Yeah, league one is his best level, but possibly could do a job as a squad player next season. Willock looked several classes better than Smyth when he came on.
Agree Willock did look better when he came on after Smyth had done 60mins work. I thought we looked creative in the game (mostly Chair) with Chair, Anderson and Smyth contributing. I thought we were very weak on the press; Plymouth looked much more ‘on it’ with their press at times and we struggled with it - keep to our press game and we take the ball and the initiative.
I feel like I go on and on, and on, about Dykes and maybe I have a bee in my bonnet about him. But … last night he was really poor once again. He’s never fully vested in the game, ie he rarely fully competes for the ball (half hearted chases, half hearted jumps for headers); he’s almost always a yard short; he wonders around instead of aiming to be in the right place in the box for balls in. The number of times we’ve got to the byline and we don’t have him ready for the pass/cross. He should have been hooked on 60-65mins and Armstrong on.
There’s a lot to be done in the off season - clearly contracts will be up and people leaving. Maybe the odd sale or two. So certainly some headroom on staff and wages. It will be interesting to see what Marti does (as we have no Director of Football I’m guessing it will be all on him and his backroom team). Anyway, another point on the board and we go again on Saturday in Hull … maybe another point (or three )
I thought Dykes did ok last night. Pretty sure it was his assist for Field's goal, stretched a long leg out to reach the ball probably going out over the dead ball line and pulled it back for Field. Plus he nicely set up a good chance for Smyth, I think it was.
I also thought Dykes was better than the usual invisible performance he puts in. But that’s not saying a lot. He did nicely set up Smyth but any striker with an ounce of confidence would have taken it on himself.
That was my immediate thought at the game (and a number of others around). He did a similar thing earlier too - almost like he had little confidence in himself.
Unfortunately a striker with 5 goals all season & no away goals in 50 matches will probably be low on confidence. I have no answers for our front line/lone striker, rotating selection suggests neither does Marti. I do know this can't go on for yet another season.
Had the same thought just now watching the highlights. Made a nuisance of himself, got the assist and really should have had the second assist. Can't ask for too much more from a target man. Hopefully Marti is using that to build up his belief a bit.
I think it'll be Nourry and his analytics that handle the procurement with input from Marti. Putting managers and coaches in charge or more specifically always giving them what they want is what leads to clubs becoming unsustainable.
In a way there was a lot to like about our performance last night.... You can see that away Marti sets us up to sit tight and frustrate the opposition 1st half and not to concede working on the basis we become more dominant as the half wears on and create chances, which we did..... Then 2nd half becoming more on the front foot taking game to opposition...... exactly what happened last night and we should have been out of sight before flapper did what he did...... We looked comfortable all game and all their attempts were from long range, apart from 1 horrible slice wide from 10 yards or so..... they didn't look like scoring, and with 5 minutes to go we were effectively safe...... We don't make it easy......
Second half the way we stood up, pressed and opened them up was impressive. Expected them to really come at us but they never really did until they scored. Better performance than Swansea or Birmingham despite the first half being so meh and let down by our captain/senior leader/highest earner.
100% agree with this. I never thought they looked like scoring and although one goal is a slim lead I thought we would comfortably see it through once we were ahead. I guess I wasn't the only one sweating on that last sweating on that late free kick of theirs though!. So QPR!
Do analytics build a team? Does analytics take into account personality? Seems important to me. Attitude counts and the fans don't like it when the attitude is not right.
Yes they do. In the olden days those great old managers like Harold Dedcrapp and George Graham used to have an infallible method of judging the character of their prospective purchases including how much their clubs should pay for them - the thickness of the brown envelope the player’s agent/selling club gave them. Worked every time. Of course there was the more sophisticated continuous improvement programme implemented by some managers (Colin?) otherwise known as ‘pay to play’ or ‘wage tithe’. Always guaranteed to get the best players into the starting 11.
Warnock wasn’t averse to sending a player on for the last few minutes in exchange for a share of the player’s appearance bonus.
