Very, very frustrating. Without question a foul and red card for them in the 1st half which would have changed everything. No complaints for the 2 yellows on Kane, but could it have been avoided? We have 5 subs Warbs, eliminate the risk. I’m not even going to comment on the marking or the set up from defending set pieces, I knew it would be a goal before the delivery was taken. That being said, liked his post match interview, he was pi**ed off and he should be. Could well have been talking about a great performance by us at the end of it. Our goal was superb and had me off my seat. How we react to this in the next game will be telling in terms of where we’re at.
I thought we played well tonight, but we were let down, as always, on set pieces. Every one of theirs threatened a goal, every one of ours threatened nothing. Chair is a lovely player, but he's awful with a dead ball.
Putting Nico on Toney for that free kick bad choice, should’ve been a CB or Dykes, unbelievable decision not to send their bloke off
It does make you think who is marking who? Our best defender should've been on Ivan Toney tonight. he was invisible first half. Hämäläinen was a liability in this game. Every challenge appeared to be wrong. He was lucky not to be sent off. He should've been hooked at half time.
In hindsight, we should've switched to 3-5-2 after the break. Hämäläinen and Kane off, to be replaced by Bonne and Kakay. This would have repelled Brentford's change in formation. It would have also kept us on the front foot and given us more options on attempts on goal. Keeping it as it was offered us none as Dykes was nullified due to the introduction of Jansson
Assuming these observations are true (and the result and mechanics of the goal imply they are), why can you see that and MW and the team can't? Makes complete and obvious sense to have Dickie on Toney. Why wasn't he?!
Because they had three big centre-halves up there against our two who along with Ball and Dykes were the only big blokes in the team. If Cameron or Kakay happen to be on the pitch it probably doesn’t happen. Which doesn’t excuse Hamelainen’s defending. He’s inexperienced but he’s not nine.
To be honest I only caught the last 15mins or so but I thought we had a determination about us to push for a goal; there was some quick passing but our final ball to create a goal scoring opportunity wasn’t great. Once Kane went off Brentford got confident again but we tried. Saw the first half penalty incident later and awful refereeing. Could certainly have changed the game in our favour (for a win or draw). Despite many negative comments above there does seem to be some slow improvement. Nice to see Dykes get an open play goal and get that out of the way too. Onwards we go.
Defending corners 101 for kids teams is to have a defender in front of theirs at the near post so they can't just glance or flick the ball on, tall mark tall and put your fastest player on your halfway line.
Todd Kane wasn’t marking anyone, just stood too far away from Tony/Niko and watched the ball go past his head. Should Niko have shouted at him to do the toes of Toney? Yes, but Kane’s an experienced player and should know better
Absolutely. He’s not particularly old or experienced really but in such a young team he needs to be stepping up more but then my mild obsession with football autobiographies and podcasts tells me there’s a lot of leadership we plebs don’t see. Dieng too needs to be screaming at his defence at every set piece. As a mediocre amateur keeper I knew which of my defenders needed to be told. Just a very naive goal against a player in form. But unless I’m forgetting someone and I can’t be bothered to check, Barbet was the oldest player in the team at 27. We’re in a really good place for the future compared to a year or two ago IMO.
Spot on with a lot of that. Despite the defeat, I’m a lot more optimistic about this group than previous. Dieng, Dickie, Chair and Dykes will all be better with this season under their belts. Willock also has some scope. Resigned to losing Bright, and replacing him will be some task. Glaring area of weakness is still that presence in the middle of the park. Thought Carroll actually had a good game last night, and Dom Ball despite his limitations can never be accused of not giving 100%, but we’ve not had a box to box player in there for some time.
It’s **** on a Saturday morning to wander around realising we’ve already lost our game for the weekend. Against ****ing Brentford. I don’t really care about the alleged rivalry but it would be nice to beat them occasionally.
It's not just defending corners. Attacking them too. We might as well not take them and pass it straight to the 'keeper with ten men back to avoid the counter attack. We don't even look nearly threatening from them.
This confirms what I've said previously about MW that he doesn't seem to make the right decisions tactically often until it's too late or the game is beyond us. The lack of defensive 'nous' is the difference between us being on the fringe of the Play-Offs or the fringe of the Drop-Zone, I don't think we'll be in either but a run of injuries/suspensions can start a nosedive...