After sleeping on it

Shiggy

Shiggy

Well-known member
I don’t feel any better.

Last night was one of those where you question why you invest so much time, effort, and money into football.

For some reason me and a few friends were excited to make the trip to Rotherham. Maybe it was the lack of action at the weekend that convinced us attend an away day that I would usually have missed.

It was my first time in Rotherham and to be completely honest, I think it will be my last. I’m not usually one to look down on other towns considering the issues my own hometown has, but wow… what an incredibly soulless place. I’m not sure whether the ground was just in a depressing location, but the 20 minute walk there from the car was a sobering experience.

The ground itself was ok enough, but the atmosphere inside before kick off and during the game was as devoid of character as it’s surroundings. It’s always tougher to take when you’re comfortably beaten in a stadium which appeared to have 4 family stands.

On to the game itself…

I thought the starting 11 was disappointing. I posted a thread about Rhys Williams following the Huddersfield game stating how he had looked a liability in every game I’d seen him play, so to see him starting once again was a surprise. There’s already been plenty of posts about his performance last night so I don’t think there’s any need for me to add anything more. He needs to be taken out of the firing line for a bit.

5 at the back. I don’t like it, never have done and never will do. I know we played it against Huddersfield and got a result but that was far from the best performance in the world. Last night showed it’s many flaws, especially when you employ it with our current side.

I like Connolly. I like Dougall. Kenny for me has taken far too much grief and appears to have unfairly become a scapegoat for some.

But I don’t like them together. There’s not enough creativity between the two to justify them playing together, especially with a flat back 5 behind them. I noticed that people have been describing last nights formation as a 3-4-3, but I didn’t see nearly enough of Gabriel and Thompson going forward to say that they were playing as attacking wing backs.

I think the most concerning thing about last night was that the team just looked lost and completely disconnected from one another.

The back 3 don’t seem confident in possession and don’t look confident in one another. At times they just seemed focused on getting rid of the ball as soon as possible (that’s the only reasoning I can see that anyone would be playing long balls to Jerry and Poveda).

Poveda and Corbeanu had clearly been given license to roam around the final third and swap wings with each other, but based on last night they need to be coached significantly better and also need to be much more intelligent themselves. At times we had Theo and Poveda on top of each other and no one on the other side of the pitch where space had opened up.

Jerry- He isn’t a lone striker. We’ve known this since his first days as a player for us. He was one of the few that showed any fight last night but I genuinely believe that’s all he can do in that system. The service to him was atrocious. There was at least 3 times where the ball was hammered into him at ridiculous pace. Once again him and Lavery played like strangers.

I know we’ve been unfortunate with injuries, and we’re allowed to have bad days. But last night was really worrying.

Rotherham are an ok side but I didn’t see anything special that warranted us playing 5 at the back for so long and we shouldn’t have allowed them to beat us so comfortably. We only have ourselves to blame for that.

My biggest concern is that we’re yet to have a good 90 minutes. The closest we’ve come to that for me was Bristol City at home and even then we had a woeful 15 minutes that cost us 3 points.

Despite the board’s best efforts, I think we’ve gone into this season undercooked and that’s hard to accept. We’ve been unlucky with injuries, yes. But if we’d have addressed the key areas more thoroughly; centre midfield and up top, we wouldn’t have suffered like we have.

As I said, I feel no better about last night just yet, but I’m sure by the time Saturday morning rolls around I’ll be right up for it once again.

Must improve.
 
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Just to comment on the 3-4-3 and not seeing evidence of Gabriel and Thompson as attacking fullbacks. This is where this system falls down completely with the players we have. In order for them to get forward, it's essential to have a midfield who can retain possession and a striker who can hold the ball up. We have neither right now, and so you end up with the wingbacks being pushed further and further back with hardly any opportunities to get forward. If they start making a forward run, we'll have lost the ball before they get forward to support.

It's a system we can't possibly play with the players we have and I don't want to see MA try it again. I'm amazed a man of his experience is even trying it in the first place, with two defensive mids that aren't known for their ability on the ball, and a striker we know can't play up front by himself. It's worrying.
 
Shiggy said:
I don’t feel any better.

Last night was one of those days when you question why you invest so much time, effort, and money into football.

For some reason me and a few friends were excited to make the trip to Rotherham. Maybe it was the lack of action at the weekend that convinced us attend an away day that I would usually have missed.

It was my first time in Rotherham and to be completely honest, I think it will be my last. I’m not usually one to look down on other towns considering the issues my own hometown has, but wow… what an incredibly soulless place. I’m not sure whether the ground was just in a depressing location, but the 20 minute walk there from the car was a sobering experience.

The ground itself was ok enough, but the atmosphere inside before kick off and during the game was as devoid of character as it’s surroundings. It’s always tougher to take when you’re comfortably beaten in a stadium which appeared to have 4 family stands.

On to the game itself…

I thought the starting 11 was disappointing. I posted a thread about Rhys Williams following the Huddersfield game stating how he had looked a liability in every game I’d seen him play, so to see him starting once again was a surprise. There’s already been plenty of posts about his performance last night so I don’t think there’s any need for me to add anything more. He needs to be taken out of the firing line for a bit.

5 at the back. I don’t like it, never have done and never will do. I know we played it against Huddersfield and got a result but that was far from the best performance in the world. Last night showed it’s many flaws, especially when you employ it with our current side.

I like Connolly. I like Dougall. Kenny for me has taken far too much grief and appears to have unfairly become a scapegoat for some.

But I don’t like them together. There’s not enough creativity between the two to justify them playing together, especially with a flat back 5 behind them. I noticed that people have been describing last nights formation as a 3-4-3, but I didn’t see nearly enough of Gabriel and Thompson going forward to say that they were playing as attacking wing backs.

I think the most concerning thing about last night was that the team just looked lost and completely disconnected from one another.

The back 3 don’t seem confident in possession and don’t look confident in one another. At times they just seemed focused on getting rid of the ball as soon as possible (that’s the only reasoning I can see that anyone would be playing long balls to Jerry and Poveda).

Poveda and Corbeanu had clearly been given license to roam around the final third and swap wings with each other, but based on last night they need to be coached significantly better and also need to be much more intelligent themselves. At times we had Theo and Poveda on top of each other and no one on the other side of the pitch where space had opened up.

Jerry- He isn’t a lone striker. We’ve known this since his first days as a player for us. He was one of the few that showed any fight last night but I genuinely believe that’s all he can do in that system. The service to him was atrocious. There was at least 3 times where the ball was hammered into him at ridiculous pace. Once again him and Lavery played like strangers.

I know we’ve been unfortunate with injuries, and we’re allowed to have bad days. But last night was really worrying.

Rotherham are an ok side but I didn’t see anything special that warranted us playing 5 at the back for so long and we shouldn’t have allowed them to beat us so comfortably. We only have ourselves to blame for that.

My biggest concern is that we’re yet to have a good 90 minutes. The closest we’ve come to that for me was Bristol City at home and even then we had a woeful 15 minutes that cost us 3 points.

Despite the board’s best efforts, I think we’ve gone into this season undercooked and that’s hard to accept. We’ve been unlucky with injuries, yes. But if we’d have addressed the key areas more thoroughly; centre midfield and up top, we wouldn’t have suffered like we have.

As I said, I feel no better about last night just yet, but I’m sure by the time Saturday morning rolls around I’ll be right up for it once again.

Must improve.
Click to expand...
Agree with all of that.

5 - 2- 3 and the midfield 2 were simply overrun and didn't have time to make a decent pass because they always had at least 2 players on them and more often than not, it was more.
 
Agreed Shig.

Last night we basically played 7-3. Obviously wasn't the intention, but that's how it worked out.

With Patino, Carey and arguably Wright all available for Saturday, the formation and equally important who plays will tell is much about MAs aims and objectives.

There's a great opportunity to go with two of those three plus either Dougall or Connolly. Get back to a four defence and see which CH he chooses to leave
 
Still feel bad about it, was a shit performance and shit result, no sugar coating it.

How Appleton couldn't see that we needed an extra man in midfield was beyond me. Dougall and Connolly cannot progress the ball at all so any time we won it we gave it right back to them. Patino for Williams at half time should have been made.

Will hopefully see the return of 4-3-3 on Saturday.
 
Excellent o/p...

I watched the game via the red button last night and agree with everything you say.

It was plainly obvious after a short time that the personnel selected and system just wasn't working. Was surprised that MA didn't change things sooner, as he had done in other games.

😉👍
 
Good post. Well balanced and considered comments. I have to agree with your thoughts on five at the back.
Coaches will sell it as 3-5-2 (or in this case 3-5-1-1 really); the notion being that the two full backs will get forward and provide an attacking threat. The reality is that the other side sees space on the flanks to exploit as our full backs vacate those areas. We are then compromised; either leaving them free reign to bomb on or being forced back into a defensive five. Never works. Rotherham had pacy committed runners and exploited our flawed system well.
 
We were far from good last night but it can be very fine margins, Connolly had two great chances early on, his deflected shot could have gone anywhere and it almost ended up in the net and the second chance, the header, he probably should have scored. Either of those go in and it's a different game. How Carey was sent off against Burnley and their guy wasn't for the chopping down of Theo, I don't know.
Very fine margins, that said, the system we played last night just isn't working, I'd like to see Husband back alongside Marv instead of Williams and we have to start someone creative in the midfield.
One thing though, Rotherham are nobodys fools, they are on a very strong run at the moment and full of confidence, the second goal killed us and although there was plenty to hate about our performance, we weren't playing a second rate side.

I think Appleton will want to go back to 4-3-3 but I wouldn't hate to see a 4-4-2

Grimshaw
Gabriel Marv Husband Thompson
Poveda Connolly Patino Carey
Yates Corbeanu

One things for sure, something has to change
 
There are issues all over the pitch but the lack of creativity in midfield really is a massive problem as last night showed … one shot on target which was a Yates pea roller equals no goals… if you don’t buy a ticket you can’t win the lottery as they say and the lack of chances was never more clearly displayed against a very average Rotherham side
 
Lytham_fy8 said:
Don't know if we were undercooked, I don't think the early injuries helped but we still look like a team of strangers.

Jerry needs a strike partner he can pull back to or balls across, Simms was perfect for him, we're not playing to his strengths at all.
Click to expand...
Colby Bishop would have been good for Yates..Why we went against signing him I'll never know..
 
Why change from 4-3-3, that's what I'd ask, as e seemed pretty adamant to play that system - why look at Rotherham and change to suit, seems to go against what Appleton's tried to do so far.
Poor all round, from a tactical and playing perspective.
 
I've slept on it too. We are going to have to put up with some games like that this season, we will win some comfortably, scab some and lose some badly, like we did last night. It is a mixture of things. The injuries and suspensions have not helped us at all and playing a midfield 2 of Dougall & Connolly doesn't and never will work. It is far too defensive and frankly neither of them are very good defensive midfielders anyway. We were lucky to win against Huddersfield and we got what we deserved last night.

I think we were geared up for another season under Quitchley and a lot of work had gone into identifying players for his tactics. His leaving certainly put a spanner in the works and I think the appointment of MA was a sensible one but my own feelings are that they have never actually got to grips with the players he wants for his style of play and it looks like they have been trying to get him to take players he doesn't particularly want and they haven't even been very good at that either.

The side is unbalanced and lacking any attacking threat. We haven't got good enough players to be playing 433 in my opinion unless Anderson can regain his form when back and maybe Poveda or Fiorini to play either side of Yates.

I think a midfield 3 is a great idea but we can't afford to play either Dougall or Connolly in that so we either need Stewart back and fit for the rest of the season or if not we have to get an experienced number 6 who is a leader from somewhere because we haven't got one. In front of him you would have Patino and Wright or Fiorini or Carey. We also need to go back to a back 4 and that would include Gabriel, Marv, Thorniley (or Hubby) and Thompson (or Hubby).

It's not ideal and we really needed some better players in capable of causing problems to opposition defenders. Jerry is completely isolated and probably plays better in a front 2, as Lyth said, he was great with Simms, but we failed miserably to get a striker, so we have Lavery, who is frankly awful at the moment, Madine, who is decent and again looks better in a front 2, Beesley who will be out for some time and that's it for strikers.

The recruitment team have badly let MA down this summer, we needed experience and quality in 3 key areas, defence, midfield and up front and they have failed to deliver on all counts. They didn't do that well the season before either, we have never managed to get the midfielder the team so desperately need, they have fucked about and landed no one, other than young loan players.

I hope MA is brave and plays some of the creative players he has, we can't go with what we did last night again. Losing Bowler was also massive and it is nigh on impossible to replace him. I just worry that we are an aspiring Championship team with a league 1 budget and if that is the case we will inevitably struggle. It's easy for me to say SS needs to invest more on players but even if he is doing there has to be question marks over the use of Bullshit Ben, because he isn't delivering.

It was a bad day at the office yesterday. We need to get to January as close to 1.5 points per game as possible, we don't want a spiral down. I feel sorry for MA, I think he's been sold a bit of a bum steer.
 
I don't feel sorry for Appleton at all.

Given the available players he could have picked a much more effective setup and better personnel. Part of a manager's job is to work within the given constraints and I doubt Appleton came here expecting big signings. He's got rid of a load of players already and brought in plenty.

At a minimum we need solidity and a basic ability to retain possession in midfield. Connolly and Dougall don't supply that so it needs to be changed. If that means Williams has to sit out a couple then that's what Appleton needs to do. Even if we get beat at Millwall that's the absolute minimum requirement.
 
Shiggy said:
I thought the starting 11 was disappointing. I posted a thread about Rhys Williams following the Huddersfield game stating how he had looked a liability in every game I’d seen him play, so to see him starting once again was a surprise.
Click to expand...
I'll take your first point but you make many good ones. A team with so little experience needs a James Husband in it. Losing Keogh I think means we have also lost that wise head.
 
Shiggy said:
I don’t feel any better.

Last night was one of those where you question why you invest so much time, effort, and money into football.

For some reason me and a few friends were excited to make the trip to Rotherham. Maybe it was the lack of action at the weekend that convinced us attend an away day that I would usually have missed.

It was my first time in Rotherham and to be completely honest, I think it will be my last. I’m not usually one to look down on other towns considering the issues my own hometown has, but wow… what an incredibly soulless place. I’m not sure whether the ground was just in a depressing location, but the 20 minute walk there from the car was a sobering experience.

The ground itself was ok enough, but the atmosphere inside before kick off and during the game was as devoid of character as it’s surroundings. It’s always tougher to take when you’re comfortably beaten in a stadium which appeared to have 4 family stands.

On to the game itself…

I thought the starting 11 was disappointing. I posted a thread about Rhys Williams following the Huddersfield game stating how he had looked a liability in every game I’d seen him play, so to see him starting once again was a surprise. There’s already been plenty of posts about his performance last night so I don’t think there’s any need for me to add anything more. He needs to be taken out of the firing line for a bit.

5 at the back. I don’t like it, never have done and never will do. I know we played it against Huddersfield and got a result but that was far from the best performance in the world. Last night showed it’s many flaws, especially when you employ it with our current side.

I like Connolly. I like Dougall. Kenny for me has taken far too much grief and appears to have unfairly become a scapegoat for some.

But I don’t like them together. There’s not enough creativity between the two to justify them playing together, especially with a flat back 5 behind them. I noticed that people have been describing last nights formation as a 3-4-3, but I didn’t see nearly enough of Gabriel and Thompson going forward to say that they were playing as attacking wing backs.

I think the most concerning thing about last night was that the team just looked lost and completely disconnected from one another.

The back 3 don’t seem confident in possession and don’t look confident in one another. At times they just seemed focused on getting rid of the ball as soon as possible (that’s the only reasoning I can see that anyone would be playing long balls to Jerry and Poveda).

Poveda and Corbeanu had clearly been given license to roam around the final third and swap wings with each other, but based on last night they need to be coached significantly better and also need to be much more intelligent themselves. At times we had Theo and Poveda on top of each other and no one on the other side of the pitch where space had opened up.

Jerry- He isn’t a lone striker. We’ve known this since his first days as a player for us. He was one of the few that showed any fight last night but I genuinely believe that’s all he can do in that system. The service to him was atrocious. There was at least 3 times where the ball was hammered into him at ridiculous pace. Once again him and Lavery played like strangers.

I know we’ve been unfortunate with injuries, and we’re allowed to have bad days. But last night was really worrying.

Rotherham are an ok side but I didn’t see anything special that warranted us playing 5 at the back for so long and we shouldn’t have allowed them to beat us so comfortably. We only have ourselves to blame for that.

My biggest concern is that we’re yet to have a good 90 minutes. The closest we’ve come to that for me was Bristol City at home and even then we had a woeful 15 minutes that cost us 3 points.

Despite the board’s best efforts, I think we’ve gone into this season undercooked and that’s hard to accept. We’ve been unlucky with injuries, yes. But if we’d have addressed the key areas more thoroughly; centre midfield and up top, we wouldn’t have suffered like we have.

As I said, I feel no better about last night just yet, but I’m sure by the time Saturday morning rolls around I’ll be right up for it once again.

Must improve.
Click to expand...
Spot on.
 
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