Preston NE preview / thoughts...

What a week in the life of ITFC.

Played 3, scored 0, conceded 7, Hurst gone, and us adrift bottom of the table. Scorchio.

We ' entertain ' PNE with Lambert taking control. He no doubt will have been horrified with what he saw at Millwall....

PNE's best player is injured apparently - ( cannot recall name ) but this lad has a good youtube channel.

PNE are actually unbeaten in 5 now, and are pulling themselves away from the drop. I didn't realise they were unbeaten in 5 I must confess. Their actually the leakiest side in the league ( conceding 4 more than us ) 29 in 15 which is ridiculous. However, they've scored 24 in 15 which isn't bad at all considering league position. They have fire power.......... hard to call.

I'm however going to plump for a WIN. Lambert getting things off to a positive start. We need a W here - by any means possible. Even a W - unless Hull get humped we're still bottom on goal difference.

A loss is really unthinkable and would put us further in the mire.

Main concern - from memory ( COULD be wrong ) Lambert is VERY MUCH a 4-4-2 man of sorts anyway - perhaps with Hoolahan or someone floating. We've literally got Sears + Jackson - we DON'T have a Jerome type.......... the lack of the #9 really concerns the living hell into me.

Be very interested to see line up / system that Lambert feels is the way to go.

We've won 1 in 16 games at home, and if we've any chance of survival, I'd say we require a minimum 7 home wins the rest of the season.............

COYB.

 

Preston are starting to look decent and I think it is going to take a while for Lambert to establish an XI, assert his stamp on the playing style and rebuild the confidence that has been shattered since the international break - a messy performance, 2 - 0 Preston.

 

1-1?

 

With our extreme lack of forward options, i wonder if there is anyone available in our squad who could be used as a makeshift striker for a few games?
Jordan Roberts maybe? or even Edun? Surely they can't be much worse than Jack and Sears on current form.
I was thinking of going Saturday, until i remembered that i genuinley have not seen a home win at PR in about 5 years (roughly 12-15 games), so i think i'll stay away.
Got a feeling we'll sneak this one 1-0, with a penalty early on and then hanging on for dear life for the rest of the game

 

Edwards??

 

Don’t think it’s Sears and Jackson that are the problem, apart from Jackson’s confidence. Sears gave the ball away a lot against Millwall, which is not usually his game - usually he’s pretty good at holding it up. They have been feeding off scraps in the last few matches, if we don’t create anything there’s no chances for them to get used to putting the ball in the net. We do need more than two options up front but it’s not addressing the real issue, which is low confidence and slow, easy to pick off passing. There were just a couple of instances against Millwall where we moved the ball more quickly and it ended up with a chance. The best one unfortunately fell to Chambo.

 

Echoing the immortal words of Han Solo, I've got a bad feeling about this. Preston, a team on the ascendancy, five games unbeaten, and an on-form attack versus a team low on quality, confidence, and goals. But then football is a funny game, and a new manager bounce certainly does have a habit of producing good results. Like Big Al, I think we could scrape a 1-1 draw and that out of our midfielders, Edwards looks like he could be a decent shot up front alongside Jackson. That would leave us relying on Ward, Graham, Edun, and Rowe out wide, but honestly, I cannot think of many better alternatives because a strike-force of Sears and Jackson will not get us goals and will not consistently win us matches.

Hopefully Paul Lambert will get us this squad back to basics, and while that will likely mean some pretty limited and defensive football, the senior players are likely to feel more comfortable playing that way. So we could conceivably grind out some good results up to January, making our hopeful escape job a bit easier. Honestly though, I think Lambert's got his work cut out with this team and I'm still of the opinion that we're going down. We've had too much quality and experience ripped out of the side. You can only go so many years by making more money from player sales than spending on player incomes before the standards and quality in your team bottoms out and the rest of the teams in your division exceed your level. It would not surprise me to see that we currently have the lowest wage bill in this division.

 

Lambert has played us twice in first game scenario won with Blackburn and drew with Wolves defensively we are pants and Neil will probably make 10 changes suspect a draw and a crap game

 

You don't really need to worry about defending, as the game will be played in our half. In fact I heard Alex Neil was pondering starting the match with seven players and giving your goalkeepers and defenders a week off. If your forwards can manage to beat a couple of traffic cones in training you ought really to win.

 

A bit harsh.......
..
.........but probably fair!

 

Gutted that Folami is away on international duty at the moment as I suspect he would have been given plenty of minutes in the past few weeks... as well as plenty in the weeks ahead. That said, someone like Lankester or even Shane McLoughlin could be used and provide some attacking threat from the bench

Can't see much more than a spirited but low quality draw.. Perhaps even a 0-0 as Lambert will have prioritized working on simple defending after the horror show on Saturday, which was perhaps as bad as anything I've seen since the regular thumpings we used to get under Paul Jewell.

 

I don't think that right now is a good time to throw kids in up front, it's so dire in the first team right now in terms of chance creation that it might really harm their potential.

 

Not sure I buy into the when it comes to attacking players.. Lankester got man of the match the other day for being on the pitch for 20 minutes.

Defenders, absolutely as I would feel for anyone coming into the side, but we're so devoid of options and ideas in the final third that giving some of the youngsters a run out late in the game makes perfect sense*



*assumption that they are performing well in training and U23 fixtures that they have earnt their opportunity

 

Did you watch Millwall live / a stream?

 

Yep. There was too much passing sideways / backwards and giving the ball away, for most of the game nearly every forward pass was too easy to intercept. Millwall let us have the ball at times up to the 30 yard mark and then they were quick to win the ball back. On the occasions in the second half that the passing was a bit faster and sharper we managed to get higher up the pitch.

 

I don't think it's a personnel or quality issue, I'm not talking about picking out cross field passes or balls over the top, I'm talking about sharp passing that every football league player should be able to do if they are well-drilled in training. We do need to add more quality in attacking midfield and up front - and that was a different problem we had earlier in the season, but we are not even often getting to a position where that matters at the moment.

That's why I think that needs sorting before we start to put youth players up front in the side who will have few opportunities to affect the game.

 

He did look lively but if a forward doesn't score a goal or set up a team mate then the only way he's getting MOTM is if everyone else was awful.

 

Which is the situation we seem to find ourselves in..

These youngsters may even prove to be a catalyst for some of the experienced pro's as they are probably the only players in the side that have little fear and that can be quite liberating for the whole team to see some fresh faced young pup showing what can be done*


*I'm not suggesting throwing random youngsters in, or sticking them for the sake of it... But we only have 2 fit strikers currently.

 

*We need to draft in one or two free agents immediately.

 

Out of interest live or via a stream / I follow etc ? I was tempted to go but bottled it. I looked for a stream but couldn't find one sadly!