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Mannequins or not - we need to be able to adapt. It wasn’t like it was for the last half hour or so. It was for about 75 mins. We were dog shit. That is probably being harsh on dog shit.
Movement
I'll be the first to agree with you. Very harsh on dog shit. But 'movement' is a blanket term that requires a lot of detail and is highly dependant on the opposition, so just throwing it out there as an excuse (not saying you have done) is a very easy thing to do. Whereas if our fans were to watch it back and identify when the movement was poor, if they were asked 'well what would you have done instead?', they wouldn't be able to give neither an educated nor realistic answer.
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Fair post on the whole, but fans aren’t the ones with the nous or expertise to find a solution. Our coaching staff and the players (many of whom now have a fuck load of experience at this level) should be able to change things after such a prolonged period of time. Maybe we set ourselves up not to lose after two great results, but we should have had more players available from throw ins and other situations. To go up in this league we need to take a risk from time to time. Today we failed to do so and it showed.
Yes but it’s the manager’s job to get the team playing to a winning system. If our passing and movement isn’t working and our players on the pitch aren’t good enough to tweak things successfully then change it. Eg put our big target man on and get the others feeding off the knock downs.
It’s for the manager to identify the obstacles we need to overcome and then get the team playing to a system which has the best chance of succeeding and that includes the effective use of substitutes. Eg he could have seen quite early in the match that having both Clarke and Hughes as full backs was seriously limiting our attacking threat and so giving the opposition the initiative and he could have addressed that problem.
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Get Barky to run hard at defenders
Get Sinclair to run hard at defenders
Get DJ to slide some through-balls in-behind
Stop pulling-up short near the edge of the box, then waving your arms around in exasperation.
Take the bull by the effin horns and play with speed, energy, skill and wizadry.
Pretend your Mo Salah. Do a McGeady.
Do anything.
But to simply run out of ideas and look shit, there's really no excuse when there's nothing to lose and you're 1-0 down.
Good points (as usual). All I have to offer is that creative running (movement) should move defenders out of position leaving space which we utilise. Yep, that's probably an over simplfication and it doesn't always work but, sure as shit, it's better than going sideways and backwards ad nauseam.
So that when they get tackled numerous times by fellow championship defenders you can shout at them and tell them they should be passing instead.
The problem there however is when there is five defenders and two holding midfielders playing deep, they just don’t move. There’s no space to run behind because they’re so deep. There’s minimal space between the lines because they’re so compact. So the ‘backwards and sideways’ patient approach is the best way to go about it. You just need your quality to be up to scratch. We made a good few chances from being patient and probing.
It’s either that, or bypassing the midfield all together by smacking balls up to a lone striker against three giant centre halves. Pointless.
IMO the problem today was the execution, not the tactics. I’d have started Gally since we passed it a lot first half and they were very deep. But in that first 20 minutes we had a few good openings but the quality just wasn’t there unfortunately.
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Me? Personally? Nope.
I want to see Barky running at defenders. It's what floats my boat. Love it. Look at Barky's body language. He's always pointing in front, asking players to put him through.
I want to see us using pace against big defenders. They hate it. Sure - it doesn't always work, of course it doesn't. But does hoofball work? Nope. Do we have a big boss-man who can power through the midfield, leaving opponents in his wake? Nope.
The chances we had in the first half came from our skillful / speedy players hunting in packs. They just couldn't finish.
Exactly...you move to find space, but sometimes there is no space to move into! So smaller, more subtle movement is effective but bigger movement is just a waste of energy.
Hard to believe but I sometimes think that quite a few of our fans may not have actually played or managed at a decent standard...
Yes Barky is always pointing in front of him but the point is that today there was rarely any space for him to run into! And on the two occasions there was we slowed down the attacks.
Summarizes our game rather well 👍.
Yes, sometimes it's a case of capitalizing on opponents mistakes rather than 'forcing' the issue.
A frustrating and disappointing game all round unfortunately.
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Very true. And on various occasions that he (or others) made it to the byeline on the right side, there was not a single body in the box.
Hence so much hand-gesturing from those right-sided players. When was the last time Browne made a run into the box?? Or in fact we saw anyone making dynamic, speculative runs into the box?
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Which is fair enough.
It's much easier to set up a team to be strong at the back vs one that can score for fun, especially on a limited budget.
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It was about him bringing Maguire on instead of Stockley. If we don't bring Stockley on when trying to play through a defence has clearly failed, what's the point of having him on the bench, or even in the squad?
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Well, as an ex player, what would you have done?
I don't mind a bit ot sideways and backwards in order to switch play and move opponents out of position but it has to be done at speed in order to a) catch them out of position and b) tire them out chasing back and forth but this is negated because we are so pedestrian about it. It is predictable and boring and plays into the opposition hands as they have plenty of time and energy to get into the correct position to steal the ball. Guess what?...... that is exactly what happened yesterday against Milwall.
Oh,we didn't help ourselves with numerous errors 5 Yard passes going behind a moving player instead of towards his movement.
Oh, oh...another blind ref to an obvious penalty I could see from the AKTE. We got those earlier in the season. That knocked some stuffing and vim out of us. Perhaps the players realised it is no use fighting against the possibility of ref pre conceived ideas?
Oh,we didn't help ourselves with numerous errors 5 Yard passes going behind a moving player instead of towards his movement.
Oh, oh...another blind ref to an obvious penalty I could see from the AKTE. We got those earlier in the season. That knocked some stuffing and vim out of us. Perhaps the players realised it is no use fighting against the possibility of ref pre conceived ideas?
Thracia
Club Owner, or wingback, depending on your view
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Yep, but we often get the revisionists on here claiming pre-AN we were all defensive and negative but now we're all swashbuckling and free on the same budget.
It's a myth. For vast swathes of the game this season, we're just as slow and dull to watch as any other recent PNE side.
Especially at home, where the game often gets bogged-down into a Defence v. Defence stalemate.
But for the first fifteen/twenty minutes we took their flat back five system apart,playing football on the floor, attacking with pace and creating three or four great chances.We then played right in to their hands slowed the game down,went sideways and backwards and punted long hopeful balls forward to a lone striker.
We let them back in to the game played to a style and system that gave them the ball back time after time and created next to nothing.
We continued to play in this style for the remaining 75 minutes or so and Millwall were more than happy for us to do so as it suited their system.