Look at Spence for their goal. First of all Jon Nolan is covering Spence's zone - he dives in - but he's not a defender to be fair to Nolan. The man Spence then picks up gets left as Spence ball watches, the ball comes in so he starts to come then backs off. Having cost us 2 points on the opening day, I think he must be the worst defender I have ever seen in a Town shirt.
Erm, the goal you're referring to isn't Spence's doing. * Chalobah lost man. * Bart should have held the ball. Not his biggest fan, but we've had far worse. O'Dea, Fish, Ingimarrson, Iorfa, Balkenstein, many others worse than him. Granted - we need better than him, agree with you there.
I do mean Claydon. I was typing something on my way to the gents when a Town fan cornered me for my in depth opinion of the match.. 20 minutes later I told him I was on my way for a pee and he promptly followed me and carried on the conversation at the urinal next to me.. I hope it wasn't one of you lot on here By the way, I had a "Steak on a Pie" which is a Steak & Ale Pie with a Steak sat proudly on top.. Half a Kilo of mashed potato and plenty of Gravy and I very nearly fell asleep on my drive home. I was genuinely shocked and disappointed when I saw the line up.. I wanted to see more of Edun and Chalobah and thought that the central midfield was beginning to show some promise (albeit at the expense of an isolated striker) so to move to 442 seemed a bizarre move and for large spells we looked like a side who hadn't played like that before. Edwards and Walters often went for the same ball.. Nolan nicked the ball of Skuse in the middle of the pitch and overall we looked like we couldn't get beyond 3rd gear (or still had the handbrake on) There were some positives though. We have a manager that is obviously brave enough to make big calls and will switch systems if he doesn't think it's working... Though we obviously want him to find one that he's comfortable with (and is successful) soon, but at least we seem a bit more adaptable to play a variety of ways.
Wrong Westlake - he was hopeless against Blackburn. The second goal as you can see he's been caught out of position - Donacien even more wildly - but Donacien busts a gut to get back whereas Spence jogs back casually. He actually starts deeper than Donacien and could have got a block in with a tiny bit of effort - he was awful and there was so much space for them to exploit down the left hand side. It's not Chalobah's man to pick up in fact - it's Chambers', but Chambers sprints across to try to intervene. After Woolfenden came on and Donacien went to full back the door was shut. Now watching the Norwich goal, the chance comes from his zone again and he looks completely and utterly lost. The players you mention, still not worse.
I cant fault the effort and commitment of the team everyone gave 100%, as far as quality goes that came from Walters, Edwards and Pennington who looks like a real player. The midfield looks lightweight and especially after Skues went off, Graham was anonymous and I cant think why he started after playing so little football recently, Gerks didn't do anything wrong but the old faults are still there, failure to command his area and the defence not knowing whether hes coming for a through ball or not and so get forced into a hurried clearance. Spence was very poor and got turned inside out regularly in the second half and it must be questioned whether hes up to Championship standard,the front men tried hard but couldn't produce dangerous situations and quite honestly looked exactly what they are which is lower league players, this may change with experience of course but the Championship isn't the place to hone a players skills in my opinion. Having said all that I really enjoyed the match but we cant go on indefinitely excusing players who are "learning" the game, we desperately need experienced players to return to change draws into wins.
It was also telling that probably our best 'technical' players were all involved in the goal. Nolan with a dangerous diagonal into the Box, Walters with the knock down and Edwards with the (Fortunate) deflected shot. Had that have been anyone else in either of those roles I doubt we'd have seen anything like a similar outcome.
I thought the games was a pretty good reflection of our season so far lots of positives and negatives at the same time. Hopefully now we will have a good 2 weeks for the players to work on a few things
