Orange on Acid
Well-known member
Firstly, the booing was ridiculous.
Yeh we weren’t good but some of the team played well, and put a shift in. We were let down by some of the others.
The formation needs reassessing and I find it very hard to understand what exactly is Critchley trying to do.
We have 3 centre backs passing it between each other, then playing a very long searching ball diagonally that always met the head of a port vale player. The wing backs - CJ needs dropping as his decision making is shockingly bad. He doesn’t seem to know what to do anymore, and being a wing back is daft because he can’t defend, he’s just very fast so can recover quickly. Lyons looks lost, and strangely we seemed to play 90% of the time to the right wing and not the left.
Not sure what’s happened to Marv, but he’s gone from rolls Royce, to rusty skoda. Why does he take about 12 touches of the ball before either stumbling over or playing a hoof ball to no one/ out of play? In each game this season, he’s nearly cost us a goal. I’m sorry to say this but he needs dropping and spending time working on getting back to the player he used to be.
Grimmy has hardly made any saves in the last 4 games (but his distribution is very poor) … and Hubby played well as did Casey.
We also have too many central midfielders - which again baffles me because why have all them, but have the defenders booting it long over the top for one small striker to chase down, with no one anywhere near him??!!
They are getting in each others way and are somehow getting overrun and turned in the centre when the formation SHOULD dictate that we would dominate there.
I posted two weeks ago a thread saying it’s time for Carey to show his potential, but he’s so hot and cold and looks completely lost at times. First half he just seemed to be wandering around somewhere near Lavery.
As for the other 3, Morgan was unsure what to do, and when Carey went off, he stepped it up and seemed to have more room to create.
As with the defence, there’s no need for that many midfielders!
Norburn had another very good game and he leads by example. Dougall was pointless. All he did was run around, then go deep towards one of the centre backs, ask for the ball, play it back to them, and then go back into the midfield void!! Baffling
Lavery ran around all over the place chasing down lost causes and he almost created chances out of nothing. He didn’t get one decent chance all game to shoot or to run onto considering how fast he is im surprised by this, but that was as a result of poor decision-making in the final third.
Beesley did ok when he came on, and Weir looked very interested in carrying the ball and I was right behind the shot he had that was blocked - it looked like it was going top corner. Matty Virtue did ok but that’s about it.
Port Vale actually played very well. I think a lot of the supporters including myself, thought we would walk this league but we are realising that in actual fact every game in this league is different. You have different play styles. Every single team is fighting for the ball from the first whistle, we didn’t fight at all first half but stepped it up second half which allowed us to create chances. We can’t walk each game, especially not in league one.
Marv and Carey are two of my favourite players, but they’re not starting the season well at all.
I think GK, the defence, and ball carrying midfielder positions are full. We desperately need a winger and another striker.
We also need a plan B, or go back to the drawing board.
Buying 50 central midfielders will not sort this. We need 4 or 5 very accomplished ones, the rest aren’t needed. I hope Trybull stays as if he does, then we’ve got another good midfielder to use (and I would hope that what we get for him will cover the cost to get a very highly rated attacker or winger).
Edit to add:
In my opinion, we need to go with this team:-
Grimmy, Casey, Pennington/Hubby, Lyons, Connolly.
Morgan/Trybull, Norburn, Weir.
Beesley, Lavery, Dale/Apter.
Obviously that will change when players come back from injury, or we sign someone else but that’s how I see it.
Yeh we weren’t good but some of the team played well, and put a shift in. We were let down by some of the others.
The formation needs reassessing and I find it very hard to understand what exactly is Critchley trying to do.
We have 3 centre backs passing it between each other, then playing a very long searching ball diagonally that always met the head of a port vale player. The wing backs - CJ needs dropping as his decision making is shockingly bad. He doesn’t seem to know what to do anymore, and being a wing back is daft because he can’t defend, he’s just very fast so can recover quickly. Lyons looks lost, and strangely we seemed to play 90% of the time to the right wing and not the left.
Not sure what’s happened to Marv, but he’s gone from rolls Royce, to rusty skoda. Why does he take about 12 touches of the ball before either stumbling over or playing a hoof ball to no one/ out of play? In each game this season, he’s nearly cost us a goal. I’m sorry to say this but he needs dropping and spending time working on getting back to the player he used to be.
Grimmy has hardly made any saves in the last 4 games (but his distribution is very poor) … and Hubby played well as did Casey.
We also have too many central midfielders - which again baffles me because why have all them, but have the defenders booting it long over the top for one small striker to chase down, with no one anywhere near him??!!
They are getting in each others way and are somehow getting overrun and turned in the centre when the formation SHOULD dictate that we would dominate there.
I posted two weeks ago a thread saying it’s time for Carey to show his potential, but he’s so hot and cold and looks completely lost at times. First half he just seemed to be wandering around somewhere near Lavery.
As for the other 3, Morgan was unsure what to do, and when Carey went off, he stepped it up and seemed to have more room to create.
As with the defence, there’s no need for that many midfielders!
Norburn had another very good game and he leads by example. Dougall was pointless. All he did was run around, then go deep towards one of the centre backs, ask for the ball, play it back to them, and then go back into the midfield void!! Baffling
Lavery ran around all over the place chasing down lost causes and he almost created chances out of nothing. He didn’t get one decent chance all game to shoot or to run onto considering how fast he is im surprised by this, but that was as a result of poor decision-making in the final third.
Beesley did ok when he came on, and Weir looked very interested in carrying the ball and I was right behind the shot he had that was blocked - it looked like it was going top corner. Matty Virtue did ok but that’s about it.
Port Vale actually played very well. I think a lot of the supporters including myself, thought we would walk this league but we are realising that in actual fact every game in this league is different. You have different play styles. Every single team is fighting for the ball from the first whistle, we didn’t fight at all first half but stepped it up second half which allowed us to create chances. We can’t walk each game, especially not in league one.
Marv and Carey are two of my favourite players, but they’re not starting the season well at all.
I think GK, the defence, and ball carrying midfielder positions are full. We desperately need a winger and another striker.
We also need a plan B, or go back to the drawing board.
Buying 50 central midfielders will not sort this. We need 4 or 5 very accomplished ones, the rest aren’t needed. I hope Trybull stays as if he does, then we’ve got another good midfielder to use (and I would hope that what we get for him will cover the cost to get a very highly rated attacker or winger).
Edit to add:
In my opinion, we need to go with this team:-
Grimmy, Casey, Pennington/Hubby, Lyons, Connolly.
Morgan/Trybull, Norburn, Weir.
Beesley, Lavery, Dale/Apter.
Obviously that will change when players come back from injury, or we sign someone else but that’s how I see it.
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