Hampy, Walton just needs to be properly coached to distribute better, at least he didnt aimlessly kick it out today! Otherwise, he is the best we have by a mile and kept scores down for weeks. Some more great saves today.
He's never let us down on the pitch, always gives 100% and on top of that is a good player at this level. Apparently he came back to pre season and was getting all the best fitness stats at the club. I've always said he's the player who suits the 1 upfront best out of anyone in our squad but in a 2 him and Bonne are a pretty scary partnership for defenders
At 26 he should be a lot better on this so I don’t know if it’s something that can be coached. Has he never worked on it in training? If they can’t correct it by the summer then it definitely isn’t worth holding onto him. If we can’t land a keeper who has the full package then I would trade a bit of the shot stopping for better distribution because he just puts us under pressure all the time. If it was me, I’d be picking Holy and telling him he’ll get back in when he’s sorted that out.
Well at last we got our 442 and didn't get beat, had we played 4231 today, i think we would have lost. As far as Nogood never letting us down on the pitch, i beg to differ but on that we must disagree!!
Agreed, he has impressed me with how he speaks and the tactical changes he makes. This performance wasn't perfect but you can see he's already influencing how the team play
When has he let us down? His goalscoring record is 1 every 2 games for us, in a very poor side and he works hard upfront. The biggest let down is that he hasn't been able to get on the pitch enough
Dunno, but on paper he should be in the side. On paper he should be above this level and there was no real logic in leaving out Norwood so maybe there’s no good reason. He must be fuming.
Yes, and he has earnt respect from the players quickly. He is perhaps the best interim manager we could have hoped for while the long term mess is being sorted out. Who knows, if we pull off an unlikely win v Sunderland, then the job might be his to keep!
We learnt a lot yesterday about our forwards and how different they are. It comes down to their playing styles - Bonne who impressed us all earlyseason has been starved of quality ball. And if we were getting loads of quality crosses into the box, which Edwards failed to do, I'd prefer Pigott. If our midfield passes through balls forwards, I'd have Bonne. But when the rest of the team is playing poorly with no confidence, I'd prefer a League 2 striker who knows how to fight, be in their face, force them to make errors, and generally get about and be a nuisance, and score the odd goal, Norwood is the man. And we see that Chaplin should not be out wide.
Reports that Walton is being recalled to be sold in January, so we wouldn’t have the luxury of the new manager working with him before we’d have to make a move for him.
Sounds to me like Brighton trying to force our hand to buy him.That’s the problem when Clubs know you have new owners with cash to splash.
I think that’s spot on analysis of the situation. similarly, I think we must be cautious about the tendency to be reactionary to short termism re JM. He doesn’t seem to want the job and wants to be out of the firing line in the role he was recruited for. If he can get some points on the board and make some tactical and playing changes to do that great but we can’t suddenly hand him a 3 year deal. Look at OSG…same applies to Bonne; Twitter was full of screams to sign him up, now it’s all about dropping him…had we paid big for him they’d be fuming! All short term reactionary stuff. I think a more long term appointment has to be best for all parties and if JM can keep us ticking over for as long as that takes good on him and I’ll be forever grateful. But full time? I think we need to look further ahead. JM has all his coaching badges so he’d be part of a super strong coaching team behind a good first team manager for me.
Agree Bucky, it would be terrific if he was part of the long term coaching staff. He deserves it and reward for taking over the sh......show!
He seems to me to be very much a ME era type signing, had a lot of potential when younger but career has been savaged by injury and Ipswich take a chance. Difference is back in those days we'd have a whole team full of that type of player!!
From what I've seen this season I'm still convinced Norwood should be our main striker. Whilst I've been very impressed with Bonne, his movement, his work rate, he's strong, good at being at the right place in the box as I've said before I don't think he's a great lone striker as the ball doesn't stick uptop and if he's not getting service whilst he does work hard sometimes you forget he's playing. It's okay to play him as a lone striker if you can balance the other forward positions to compliment his skill set but unfortunately we don't have that, not enough of those forward players hold on the ball enough to maintain much constant pressure. And whilst Bonne might be better than Norwood in some areas Norwood is a better all rounder. He can hold onto the ball and bring others into play and even if he's having a bad game/not getting many opportunities you still know it's going to be a tough game for defenders because he's physical, always on the move and always looking to get on the end of things. He also seems a great trigger for the rest of the team in terms of pressing. I think if we continue with a lone striker Norwood is the best option and could play with any of the wide forwards/no. 10s whilst I do think Bonne and Pigott can play that role the team needs to be balanced around them to make up for what they lack in some areas. For me the ideal would be to try a few games with Norwood and Bonne upfront together, I think most defences would know they've been in a game with those 2 upfront
