Match Day Thread No Match Day Thread

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That second goal is horrific, the ball has traveled so far and Bassong is caught the wrong side and lets them back into the game. I would get a bollocking if I did that at the pony standard I play at! Lets be honest, we've seen almost exact examples of that from Bassong far too often and thats why he can't be a first team regular.
 
At 3-1 we looked like we were playing the ultimate and rather canny away snatch and grab. But too concede so quickly and 3 in the last 20 odd minutes is just laughable. The more capitulations like this you see the more you realise that our biggest problem is between the ears! That and maybe fitness, too often on the back foot at the end of games.

Bah!

To be fair we were lucky to be 3 - 1 up. Newcastle could have be out of sight after the first 30 minutes.
 
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I don't see how you can blame this one on AN, Gambia. We had 3 CBs on and still couldn't stop them scoring.

Well we should have got rid of Bassong & Turner and bought someone else. Strange as it might seem when we went 3 - 1 up we were having our best period of the game having looked poor for the first half hour until we changed our tactics. Why oh why did we not stick with the shape and tactic we had when we were playing well. I'm not sure if we need a manger as they can't be blamed for anything when things go wrong.
 
ILD, there are two ways of looking at this! Cardiff and Wigan, he shored up the defence and we scrambled over the line, last night we didn't, so going on previous results, he was right to tighten the defence. If he'd left things alone and we went on to lose, he would have been slated for not doing what he did v Cardiff and Wigan!

Damned if you do and damned if you don't!

Look at it however you want, we lost the game because he's a twat and doesn't learn from his mistakes. We kept attacking Burton and the game looked a whole lot better. Bassong for Bennett proves my points.
 
The downfall was that your defenders seemed to thing the points were in the bag at the end and basically gave up; the defending on our last goals was woeful - first Gouffran is allowed a free header in the 6 yard box when surrounded by your defenders, then immediately afterwards you let Gayle walk through your entire defence. Surely the players have to take a big responsibility there?
Fair comments. Problem was in sacrificing Murphy to bring on an extra (pointless, as it turned out :emoticon-0106-cryin) defender meant we had no outlet up the field, so Newcastle knew they could play on and in our area without threat of a counter as we were so deep and had no pace on the pitch. :(
 
To be fair when you're 3-2 up away at a good team with less than 20 minutes to go, you know the opposition is going to throw everything at you, and being defensive is a reasonable stance to take.

I'd agree with this if our defenders particularly Martin and Bassong had ever in the past demonstrated that they had the ability to see games like this out. The trouble is they've never in the last 18 months shown they had this ability especially against a team like Newcastle. Why keep using tactics that we don't have the players to implement, if it wasn't so sad it'd be laughable. AND YES THAT'S DOWN TO AN and the coaching staff.
 
Fair comments. Problem was in sacrificing Murphy to bring on an extra (pointless, as it turned out :emoticon-0106-cryin) defender meant we had no outlet up the field, so Newcastle knew they could play on and in our area without threat of a counter as we were so deep and had no pace on the pitch. :(

We may have been better taking off Murphy and packing the centre of midfield, trouble is if you look at the bench we didn't have much of a defensive option other than Bennett and I think until someone tells me otherwise that who sits on the bench is definitely down to AN.
 
We may have been better taking off Murphy and packing the centre of midfield, trouble is if you look at the bench we didn't have much of a defensive option other than Bennett and I think until someone tells me otherwise that who sits on the bench is definitely down to AN.
He could have got instructions to them to push out and not camp on the 6 yard line.
But for well paid professional players, they should have had the savvy to work that out for themselves <doh>
 
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We may have been better taking off Murphy and packing the centre of midfield, trouble is if you look at the bench we didn't have much of a defensive option other than Bennett and I think until someone tells me otherwise that who sits on the bench is definitely down to AN.

Which makes all the more perplexing, having the starting line up as more defensive than usual.
 
ILD, there are two ways of looking at this! Cardiff and Wigan, he shored up the defence and we scrambled over the line, last night we didn't, so going on previous results, he was right to tighten the defence. If he'd left things alone and we went on to lose, he would have been slated for not doing what he did v Cardiff and Wigan! Damned if you do and damned if you don't!

NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,Cardiff & Wigan we were doing well, we were ahead and looked comfortable, AN changed tactics and went defensive and nearly lost the games which we should have won comfortably. Cardiff, Wigan & Newcastle = Winning the game, looking comfortable, AN changes tactics and we go from comfortable to looking extremely fragile. If Wigan & Cardiff had been better teams or we hadn't had Klose to organise the defence, we'd have lost both games. If we're winning a game and looking comfortable WHY change tactics and deploy a tactic, especially when we know from experience that we don't have players on the pitch to see a game out. AND ONE MORE NO FOR LUCK.
 
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Which makes all the more perplexing, having the starting line up as more defensive than usual.

I'm not convinced having Dorrans, Howson & Tettey on the pitch at the same time is a good idea, makes more sense to me to have 2 on the field and one on the bench.
 
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,Cardiff & Wigan we were doing well, we were ahead and looked comfortable, AN changed tactics and went defensive and nearly lost the games which we should have won comfortably. Cardiff, Wigan & Newcastle = Winning the game, looking comfortable, AN changes tactics and we go from comfortable to looking extremely fragile. If Wigan & Cardiff had been better teams or we hadn't had Klose to organise the defence, we'd have lost both games. If we're winning a game and looking comfortable WHY change tactics and deploy a tactic, especially when we know from experience that we don't have players on the pitch to see a game out. AND ONE MORE NO FOR LUCK.

EXACTLY!!! :emoticon-0137-clapp
 
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But AN picks the players and he picked pretty much the same players who rolled over in several games last season and used the same tactics, so why on earth would he think it was going to be different this season especially against a team that were in the PL with us last season. As I've repeatedly bleated on about for months and months WE NEED TO SORT OUT OUR CB PAIRING without Klose to sort things out at the back we're f***ed. Both Martin & Bassong are clowns and incapable of organising our defence.

Excellent post carrow!!! <applause> I saw a tweet earlier that 7 NCFC players started ast night that capitulated 6-2 last season.
WHEN is AN going to learn???????
 
Excellent post carrow!!! <applause> I saw a tweet earlier that 7 NCFC players started ast night that capitulated 6-2 last season.
WHEN is AN going to learn???????

Maybe he was just "making sure" and finding out if last season really was a fluke or not <whistle>

Must admit I am not convinced with AN but if we remain in the top 2 I will make do for now
 
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Oh their second goal...it was in the air for about half of the highlights reel. Bassong had time to run to the two corner flags, kiss a ball boy, make a chip butty, a cup of tea, before getting his massive forehead on it to clear to safety. Guess he had other ideas...
 
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I still think a fair ammount of critisim of AN for this one is unfair. We can only assume Klose was not playing because of some ailment. That leves Bass as our other left CB option. Bass must have at least had an adequate game against Everton as we kept a clean sheet. Bass vs most teams in the championship would have appeared before last night a decent option, not great but as backup certainly I thought adequate. He's had a shocker last night and I can't really defend him, but AN has the squad he has, Bass may have previous of these sort of games, but was actually the lynch pin of our defence under Neil two seasons ago when we got promoted. Bass was so poor for that second goal, I can only imagine that the wind has embarassed him, because it was so ill judged.
At 94 1/2 minutes the Bennett/Murphy substitution had not seemed such a bad call. But individual errors have let him and us down again. But collectively we didn't press the ball well enough in the finale, then we didn't win first or second balls, and with Gayles winner they all just stood off him! The scorer of 2 goals and comfortably most dangerous player in the championship.
If it's down to players fitness then AN has to take some blame. But tactically I'm not convinced he got it wrong last night. Newcastle were a cut above for 30-40 minutes at the start and from our 3rd goal onwards. Maybe we should have stayed as was with Hoolahoop for Tettey, our posession and threat would surely have been enhanced. But then evryone would have jumped on him for not learning from last time.
I think it was in the end what it was,
  1. a display that they certainly have more quality than us.
  2. Without Klose, we are a playoff side at best.
  3. Whilst at times it looked like we could get thrashed we didn't and I think allot of other clubs would have been in the face of that Newcs performance
  4. Hugely disappointing that we could not hold out from that position. But if AN had any doubts about our requirements for defensive reinforcements then I don't think he can deny it any longer.
Bah!
 
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Oh their second goal...it was in the air for about half of the highlights reel. Bassong had time to run to the two corner flags, kiss a ball boy, make a chip butty, a cup of tea, before getting his massive forehead on it to clear to safety. Guess he had other ideas...
I would say Sunday league defending - but that would be an insult to all who play in their local park at weekends :(
 
4) Hugely disappointing that we could not hold out from that position. But if AN had any doubts about our requirements for defensive reinforcements then I don't think he can deny it any longer.
Why didn't he start with Bennett and Martin? Bennett and Klose are widely accepted as our best CB pairing so why change both because of an injury to one? <yikes>
Your point 4 above is spot on GM - and I hope AN and Alan Irving are busy compiling an 'xmas' shopping short list as we speak.
 
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