Hope this helps ... ------- Ingram ------- Coyle Burke Greaves Elder --- Honeyman Doc ---- Emmanuel Crowley KLP ---- Magennis ------ It's how he's been setting them up for months now, ever since he dropped his favoured 4 3 3. Tonight he dropped Honeyman back into the 2 in place of Smallwood. Before that he played Crowley where Emmanuel played last night (WTF), in order to accommodate Crowely and Honeyman in the same team. He was able to (sort of) accommodate both last night by dropping Honeyman to fill in (in theory) for Smallwood. But of course, Honeyman runs everywhere irrespective (just not as advanced last night as normal), and Crowley drops deep now and then as he wants to constantly be on the ball. And they both run into the same spaces too much as they both naturally play similar roles (but Honeyman being more of a duracell bunny). And Doc makes bursting runs forward, and the wide men drop back when we lose the ball. -> by now in the season all the little glitches should be worked out and the team used to each other and be able to adapt to other teams and their own formations. We look all over the shop especially when we lose the ball. hopefully we will turn it round but it feels like it’s slipping away from us". I agree. We also seem to have lost any meaningful press, speed and urgency.
People seem to be saying it was 4-4-2 My point is it’s hard on a tv screen to see it isn’t it? I think individually there was some good battling performances from the usual suspects Doc Burke honeyman emmanuel etc But we aren’t making a whole are we.
Last night was obviously much better than the weekend, but we were still really pedestrian and predictable, as we have been for most of the season and we're quite obviously not going to win games if we can't get a single shot on target. Had we signed a decent striker last month, I think we could have turned our patches of dominance into wins, but we didn't, so we won't. I think we'll probably finish sixth and with McCann in charge, would anyone seriously fancy us in the play-off's?
Cotterill has been in hospital for a couple of weeks, ex-Tiger Aaron Wilbraham has been in temporary charge on match days. Never saw that coming! Regarding last night and zero shots on target - it’s a bit misleading, we had plenty of shots that were heading towards goal but were blocked by Lincoln’s excellent defence. Most weeks we won’t play teams quite that committed to packing their defence and blocking shots with their arse.
I'm less pessimistic than most after that, it was a much improved performance in many areas, although clearly not up front. The problem last night was mostly down to lack of sufficient movement up front, there's no point in players like Crowley, Docherty and Honeyman having possession in the final third if no-one is making runs. Given that Wilks looked on it again, we have to go with KLP, Wilks and one other up front with same midfield as last night. Until Whyte is fit, I'd think about giving Chadwick a go, give us a hard working, mobile front three who can swap around.
Losing Smallwood for the last couple has really affected the team. They never found the rhythm against Burton and although it was better last night we are missing Honeyman in that more advanced midfield role where he excelled. Jones could play in Smallwoods place and he probably will when fit again. I just can’t buy into the theory that Terry manages players well. His handling of Wilks and KLP problems has been awful and I am certain it’s affected them both in some way. If he is telling the kid when to shoot and pass then he should knock it on the head. KLP has great natural ability and I would tell him to go out and enjoy his football and express himself. It’s all very well this ****e about goals coming from midfield and centre half’s, sure they are welcome always but your forwards should be the ones banging in goals. We need a 20 goal a season player and we haven’t got one (yet). I hope I am proved wrong by one of our lads. We might get promoted if that happens.
My original post said that our accepted 'front 3' haven't delivered since November. I just checked and Wilks, KLP, Eaves and Magennis have scored a total of 7 league goals between them since we beat Ipswich on the 24th November.
It's still the width of the bar. I think them coming at us more suits us better and we'd likely have scored more if they had. We struggle to break down teams sitting deep.
The performance was decent last night , the problem is we didn't win and it comes after losing against Burton
Goalkeeper (in woolen jersey) right back left back right half centre half left half right wing inside right centre forward inside left left wing What's that set up? 235? Shirt numbers nowadays 40+ What's that all about? The attraction of the game is being lost by all the bs talked about by so called experts analysing 433, 442 etc when the only object of the sport is to score more goals than the other side. I'm aware there is more to it than that but not much. There's more back and sideways passing goes on now than in the game of rugby.
Players have to be registered, so it's normal to have young players with high numbers because the first team take the lower ones. If a player joins halfway through the season, they'll get a higher squad number because the others were used up.
Batty got another mom for Fleetwood yesterday. Brilliant. Our strikers don't score, but they also don't really miss that many chances either.....we just don't really seem to create anything other than getting it out wide and humping it into the box. Defensively we are so stand offish, never put pressure on teams in their half, when we lose it we drop off and reset rather than counter pressing. We are dull.
Formation seems more settled up front when Whyte is available. Crowley seems to want to come inside a lot.
This is exactly how it's become! Pleased for Batty. We should have kept him and involved him more. Not a world beater, but a decent player, sufficiently young to still develop further, and he clearly cared. .