Town v Wimbledon

Jeez the Acca I wish I’d had on the number of 2-2 draws…

 

Groundhog Day,perhaps I’ll predict a 2-2 for the next match!

 

Just got home from the match and a tad gutted to say the least. As we’ve had a few games now, the areas we need strengthening are: goalkeeper - possibly the most important position on the pitch and PC has got it wrong with this signing. He’s not commanding, doesn’t organise the defence and is not a massive (if at all) upgrade on Holy. We need Edmundson fit or another cb to play alongside Burgess as Wolfenden is not good enough (IMO). Evans and Harper - I don’t think either of them are bad footballers but they are not a partnership. Think we need to give Carroll a try and 1 final thing, we change owners, managers etc but still nothing improves on the injury front with currently: Bonne, Chaplin, Norwood, Nsiala & Edmundson all out (might have missed others)

 

Good reports, depressingly familiar pattern now. Cant for the life of me understand why Bonne wasnt playing. Injured or what?

 

Yes, slight hamstring injury

 

So many goals so far were all so avoidable. Hladky seems weak at this level. Both wolfy and Evans have caused us to drop 4 points. The defence is a problem and that includes the midfield who make life hard for the cbs. Evans seems the weaker of the two and worth swapping.

so many injuries too: Burns is playing with an injury and royston listed the others. We’re only 5 games in!!

BUT we’re scoring and that’s a harder thing to do than stopping goals, which is easier , cheaper and quicker to fix.

 

The other thing that worries me about the current team which someone (Spanish??) has mentioned before is the fact they look absolutely shattered after about 65 minutes. Before he gave away the free kick that led to the 1st goal, everyone around me could see that Edwards needed replacing as he was done but he ended up playing the full 90 minutes. Fitness and conditioning coaches have much work to do

 

Was fortunate to have no phone signal all day and spared the last minute disappointment!

What an absolute **** show.

 

Roystonblue and Buckyohare I think what you are pointing to is exactly the issue you get with building a whole team over 1 summer. Lack of a proper consistent pre season is massive. You rarely see players who have had a disrupted pre season go on to have a good season.

Defensively we're not good enough at the minute and whilst I think we can improve the standard of players in terms of recruitment I actually think most of those players are half decent and 2 bigger things are at play one being as previously discussed lack of a good solid pre season and therefore players fade and then make mistakes and secondly I think it's tactics.... For years I've been wanting us to play front foot football and am delighted we have a manager who promotes this however given where we are as a team in terms of being a brand new team still finding our feet I feel positionally in particular the full backs are too far up the pitch and feel we need to be a bit more solid at the back, we have enough quality in the team to cause problems without needing our fullbacks bombing up the pitch....maybe that can come later. But this attacking play means there are always huge gaps either on the wings or centrally which leave the CBs, fullbacks and centre midfielders very exposed and given we are such a new team it's not surprising the mistakes being made.

I'd say we need to be more compact off the ball and also go a bit more direct and play off the second ball (how Royle used to set us up) in a 442.

 

The keeper is clearly a liability and we have seen that in every match. I think the problems are deeper than the defenders themselves. Still Burgess is not featuring and the trio of Harper, Evans and Fraser persists. These are errors of judgement from the manager and has nothing to do with available resources or turning the squad over. Six games in and the players should be at peak fitness. There are no excuses for that either.

 

Burgess not featuring?

 

Coulson was awesome IMO. Keeper is not commanding enough IMO.

 

We’ve got three attack minded midfielders. Burgess should be sitting in front of the defence. Its an absolute waste of potentially our best player. Okay he was in the side yesterday as cover albeit out of position. Like I said I haven’t seen the game but still, he is not a defender. Of all the things we could do to improve that one and the keeper are screaming out.

 

Do you not mean Carroll? Burgess has pretty much spent his whole career at CB

 

I’ll get my coat!

Carroll ffs!

 

Agreed, Carroll should replace 1 of Harper / Evans. Interestingly, reports on Twtd (taken with a pinch of salt) linking us with a GK (Brighton) and a DCM (Boro) it’s the 2 positions we are most in need of so we will see what happens by Tuesday

 

One thing I've noticed is that Cook doesn't really make substitutions on the hour mark. As others have said, some players look leggy in the second half and I've thought that we need some fresh legs on the pitch but no subs are made when I would expect them to and then we are getting done by late goals in every game.

 

I’m not pressing the panic button yet,I’m enjoying visits to PR more than I have done for several years.I’m confident the manager/owners are aware of our present shortcomings and it’s expecting an awful lot to correct the years of team neglect in one transfer window.If we can convert a few more of the chances,cut out the defensive blunders and avoid too many injuries I’m confident we will soon be moving onwards and upwards.

 

Same here

 

Good feedbacks, I missed the whole game while travelling to France. While very disappointed I believe that this game showed several similar aspects that worry us all.

1. Defensive errors, top coaching point always used to be clear the line, get the ball away, whether you kick, head it throw yerself at it! Too many goals have come from opposition set pieces.

2. Cook needs stronger more experienced coachig staff...asap. Misses Richardson.

3. I am wondering if the later start, no pre-season, has lead to frantic powerful midweek exhausting training sessions that leaves most players shattered by 60 mins. And vulnerable to injuries...only 4 weeks in to a long bruising L1 season.

4. From what I see on the highlights, I cant really blame the keeper for both goals. Defenders should have cleared. But he is one of the weak links; I think Holy deserves another chance. He never leaked 2 goals every match on the trot!

I am still hopeful that by September things will improve.

If I was the Americans my fingernails would be chewed!