Its like trying to decorate Katie Prices gusset.........you can’t paper over a massive crack and think it solves the problem.
Amazing, well what do you know! Another home win, well done Lancs! Luckily other results went our way, several surprising Draws. Not the afternoon I was looking forward to in these challenging times. Keep winning games we dont deserve. Oh, well, Hull up next, a treat that will be.
Well done Jack. A sloppy display and a lot of favourable dodgy refereeing decisions but got away with it.
Say thank you very much and get the hell out of there, drop Nsiala and play Woolfy before he costs us another penalty.
Heard the post match interview with PL. Brenner (not sure if correct spelling) said we hadn’t been at our best....to put it mildly and PL took offence at the question as if to say “how dare you ask me a difficult question” on top of that, in the zero games played over last 2 weeks, we’ve picked up 2 injuries in Edwards and Hawkins and another 2 today in Nolan and Bishop. 1 final point, when you have both Judge and Lankester on the pitch, would you not play Judge as the attacking player in a midfield 3 (IMO his best position) and Lankester on the wing rather than the other way round?
Not good enough today and we got away with it in the end., Lambert needs to do much better with whatever it is he's trying to do with this team. Game started with a sloppy penalty given away and we're playing catch up before we've played five minutes. We're continuing to try and play out from the back which is all well and good but my goodness we need to make more forward passes than backwards ones if we want to win football matches. Nolan goes off injured and Lambert brings Lankester on and makes mistake number 1. Why leave Judge on the right of the front three and put Lankester in the hole? Surely most of us would have put Jack out wide and brought Judge into the middle. Personally I would have brought Bennetts on and put him wide right. First half played out as so many have this season. Lethargic build up, lots of possession with our CBs and barely any shots on goal. Second half started and Bishop was on the field, surprising to me as he looked like he was struggling to shake off the studs down the Achilles challenge he'd suffered late in the first half. Mistake number 2 from Lambert. He should have swapped Teddy at the break so that he would still have two chances to make subs in the second half but chose not to. Just so you all understand the rule, even though 5 subs are allowed, a team only has 3 opportunities to change players during the game. This is to prevent games having a friendly feeling to them and to stop teams from wasting time with 5 separate subs. Making changes at half time doesn't count towards that total so leaving Bishop on the field and then bringing him off soon after the restart was a waste and a mistake in my opinion. We still kept the same shape and the same players in the same position in the second half, Lambert making no tactical tweaks at all...mistake number 3. Our play continued as normal, passing around the back and not enough urgency to get the ball forward. It's frustrating to watch at times and I think fans in the stadium would be booing at that amount of negative action. We then made a double change, Norwood and Bennetts on for Jackson and Sears. Bennetts had a positive effect, running with the ball and making things happen down the right. It was a low cross from Bennetts that got us the first goal. I thought it missed everyone but I guess it got a touch off a Shrews defender and crept in the far corner. 1-1 and game on. We did apply more pressure after that goal and had a couple of chances to score. We still made problems for ourselves at the back. Holy poor with the ball and a few stray passes made life more uncomfortable than it needed to be. Bennetts continued to be the most positive player but everyone else was lacklustre. With 7 minutes of injury time to play we picked up the pace a bit and forced a winner. Lankester in the right place at the right time to header home and put three points on the board. Holy - poor kicking today. Really needs to work on his distribution as it puts us in trouble too often. Ward - solid work on the left. McGuiness - looked shaky at times but stood up to the test. Nsiala - nope, still scares me, especially when he gets turned around and ends up behind the attacker. I fear a penalty every time. Chambers - is he a winger or a RB? Spends a lot of the game high up the pitch, leaving Nsiala exposed and then we get in trouble. McGavin - good game today. A decent range of passing I thought he filled in for Dozzell well. Poor free kicks and corners but overall he can be pleased with his performance. Bishop - ran with the ball and played forwards as much as possible. Hopefully he isn't injured. Nolan - got injured early so no comment on his performance. Sears - not effective on the left and never has been. Play him in a two up top or leave him on the bench, those are the only two options for Freddie in my mind. Jackson - the ball didn't really stick with Kayden in the lone role. Crap first touch rarely sets him up to get on the turn or bring others into play. Judge - still not worth a starting place in the team. Made more backwards passes than forward, as usual. Lankester - looked lost in his number 10 role but he was there right at the end to head the winner. Not going to blame him for his indifferent performance, that's the manager's issue for putting him in there. Huws - nothing special, nothing terrible. Another experienced player not good enough to be starting. Bennetts - my man of the match for bringing some drive and urgency to the game, should be starting. Norwood - reminds me of Garner. More interested in getting into arguments with players or the ref than scoring goals. What did I learn today? Sears and Judge are not the answer in the wide positions McGavin handled the game well and will be a good player for us Nsiala won't get any better Lambert is not good enough and will be very lucky if he gets us promoted I feel that Bennetts is worth a start now. He has been lively every time I've seen him and makes a better contribution than Judge. When both are fit I would be playing Edwards on the left and Bennetts on the right every match. A lucky win to keep us going, enjoy your evening gentlemen
Unfortunately bar Woolfenden i don't think he had a lot of choice, our injury list is appalling. I've never been the biggest critic of Lambert as I think since he's been here he's had his hands tied somewhat mainly due to the fact the squad we have isn't as good as people think mainly due to inexperience and injuries however I am now probably more concerned than I have ever been about him. Whilst I like the fact he has a way of playing now which we didn't last season, he's gone too far the other way now and I feel he's lost all sense of reason and that pragmatism which was especially a hallmark of his success at our neighbours up the road. I'm all for playing good football but there is no harm in changing it up sometimes and the biggest thing for me is his reluctance to change formation when clearly at the moment playing 2 upfront would be beneficial, even changing it during the game. We haven't got the players in the team to be able to play 433 consistently. Part of our early success last season was that Norwood and Jackson were on fire playing together as a 2 together. Even if youre not playing that well having 2 upfront seems to provide more chances and encourage to go direct/take more risks.
