I said similar a few weeks ago about 2 upfront. A few said it would mean we'd lose the midfield battle. As far as I can see there is no midfield, we tap it around in defence without an outlet until our midfield drop back to our 6 yard box...then we lose it anyway. Ww need two upfront to atleast make the opposition think we have an attack.
Fooking marvelous, the neanderthals wipe the floor with us. The last few games have been as bad as what Ainsworth served up, no creativity, no movement, barely any chances, seriously inept defending and no ****ing goals. El Cif started well but it's all going Pete Tong now, these players are just plain ****. Unless we can miraculously unearth some cheap gems in the window, there's not a prayer of us staying up. Very very depressing
With Ainsworth, we had no chance of staying up. With Marti, we do have a chance, albeit a tough one but l’ll take that. Hopefully, we can snag a player or two in January. The season is still long enough to survive.
4-4-2 is never the answer imo. If Dykes will benefit from a second striker, then it would need to be in a 3-5-2 imo. This would depend on our fragile centre backs staying fit. However, I simply wouldn't play Dykes at all.
Then who? Armstrong... 1 goal. Kellman....0 goals. Or go with no striker and have Chair, Willock and Smyth rotating in the space? Don't think any of them can mix it against some big CDs
Good question. I'm just fed up with seeing Dykes being so completely crap. The football Marti likes to play doesn't suit Dykes anyway, especially on his own as a striker. I'd either try 3-5-2 so that he gets help, or give Kelman or Armstrong a run of games and continue with 4-3-3. Whatever he does, I do think that the tinkering needs to stop.
He's put himself in a tricky position now, if he leaves Dykes out and puts Kelman and Armstrong in and it doesn't work he'll be slammed for tinkering again. He's dammed if he does, damned if he doesn't. God knows what the solution is but we need to find a way to get more bodies in forward positions somehow.
You have just been promoted as our new DoF……. Congratulations! PS - Can we also reduce our goal? ( just asking for a friend )
I dont care if its 4-4-2, 3-5-2, 5-0-5, 1-0-9, false ten with rotating fukcing highheels. Only ever having 1 of our players in their half will not get us goals.
It’s not his fault that the ‘modern’ game requires him to give endless interviews, soundbites and opinions to media, especially in house media which is staffed by people who couldn’t get a proper journalist job on the Blandford Forum Advertiser. It’s why managers collapse into repetitive cliches by way of response, because of course they are extremely limited in what they can say. If he were to be honest he’d be saying ‘of course, a lot of this squad are ****. And many are thick with it. But it is what it is’ With games now coming 4 days apart he doesn’t have the time to reinforce the messages, the mantra and practice it in the way he did during international breaks etc, and it seems the only bit the players have retained is ‘keep possession’ and forgotten the ‘and use it aggressively’ part. Just keep the second half at Preston in your head. That’s what we are capable of.
With so many games in such a little time, I understand why Marti has tinkered and rotated certain players. He must surely be realising that the squad doesn't have enough quality in depth for it to be successful. We struggle to put a quality 11 out when everyone's fit.
With this wet winter weather, when it's like nightfall at midday, I've decided our team's problem is they suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. So, at present, they're a bunch of SAD bastards. Please bring a bit of sunshine into all our lives, Marti...
So we are not going to get upset when we sell Dykes to some Scottish team in January and use the small amount of money to take a punt on some lower league hopeful.
