Ok, so I will start off with Harper. He had a shocker yesterday, and not just because he fluffed the ball over the bar from all of 3 yards out. The lad tried to do too much, he isn't as good as he tries to be. What I mean by that is he runs around the pitch too much and tried to get involved with everything. We need him to play the holding midfield role, which means sit in the centre circle and stay there, break up play and make the simple pass. Don't try and run with the ball, don't try and score goals, give it to someone else and get back to the centre circle. It's tried and tested and it works. Secondly Playing 5 at the back. I quite liked it I have to say, it allowed either Dawson Chester or Rosenior to roam forward and attack with the ball which in turn made us look solid (at times) Belaid and Amoo are too raw, they need to be tried and tested as subs until they can prove a bit of consistency in their play. Up top for me, Fryatt and Mclean don't work very well. They spend too much time away from each other and Mclean isn't smart enough on the ball to link up with Fryatt. Just look at the difference when Barmby came on. I appreciate Barmby can't play that role for 90 Minutes but for me the player who can is Garcia, him and Fryatt I think would work well together and it would allow Barmby to come on and sit behind them and if needs must drop Garcia to the wing late on and bring Mclean or Simpson on for impact. I'm sure some of you massively disagree so come on chirp in I will be interested to hear your take on it all. We can only really move around the pieces we have now so there is no point stating players need outright replacing. on a side note if I hear another muppet say we should look to build for next years promotion push I will flip my lid, I mean come on I even wrote us off after them two home defeats but some how we find ourselves 4 points off the play-offs with a fairly good run in and teams above us like Forrest are falling away, we should give it everything take your chances when they come.
The thing I didn't like yesterday was when we was 1-0 down IMO Nigel should have took Hobbs off and brought on another attacking player. We should'nt have been playing with 5 defenders when we needed to score. He did the right thing in taking Harper off when he did, but he shouldn't have been in the team at all.
What was worrying yesterday was the lack of width and movement until Barmby came on for Harper. During the first half and the first 15 minutes of the second half, our players and manager were quite content with playing a narrow, direct system through the centre of the park. This system lead to the players lack of movement which caused us to struggle to keep hold of possession for any reasonable amount of time because of the heavy congestion in the middle of the pitch. However, as soon as Barmby came on we saw more movement as Koren, Mclean and the man himself started to pull away out wide whilst we had possession of the ball. Our goal was a classic example of how adding an extra dimension of width to our system changed the game as Koren made a run out wide and then supplied Barmby with a tantalising ball across the Norwich goal. With all this at hand, hopefully Pearson will have recognized that we need to play wider next game against a strong Millwall side. Whether this involves Koren being given more creative freedom to roam into either a position on either flank or wingers being implemented into our formation, possibly with the return on Richard Garcia into the first team, something has to be done.
Normally, with 4 defenders and Evans in the side I'd agree because that means there's still 4 players that can be freely attacking with one of Evans/Harper between them and the defence for balls that are cleared by the opposition. Yesterday if Harper had done that we'd have only had Koren, Fryatt, and McLean able to be pretty free attacking as everyone else would have had major defensive duties to consider.
In a way I agree Bev, as I thought McLean was poor and thought either Garcia or Simpson needed to replace him - but with Pearson, it seems to me like he'll stick with a Fryatt-McLean partnership no matter how poor they play, as it seems he'd rather play them to justify their hefty price tag. I thought we posed more of a threat when we only had Fryatt upfront.
