I think his attacking ability is pretty mediocre. He doesn`t have the pace to underlap or overlap, or to recover when he is caught out of position. He never scores. I don`t know how many assists he has, but I can`t imagine it will be many. I haven`t seen much crossing or dead ball expertise. All of this would be fine if he was a rock solid defender.
Just watched both the Blues & our highlights. Jeez our back LHS is ****ing ****e. Not apportioning blame to any individual or tactic but all 3 goals are directly related. Go figure.
I didn’t. Said previously I think it’s RM’s enforced tactics but regardless all goals came down that side.
When we are off boil we get smashed on both wings. Against Huddersfield and Hull we were hit so often on the right too.
It’s clearly tactical to defend very narrow. Manning is not very good but there is no way any professional would be doing that so consistently unless it was playing to orders. Whether Martin changes the instructions now we’ve conceded a fair few goals from giving the wingers too much space I don’t know, my guess would be no
Yesterday their third goal came when their winger got one on one with Manning and I thought - well this will be a goal. He beat his man - easily - and they went on to score. His positioning, pace and tackling ability are all not good enough.
Id definitely say tactics, when Downes was out we elected to continue throwing our full backs as far forward as possible with no specialist holding midfielder to sit back and shield with the centre backs. That being said we weren’t doing any better with Downes back at the weekend…..
The amount of goals we are letting in recently is a bit perplexing as we had a run of 21 league games when we only conceded 13 goals after the loss at Boro to the home game against Udders so clearly the defence has been ok for a large part of the season. Missing Downes was clearly a catalyst and he has only just returned so maybe things might settle again and KWP was out too for this match. My best back 4 would be KWP, THB, Janny B, Bree and hopefully we will see that in future games, Manning was ok for a period after a ropey start to the season but his form appears to have fallen off a cliff again.
Feels like the defence has gone wobbly ever since Stephen’s regained fitness and is having to be shoehorned into the team due to being captain.
Just playing the long game. All this criticism he's getting over the season just increases the chance that he will score a 30-yard screamer at Wembley to take us up.
Stephens at LB worked well enough away to West Brom. Would be happy playing him there until Bree is 100% match fit.
Yes, our defence has definitely become a recent conundrum. No idea where that came from. The word popped up & had to use. PNE are no mugs & chasing play-offs, so Wednesday now becomes the most important game. UTS.
We were lucky to get a draw in the reverse too. Though as TSP reminded me, we had Holgate playing in that one. We need a new matchday thread!
