Seconded, but I suspect she's been sat with the fridge door open trying to cool off before letting her fingers hit the keyboard....
It really wasn’t that good QC!! A long night, poor watch. My two penneth; Stoke didn’t really need to get out of 2nd gear, physical, out muscled us, got lucky with deflections, but we’re our own worst enemy. We’re just too lightweight, defence lacking confidence but still inviting trouble messing around playing at the back, haemorrhaging goals at an alarming rate, not moving the ball fast enough, no forward movement - de jar vu - how many times have we said that? Bearing in mind Shota has had a bit more extra time to prepare & train for this game, worrying. I did feel for Elder being hooked, thought he was our main threat of getting up the pitch first half. Shota's interview, he looks shot. Acun's dream currently looking like a nightmare. Positives; Pelkas looked industrious & a threat 2nd half, improved us. Should have started. Painful watching, but took mind off my forthcoming deep root tooth canal treatment. Don't know if anyone has mentioned it but the one minutes silence on behalf of Her Majesty at the MKM did us proud, for a change, was fantastically observed and impeccable. Made me feel really proud to have been a part of the hcafc family last night.
Thank you for posting that but yet again I don't hear any answers, or how he intends to fix the problems, I fear the lad is totally bereft of ideas of how to get this team playing.. little boy lost comes to.mind
Pelkas and Longman have to start either side of Oscar in a 433 for me at the minute. They’re more suited to that than Elder and Coyle are as wingbacks, as well as Elder and Coyle being much better suited to being full backs with less need to be creative. It’s square pegs in round holes at the minute. Not his biggest fan but i’d also bring McLoughlin back. Christie must be about up to speed now and he has to have a chance as well, the only defender we have that has consistently proven himself to be championship level.
Pelkas looks a very good player but I don’t see what position he plays? Bet he along with seri and Tufan are great at five a side
Yeah on the podcast we were genuinely stumped on where Pelkas fits into this side. We settled on maybe shifting to a 4-3-2-1 formation with him and Tufan in behind Oscar, but feels so narrow.
All our formations appear to And we expect either Coyle or elder to make lung bursters and then just head it to nowhere
This 5 at the back thing isn’t working because we don’t have particularly effective wing backs and 2 of our 3 centre backs are underperforming. I think Coyle and Elder can do a job as full backs but we are not creating enough in the current system from those positions, so we might as well try a 4 in defence and play with 2 actual wingers. We are trying to play out from the back with a defence which isn’t good enough to do so and Jones always looks more comfortable to me as a defensive midfielder. McLoughlin must be wondering what he has to do to get a chance at the moment and I think it’s time Shota gave Ingram a rest. We’ve conceded the most goals in the league - we need to shake it up in my opinion. Sometimes things don’t always click going forward but you need to be able to keep things tight at home against an average team like Stoke and at least come away with a point.
Since we brought in Fig the defence has been abysmal, sometimes players just don't play well alongside others, id revert to a back 4, Mclaughlin alongside Greaves ( who has been decidedly dodgy of late), hope the change in personnel brings back a bit of confidence, get Jones pushed into dm position with Slater.. then pick ya attacking mids and forwards from there
We have the lowest shots per match And the only reason we have any wins is due to a incredible purple patch where 30% of our attempts were goals Which was never going to continue Concede the most shots against us per match Concede the most amount of goals per match Just exactly what is the gameplan?
I thought we were pretty decent in the first half yesterday, we got forward effectively and the playing it through the back three to switch sides worked well. They spunked their first goal with a massive deflection and we recovered. The Ingram flap for the second goal really deflated us though. We had a five or ten minute spell after half time when we got forward more but the third goal killed us. We played ok for an hour. We will get a lift across the team from changing the goalie on Saturday. There’s no need for panic.
We played 'ok' but it was very much dillydallying on the ball with constant hopeful high looping crosses We didnt even threaten the stoke goal in the first half
Keeper been excellent up to last two games then two massive mistakes cost us two goals ( rest him), defence leaking goals yet hardly any changes from last season, Midfield completely changed, i like Tufan, Seri and Pelkas from what i so of him last night , all good on the ball in fact they make some of the others look poor, however balance wise its just not working, last season we had Honeyman and Smallwood both defensively better in there granted no way as talented but could we do with a better version of Smallwood right now. we are to exposed defensively as a team,not only that but a ball winner gives your team more of the ball . I know there as been on a few on here mentioning how small we are in that area and yes physically we are getting out done in most games. Up top yes we needed another striker but didnt get one so it ends up with Tyler smith up front, runs his heart out but not a decent striker at championship level. I know we still have many injuries but we still shouldnt be getting beat three nil at home.
