Can’t blame him for this for me. Put out a strong team and an equally strong bench. Williams, kane, styles etc all didn’t turn up and decided they would rather tap it around and it would be an easy game for them. Reff didn’t help but can’t blame him when we have a full international in the team that should be running rings around them.
I don’t think negative is the right word, but we have quick forwards who want the ball playing early for them to get in behind and we are ponderous. The ball gets passed between the back three and the two deeper lying midfielders far too much. The wing backs are playing almost on the same line as the strikers and we never seem to give them something to run on to or switch the ball quick enough left to right. It’s always RWB to RCB to RCM to LCB to LCM back to LCB while poor Dodgson or Cadden have made three runs and had to check back every time.
Cadden and Cotter can both beat a man, Dodgson and O’Keeffe can both put a cross in. The more time the ball is in the opponents box, the more opportunities we will have to score.
Cadden and Cotter can beat a man approx once a game. Cadden is a decent crosser but there's never anyone to aim at. He makes space for a cross but rarely beats his man. Cotter himself has no idea what he's doing , which can occasionally help him get past a defender, but lately his crosses hit the bloke 2 yards away from him - the defender he knows he can't get past. All 4 wingers you mention are in any event aiming for targets who are not much of a threat at crosses. Maybe Cosgrove might change this if he decides to focus on being a target man. What we do at the moment is not going to be good enough.
If you beat a man once and put a ball in low across the penalty area, quick forwards have a chance of getting in front of their man and getting on the end of it if they’re one on one. If you wait until 4 defenders are back and organised you’ve eff all chance.
FA Cup is about boosting the finances of teams in the lower divisions hard to assess importance of Cup if the aim is promotion,
No disagreement with that. None of our forwards are getting to these crosses. The same thing happens time after time - Cotter's balls mostly don't even reach the box. Cadden's are cleared by the first defender in the box. By the time they put it in there's umpteen defenders anyway. Because, as you point out, the build up is so slow. We are no doubt better away from home because of the extra space we get to counter attack more quickly.
He's trying to deflect blame. It's his job to motivate players and it's him making them play anti Football tactics whilst he learns on the job, after coming from a Mickey Mouse league. I miss having an head coach that sets us up to press and play positively.
Williams has generally been okay this season. Awful tonight. And styles has been basically anonymous under any manager in centre mid. I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. tonight was awful but we should have won. but to jump on the manager as a load are on here isn’t right for me. Everyone going on about last year are forgetting the manager last year had significantly better players (Anderson, Thomas, Edward’s, kitching, Connell (so far), a firing Philips, Norwood) maybe give the guy time? We are in the top 6. And still in the fa cup
Have you been today? There was only one Barnsley player who actually wanted it today, and he's 17 years old. Callum Styles, what a useless tw@t; can't even do it against a team of amatures.
And if Styles keeps doing that, he won't be getting his dream move to a Championship club in January. I'm pleased for the kid Jalo, although he was kicked about a bit and got little or no protection from the officials. It looked a bad one that he had to come off for. Let's hope there's lessons learned from this, from the coach/manager and every player who was out there tonight. Sacking Collins though is not the answer for us, certainly not at this moment in time!.
Tonight was awful. Too many players who didn’t have a clue. At least when we took Kane off and brought Connell on we started moving forwards. But let’s be honest, we haven’t been playing well all season, just in patches. We’ve had a striker on form and an excellent goalkeeper that have won us points and, in the case of Roberts, stopped defeats from turning into thrashings. “But we’re in the top 6…6 points better than at this point last season…third highest scorers…etc, etc” Look at the fixtures, look at the table, watch the performances. We are where we are in the league cos we have been beating the rubbish teams. We have played 4 teams in the top 11, all at home, lost them all. So the bulk of our games have been against the rubbish. But look at the last 4 games. We have been unable to beat Leyton Orient, Fleetwood and Horsham. Our results and our performances are getting worse, not better. Even Cole’s scoring rate has slowed down, and Roberts is injured. We had a pretty much full strength team out today, against players for whom football isn’t their job. That was embarrassing. Our midfield is shocking. I kept hearing we have the best midfield in the league in the summer. Does someone want to tell them that. What has happened to Phillips?? And I really don’t see what others see in Kane. Our strikers…deary me. Again, I kept hearing that in Watters, Cosgrove and McAtee we had a better forward line this season, but I’d rather have kept Norwood. Our best two strikers, after Cole, appear to be Jalo and Marsh. And with Nzondo scoring for fun in the U18s I’m beginning to think we should just go with the youngsters. Watters scored today. Huzzah! But I don’t remember anything else from him, or McAtee. That second striker spot is there for the taking, but none of them seem capable of taking it. And whose idea is it for us to just keep passing the ball sideways and backwards? Are they our tactics! Or are the players not listening? Either well it doesn’t reflect well on our manager. We are slow, and obvious and it’s boring. What’s stopping Kane from being more adventurous? Manager’s instructions or ability? We know he can do it occasionally, as he’s provided a couple of beautiful assists. But they are a rarity. Usually it’s sideways and backwards. A month or two ago I thought we were blessed with 4 decent wingbacks, but currently I don’t know which two I’d play, as they’ve all turned pretty hopeless. Especially Cotter. What has happened to him? We knew he had limitations defending, but he was a bit of a wildcard going forward, capable of beating 2 or 3 and whipping a cross in. He’s currently struggling to beat one player. We are looking worse all over the pitch. Collins can tell us he’s learning on the job as many times as he wants, but I am seeing no evidence of this on the pitch. To me it looks like we’re struggling and our results are getting worse. And as we are now entering a period where we’ll be playing more teams from the top half of the table I can’t see it getting much better. Unless Connell can provide the spark needed, but that’s a lot of pressure for a young lad who has been out for so long. We have held on to managers too long in the recent past, when it’s been clear they were hopeless. We’re not quite at that stage yet with Collins, but unless performances and results pick up it won’t be long before we need to be making a decision. Can we buck the trend at Derby and beat someone from the top end? I hope so, but I won’t be holding my breath.
Away from home we seem happy to sit in a little more then hit teams quickly but much more directly, at home when the onus is on us to attack we get picked off time and time again. Last night wasn't great but we get the chance to put it right, I'm trying not to overreact and look at things on the whole towards Collins. Defensively McCart wasn't the answer to the experience we needed he's poor and I'd still much prefer to see Williams at RWB, I still think shepherd is unlucky to be out of the team and hopefully Lopata isn't miles away, Defensively were not great and causing our own problems, it needs addressing and quickly
