you can give the ball away most.”

3) Connell – “Luca, we’ve long suspected that your long lost uncle was Eddie Waring so, disregarding the fact we have only one fairly slightly built forward and they have three giants at the back, just give it the old up-and-under every time you get the ball. Prizes for the highest of the day.”

4) Martin – “Josh, when you’re on the ball we’d like you to think like an Italian. Specifically, we want you to think like an Italian soldier in their East African campaign of 1941 and surrender meekly and mildly in the face of contact with the opposition whenever and wherever you can. Once you’ve mastered that, your party piece of being the baby who has the candy taken from him will be even more polished. Bit of bad news though, the British Boxing Board of Control has unfortunately refused to sanction a new lighter flyweight category just to accommodate you.”

5) Edwards – “Tom, whenever the ball’s played to you out wide with acres of space for you to run into and drive us forward, make sure you immediately stop and fanny about for a bit and lose the opportunity to get any semblance of an attack going. Then turn back and either play one of the centre backs into trouble, give it away, or do that thing where you try to hit it off the opposition player’s legs to win us a throw-in but invariably manage an angle where it rebounds back on to you and into touch for a throw-in to them. Under no circumstances are you ever to go on a lung-busting run or to even think about injecting pace into any move.”

I’m pretty sure too that Duff wouldn’t want to go into any match with only one striker who had ever started a League 1 match available to him from the whole playing staff. What a ludicrous situation he’s been left with up front. No way can MD be blamed for that. The ridiculously unbalanced squad, the total lack of pace and the stupefying failure to recruit strikers is the biggest failing in our current situation and lies fairly and squarely with Khaled imho.

Where I have got a couple of issues with Duff now arising from the Exeter and today’s defeats particularly are his reluctance to change personnel and tactics. Just one sub at half-time today? Really? After that first-half showing? And then when he’s made changes in these games it’s mainly been like-for-like, a midfielder for a midfielder or a wing-back for a wing-back. He seems ridiculously wedded to line-up/formation ‘A’ recently taking us again into the scenario where, when we’re 1-0 down with a few minutes left against the bottom of the league team who are defending with 11 men behind the ball, we still have three centre backs toddling around in a line with nobody to mark and out of the game. Surely, one, possibly two, should have been sacrificed by then?

Where we’ve done particularly well earlier in the season, it’s often been a function of pro-active positive changes eg at Wednesday where we were on top but struggling to seal the deal and Duff shuffled the pack and we scored almost immediately. See also at Cambridge, amongst others, where MD made a really positive response to the sending off and we were at our best thereafter.

So, time to dust ourselves down and for MD to get back into the positive, attacking mindset. We can’t really do much else until the January window now anyway.

 

He’s cackl

 

Hes hardly got a world class squad to work with though has he.
Ok I think some of the defeats this season show hes not wonderful and hes not the new messiah (the new Heckybum) either.
Yes hes making managerial mistakes as well, that was always going to happen. But I think he deserves better support than that.
Hes been called cack and sh*t and even a coward on here today.

 

He's not the messiah. Neither is he a naughty boy. Players on the pitch today were not good enough vs bottom of the league side. No composure in midfield and we gave away a really bad goal in defence.

We missed Norwood & Thomas today. Have to say the midfield and wing backs were woeful.

We go again. I reckon Mads will be gone in January & maybe we sign a half decent striker. If we do we may get a run at the playoffs, but I wouldn't bet my shirt on it TBH. This isn't a reaction to today, read all my posts since the start of the season. Duff is the right coach, but he has a tough job, as we lack experience & attacking flair since Thomas got injured.

 

Great post. We’ll be crap sometimes, we’ll be good sometimes. Part and parcel of supporting Barnsley isn’t it.

 

We've had some cracking results, we've had some shocker's too, that's the way its gunner go for another 5 months, get yer tin helmets on and dig in, it's gunner be a long season. C,O,Y,R,

 

Very long season!

 

Loving that summary - as I see too

 

No issue with opinions but could you answer the questions?

Who’s a realistic target who you see as better than him?

What different would you do from his ‘same predictable substitutions’?

It isn’t a secret that the club is brassic. Do you really want any money we can scratch together to be used to pay him and his team off, to recruit someone else with an offer of very likely less money than he is on, and us have nothing to strengthen the squad with in January?

The comments about only having plan a, him being a bit one dimensional, there is some merit there.

Though we are still only 14 games into the season, we’ve had some excellent results as well as some abysmal games. Is it time to panic and rip it up yet?

I’m not sure it is. To change shape, what would you do? Play a flat back four? Which centre back would you play with Mads who you’d trust in a two? Who’d be the full backs?

You mention three talented midfielders. So you might be suggesting 3-5-2. I think in recent outings ‘three talented midfielders’ is a bit generous, certainly much more generous and forgiving than you are being with the head coach. But yeah, get all of Connell, Benson and Kane (assuming that’s who you are referring to) into the team we might be better in the middle. But who do you play up in a two? Cole and Aitchison? Norwood to come on? Do you think that would be effective? I still don’t see where the creativity would come from.

One thing I do know is I’d cry no salt tears if Martin and Phillips didn’t play another game to be honest. In fact I could add another half dozen names to that.

Games like yesterday hurt. I don’t absolve the head coach of all blame, he has to be accountable. But it isn’t the time to change him, it really isn’t.

I can’t think of any player in the squad other than Collins and Mads who I’d be sad to see leave in January. And realistically if we need to raise money it’ll be those two top of the list of likeliest to go.

 

Imo it’s way too early to be speculating about the coaches job security , unlike Schopp this coach has a plan , cares and offers encouragement and support to the playing staff.
No doubt there has been games this season where players application, discipline and passing has to be questioned and imo he will address these issues ,
I’d love us to get to at least the playoffs this season however it’s a big ask with an almost new team and coaching staff .
Individually commenting on game by game is inevitable besides the overall picture and yesterdays game has a imo legitimate mandate for scrutiny .
The first half was pedestrian and Morecambe began to take heart from our lack of thrust and absence of quality and gradually started to control the game .
The lack of any urgency second half was a disgrace imo , although we had most of the possession we did the square root of baffling all with it and players not wanting the ball we’re getting rid as quick as possible by booting it anywhere .
We had no quality build up most of the final balls were wasteful to say the least and any that did look threatening our forward players weren’t alert enough nor strong enough to do anything worthwhile , in fact Cole seemed to be on the back foot in the ones that did find their mark but that may have been because of the majority of poor balls he’d been used to .
The games we’ve lost is because we’ve been poor in them both quality and application snd I think Duff will address these issues but we need to be patient although critical st the same time imo .