Was Nick being naive not playing the first team squad or been told by the management not to worry about the cup and concentrate on the league? I was a little dissapointed with the line up but thought it was still a good enough team. Fair play to Crawley, they did what they was expected to do.
i 100% blame barmby for this. He should know that these games are as difficult as any and you MUST play your best squad if you want to win. we obviously didnt want to win. our 3 best players are arguably Koren, Stewart & Rosenior, they didnt even make the bench... also i think this is an eye opener for anyone who thinks our strikers (fryatt & mclean) are good enough to get us promotion. 2 goals in our last 5 league games.. and they came from Koren & Brady..
He did though, it wasn't that weak a team: Mannone - starting keeper Dudgeon - 50:50 starting with Dawson Cooper - 1st sub centre back Hobbs - starting centreback East - reserve Garcia - regular sub since his return, played for game time Evans - starter Cairney - regular sub recently Brady - 50:50 starter with McLean, more than that before Stewart's return Fryatt - top scorer King - just brought in to be part of first team once match fit Subs: Carson - regualr sub, Dawson - starter, Chester - starter, McLean - 50:50 with Brady, Simpson - just brought back from fairly regular games at Millwall Olofinjana - coming back from injury, last seen playing regularly for Cardiff last season Cullen - along with East the only real reserve to be involved today.
Its fairly obvious the League was prioritised today but a lot of players didnt perform and will probably be out of the door on that showing and Nicky will know better where he stands with some of them
Ricardo , thats the point , most of todays players will get a game in the Championship - most of them arn't good enough for a promotion charge. its hard to buy good bench players but its obvious we cannot boss the middle of the park from a comfy seat in the stands
Whittling Stick is right, Cooper might be on the fringes for example but he's not up to Championship standard, Cairney is in and out and today should be the kind of game where he should stamp his authority, didnt see it, am starting to question Fryatts motivation in some games
I did'nt go so listened on blunderside. According to Peter Swan,the loss was down to a lack of effort from the players on the pitch. That's dissapointing if true. You would expect fringe players to fight for a regular place. But "AS I SAY" it was Swanny's assesment.
Showed we desperately need a striker! If Barmby seriously thinks we don't need a goal scorer such as Billy Sharp then I don't rate our chances of promotion one bit. For what it's worth I don't really think Crawley Deserved to win today, their goal looked about at least 3 yards off side, but we didn't deserve a win either. Had 0-0 and a poor game written all over it!
Other good things; Someone in the management with half a brain cell will finally realise Garcia, East, Cullen, Cooper and Cairney are not good enough for the championship and consequently a new contract. Someone in the same management team should now realise we desperately need a striker IF we seriously think we have an outside chance of promotion. We should now know to keep our money in our pockets and stop attending games when second rate, second class, second team players are presented. Oh and Oli deserves a call up to the first team and Evans given a rest.
How was one bit of today's result down to Cooper? Am i the only one who thought he had yet another solid game? The result today was as much about a whole team performance being poor and the second half tactics being wrong. Throwing every striker we own on is not a tactic, playing with no width and therefore no space to pass the ball is a problem. Barmby talked about not passing it post match, we couldn't everything was clogged up by having no wingers. Also Fryatt really needs to get back to making runs beyond the defence like he used to.
I think its obvious from our team sheet today, that the league took priority today, and while its clear our 2nd string team isnt upto much, if Barmby had played some of the top 1st teamers ie Stewart, Koren etc and any of them got injured he would have been slated for playing them. I,m afraid when you have a promotion chance, you wrap your main team up and hope you can have a cup run with whats left. Well thats that we now get ready for Donny
I think that's one of the reasons people shouldn't be able to phone and get their comments aired if their opinion's just based on fools like Swann. That was a squad game. The players were given an opportunity to strike a claim for a first team place. Part of the problem for me was that they seemed unsettled and unnerved by the robust backline and harrying by Crawley. This left us lumping rather than playing balls. Lessons learned, but lets not be too disrespectful to Crawley who turned up and did what they had to do and to be fair did it well.
Cooper played well. Hobbs showed his class as did Mannone. Garcia was very sluggish, very poor game. East did okay but isn't there yet, needs a loan. Cullen did well when he came on. King needs to get upto scratch, showed glimpses of what he can do but not enough yet. Rather than an particular player being awful i think it was more the combination of players.
i think i said elsewhere about Fryatt , he was asking for the ball outside the box far too often , in the first half , king bombs down the wing to wards the flag , Fryatt - instead of flying to the 6yrd box come to the outside corner of the box This is not the Striker we need if we are going to have fast wingers , we have to ask the winger to either come inside the full back n slot it across the 6 or stay wide and bang it in ... I want to see more of the back of Fryatts head or get him off . As for Simpson , i dont know what he has to do to get a chance ..... i mean Cullen !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Completely agree, only East was a real 'weak' player. That side should have been good enough to win the game and the side picked was nothing to do with the result. We're forever getting beat 1-0 in games like that, I don't see why everyone think it's something so new. If we played Koren and he won us the game but also got injured, there'd be uproar, and rightly so. NB made the right decision but unfortunately we don't pose enough of an attacking threat to teams who come and defend, whatever league they're in. I don't give a **** about being out of the cup at all. We definitely need new players if we're going to get promoted, we simply don't have an answer to teams who put men behind the ball. King seemed like a Stewart clone but with less ability on the ball, his touch was shocking. I don't need to talk about Fryatt again, it seems everyone has noticed what I've been saying for ages now. Danny East seems to do OK but it's hard to ignore that in his 2 senior games we've conceded 3 poor goals from long balls down his side, he's got to be doing something wrong on those goals.
East is not physical enough yet, get him in League Two he can learn the hard way. Fryatt has being brilliant for us, but for some reason he has decided to stop making runs behind the defenders, its not us thinking he's a worse finisher than Mclean, as he's not stats back that up. But his runs have gone downhill.