Sacked their manager and then won for 1st time in ages , even if it was against Rotherham away. You just know how up for it they're gonna be at home against us in midweek ! They'll come at us in the first 15 mins like a bullet from a gun, if we're not prepared for that then we're ****ing mutants
I put my phone away at 14:50 and didn't take it out of my pocket til my son text me at 17:03 with emojis...
I thought Chair was so off his game he should have been hooked early. His decision making especially at key moments was awful, execution worse. When we're having a bad day most usually his bad habit of holding onto the ball, refusing to pass to players in better positions, as Paal and Andersen in particular often were yesterday, shooting repeatedly from way out and way off target, all drags our offensive capability down with him. He looks like he needs a good rest to me. Was Colback injured or sick yesterday? I was thinking he should of come on for Chair and played a little deeper alongside Hayden and Field in a midfield 3, and helped give us more control of midfield and in particular of Bannan ( a nasty little sh*te, but still a good player). But he wasn't even on the Bench. I think Willock or Smith, and Anderson tucked in behind Armstrong would have done better without Chair barely playing with them, and better supported Armstrong who had the beating of their defenders all afternoon.
I was wondering this.. . How can it be that otherwise very good manager like Cifuentes is so helpless against very bad team like Sheffield Wednesday???? Just tell me…
I did point out the great effort that hit the bar and I think he's a very good footballer. However, having watched him live he seems incredibly unwilling to break into anything more than a fast jog. I like players like him, but he was a luxury we simply couldn't afford yesterday given the fact that everyone else was so poor and we seemed to decide to sit off them the entire game. Field occasionally made the effort to press, but a player doing it alone is pointless and Marti seemed to bollock him for trying. Marti gas been fantastic, but imo he got it wrong yesterday. As for Willock, I genuinely thought he was better on the ball than both Chair and Andersen, but it was a very low bar. We can't play those three in the same team whilst we're scrapping to survive imo.
Not sure he did much wrong there against a tricky player in the penalty area. I thought Field was just about the only player to come out of that game with any credit.
Armstrong made some decent early runs and the ref certainly did him no favours, but from around 15 minutes onwards their giant defenders had him in their pockets and he just got more and more disillusioned and dumb. Agreed about Chair. Andersen was even worse.
They weren't very bad though. Awful to watch, but hugely effective and stopped us playing. Perfect away performance from them. Marti was completely outwitted.
All round poor performance from the whole team. You couldn’t pick out a MoM as no-one stood out for me. Armstrong was poor in my opinion, his shortcomings were really exposed against their centrebacks who had him easily in their pockets - speed and strength is wasted if you can’t control the ball and beat a big lump of centrebacks (who it should be mentioned looked good at the back, with particularly Iorfa too). Once again our inability up front is there for all to see. Marti only has what he has to work with, add that they put in a poor shift against a team who has 11 goals against in 6 games, and we looked lost for some reason. Not the team we’ve seen in the last two games for sure - vey baffling. Where was our press? Where was our tenacity to win the ball back. All gone. Keeps us in the mix for sure - 4pts gap now and it really could have been 15th and 7pts gap. I don’t get it. I really don’t. Big disappointment. I was hoping a win yesterday, we could seal safety at Plymouth on Tuesday. It’s still a distance away now. More hard work to do.
My two daughters, not noted football analysts, thought Armstrong was our best player yesterday but that he was too isolated. I thought he was pretty hopeless, but it's a fair comment by the girls. because the few times we looked to have a threat was when he was played into the channels. Cifuentes just doesn't know what to do with our centre-forwards - all of whom are **** in their own special ways. Might as well play without a number nine.
I'd almost forgotten what it feels like to wake up to this feeling! On Tuesday, Chair shoukd be able to eat and drink just before 6pm so hoping that might make a difference too. COYRs!
Tactics and team selection aside the weirdest thing for me about yesterday (and not for the first time recently) is how we had LR packed to the rafters yet again but the team were not galvanised by that, almost the opposite. I don't know how they aren't inspired by the incredible support they've been getting. Or maybe that's a bit of a simplistic view.
Fair enough, that's your opinion and that of Stan and Jeff it seems. In my opinion Andersen, apart from that effort that I now believe was tipped onto the bar, was much worse than Willock and Chair, who both worked harder than him. He also jogged back for their second, allowing the Wednesday player to pull away from him. As Simon said yesterday, I wonder whether we've seen the best of him already. Hope not.
Were you there Frome? The stadium was packed but, brief periods aside, the home fans weren’t particularly noisy. I could hear the Wednesday support very clearly from the top of the Loft, which is quite unusual for away fans especially when they are only given the top bit of the School End.