Great day pity about the game

rememberlesshannon

Well-known member
Lucky enough to have a day in a private box at Stoke, four of us from Blackpool with a pal who's a Stokie.
Can't speak highly enough of the whole Stoke experience, but on to the game.
Much like last week, we only played as a team for 20-25 minutes. The difference today we were 1-0 down when we had our spell, not 1-0 up with something to play hang on to.
Grimshaw and the back four are the best we've got, other than Gabriel who needs to be back ASAP.
Virtue should be nowhere near the team as a holding midfielder, that's either Dougall or Connolly with Stewart injured. Carey is an impact sub, as he can't make an impact as a starter, we've loaned Patino and that's his place.
Yates, it hurts me to say this is a centre forward or nothing and he's not a Championship centre forward, Corbeanou should be starting left.
Bowler, so ridiculously gifted with the last 1% missing. Second half he left three Stoke players for dead in our half, created a great chance for himself which he probably should have scored. As things stand, without him we are fcuked.
We need a striker, goal poacher desperately, or we need to play two up front, Madine plus one.
Bizarre to take Yates off for Lavery when we are two down, don't remember a single thing Lavery did, pale shadow of the lad that started for us last season.
On today's performance i'm worried, only two games in but Stoke won't be in the shake up, although their wide players impressed. We need more quality and unfortunately that comes at a price.
 
Lucky enough to have a day in a private box at Stoke, four of us from Blackpool with a pal who's a Stokie.
Can't speak highly enough of the whole Stoke experience, but on to the game.
Much like last week, we only played as a team for 20-25 minutes. The difference today we were 1-0 down when we had our spell, not 1-0 up with something to play hang on to.
Grimshaw and the back four are the best we've got, other than Gabriel who needs to be back ASAP.
Virtue should be nowhere near the team as a holding midfielder, that's either Dougall or Connolly with Stewart injured. Carey is an impact sub, as he can't make an impact as a starter, we've loaned Patino and that's his place.
Yates, it hurts me to say this is a centre forward or nothing and he's not a Championship centre forward, Corbeanou should be starting left.
Bowler, so ridiculously gifted with the last 1% missing. Second half he left three Stoke players for dead in our half, created a great chance for himself which he probably should have scored. As things stand, without him we are fcuked.
We need a striker, goal poacher desperately, or we need to play two up front, Madine plus one.
Bizarre to take Yates off for Lavery when we are two down, don't remember a single thing Lavery did, pale shadow of the lad that started for us last season.
On today's performance i'm worried, only two games in but Stoke won't be in the shake up, although their wide players impressed. We need more quality and unfortunately that comes at a price.
Spot on assessment. We were panicked by their pressing. As said on the other thread, we have to play Patino who looks like he's going to be great to watch. Bowler did some outrageous things in the second half including one moment when he just turned around and left three of theirs stood facing the wrong way. Connolly put in a few crunchers and Corbeanu looked pretty bright, but apart from that we were horribly second best.
 
Their wide players impressed because they weren't closed down well enough (sometimes not at all). We gave them far too much time and space on the ball, whereas they closed us down quickly and we didn't keep or pass the ball well.

I really like Connolly, but not as a RB. He gets done by the ball over the top too often, and doesn't get tight enough to the winger. He does a great shift covering, but it simply isn't his strength. I said in the match thread that we need Gabriel back to release CC into midfield (where we were over run again today). Having said that, Dougall was very good when he came on,so in a way that's a nice problem for MA to have.

Sadly, Virtue and Carey haven't been able to take their chances of a first team place. The game often passed them by. They were outplayed by Stoke's midfield.

As for Jerry, he's still not getting the service despite making some decent runs, I wouldn't write him off until we can see how he gets on with decent service. That's also a reason why we have to start with Patino, and try to keep Bowler if at all possible.
 
A couple of times Jerry was too unselfish, trying a pass across the box rather than having a shot. In League One he was focused on shooting. Bring that back.

Lavery did absolutely nothing in his spell. I really think he'd be better going elsewhere to get his confidence back. He'll never get it coming off the bench.
 
The bowler turn and jiggle when he left three Stoke behind was fantastic, but it was in our own half and then he gave the ball away. He put three players out of the game so there should have been a mountain of space to either get into or players to run into.
He had one of those games where he was jigging and sliding past players and then just running into a Stoke defender when there was often a simple pass on. I personally find it really frustrating cos they are the moves that should be giving us goal action
 
You are forgetting the back 4 with Williams ( who I think is average at best, possibly worse) and Marv who in 2 games is descending from a potential prem player(last season) to a league 1 player on present form. Where the hell were the 2 tallest players in the BFC team when the shortest man on the pitch scored via header on the back post???? Im seriously concerned about them two. Far too much movement around our box without any challenges. Just hope its a bad day at the office and not something more evil.
 
You are forgetting the back 4 with Williams ( who I think is average at best, possibly worse) and Marv who in 2 games is descending from a potential prem player(last season) to a league 1 player on present form. Where the hell were the 2 tallest players in the BFC team when the shortest man on the pitch scored via header on the back post???? Im seriously concerned about them two. Far too much movement around our box without any challenges. Just hope its a bad day at the office and not something more evil.
On today's performance I'd be looking at Ekpiteta rather than Williams, he's been lazy with his distribution in the last two games.
All the problems they caused us came from wide areas and Tymon is a top player for Stoke.
 
Good assessment, I think the striker issue has to be someone a bit different from what we have, people have mentioned
Malik Wilks not a bad shout. Most of the new recruits should improve given time. I do wonder what the result would have been
had Mr Keogh been playing. It's becoming abundantly clear 2/3 good players needed to complete the jigsaw.
 
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