Not sure I'm plugged into that response. All I'm doing is responding to the question posed by the original poster, and largely cos I was miffed by the suggestion that we had a decent back 4 performance on saturday. Not that they were indecent. Anyway, there should be a seperate thread on how to interpret the word "decent". So there.
We had a good defence in Robins first season when he brought in Shotton & Dickinson on loan from Stoke. Moore was the leader at the back. Shotton played either right or centre back depending who was fit out of Bobby & Foster & Dickinson was left back. Them 5 made a very decent back 4 for several months that season & they had decent protection with Doyle & Colace in front of them
I'm more than happy with the defence that played on Saturday. Cranie and Ramage are a championship standard central defensive partnership. Bree has a very bright future and has probably been our most consistent player over the last few weeks. Nyatanga has had his fair share of good performances at centre half this season. He looked comfortable at LB on Saturday and gives us extra height at set pieces that Dudgeon doesn't.
Ah, brings back good memories - 16 game unbeaten league run early-ish in season 1984/85, the first 15 games of which we only let in 4 goals, before a 3-3 draw at Wimbledon, memorable to me as being David Geddis' last game. I recall that the Mirror called our defence of Joyce, Futcher, May/Jeffels and Law, "The Red Wall". On a topical note I seem to remember that run started after a defeat to Oldham and was ended by them too.
I seem to remember we were given a slot on Saint and Greavsie sometime near Xmas and they used the Scrooge like defence metaphor during the slot.
Yeah I can also remember that, looking at the records we didn't lose from 2nd September to 23rd December, so they probably hexed us in their 23rd December show!
Err I'm not sure there was any mention of the championship in the original post. On Saturday the defence was solid enough. The demeaning Rochdale talk does you no favours at all makes you sound like one of the windy massives. In the league we are in Rochdale are a decent team. On the broader question Mel Machin's teams were all pretty good at the back. And the McCarthy/Evans partnership was pretty solid as was any team with Futcher in it.