Need to go back to what we were doing before the Coventry defeat , we were playing a system that suited the players that were in the side . The team was virtually unchanged throughout February so players knew the system and they were used to playing together forming relationships and knowing people’s strengths and weaknesses . At Coventry we were beaten by an early goal but far from disgraced against the side currently top of the league . Fleetwood took an early lead at the SOL but we deserved a point and managed it very very late on against another team bang in form and now in a play off place . Gillingham another in form team is where things started going wrong with some late baffling substitutions affecting the defence and leading to a very late Gillingham equaliser , I have already posted a thread about this shortly after the match . Then we come to the real debacle of Bristol Rovers , I could understand keeping Lafferty in the side after his two goals against Gillingham , Power and Dobson have been a reliable partnership and Dobson had an excellent assist for Laffertys second goal against Gillingham so why break up the partnership ?? . Similar with Gooch who has a good partnership with Hume has scored quite a few goals and assists another partnership broken up at the expense of Semenyo coming in to the side . Where was Semenyo supposed to be playing , their is no doubting his speed and skill but a lot of time he appeared on the right where Maguire and O’Nien have had a productive season . Realise a lot of posters have been crying out for players to be rested , changed etc but I would suggest it has caused more harm than good and we need to revert back to the team that was in place pre Coventry match .
If the players have been training as a squad I feel that the players brought in should be able to fit into the system, all be it with different talents to offer. I think Dobson was rested because Parky knew the opposition would wind him up and get him the booking that would lead to his suspension, I think from this weekend the totting up starts again so he's safe (correct me if that's not the case).
The team was starting to look jaded in the previous games, and results were poor, the changes were acceptable, the game plan should not have been changed and I doubt it was. Warnings were there that we were running on empty and thats how it turned out, still time to put it right, we will soon see.
