TuffLuff

Firstly, what an enjoyable game of football. Was a pleasure to see Derby as a part of that and matched a very good team at the top. Pompey will win this league, we can take confidence from our performance tonight into the last four matches.
My only gripe, with my derby bias, is that I felt they got a few favourable decisions in that 10-15 minutes before they scored which helped peg us back into our own half and made us get deeper and deeper. But also, we didn’t help ourselves and seemed less and less comfortable. You didn’t think with 30 mins to go we could defend like we were and hold out because we were loosing shape too often and not getting the ball into their half for any length of time. 
Aside that, I can’t tell you one player who I thought played poorly and Warne got his tactics spot on. I can’t put it simpler.
I’ve said a few times, one thing Warne has done really well this season is that every player has contributed to a key moment this season. Tonight was Joe Ward’s turn, he’s a big game player and he showed it tonight. Still think Blackett-Taylor may yet still get his before the season is out.
Thought it was Adams best game, another who thrives to the occasion. Smith is maybe our most underrated player.
Finally, four great goals. I don’t think we can analyse the ones we conceaded too much and neither can pompey with ours. Both sides have a bit of a weakness at full back and both sides were able to take advantage.
 

They have no idea who they are signing these days…

Bit of fun, but they put up a quote attributed to ‘fan of socialism’ Brian Clough yesterday as a tribute on his birthday. I mean I’m not saying there is a capitalist agenda behind doing this but you can see for yourself here:
Anyway, they have had a special guest at the City Ground today…

Yes I thought the MM bit was most interesting, I do hope we do end up hearing a bit more from his side. Although the idea he was sceptical yet still willingness to work with Kirchner to agree a sale of his club seems a bit of a stretch to me. 
I’ve got to be honest I just don’t think it’s a great article though. There’s a pretty obvious ‘joining of dots’ here that isn’t addressed in that whether its the supporters groups, MM, Garry Cook, The EFL, the Administrators or Stretford , none of them take responsibility for what they nearly did to Derby County. No one goes ‘we got this wrong and we added to the months of limbo for Derby County fans who didn’t know whether they would have a club by the of the season’, and I think it borders on disgraceful from those who fell for Kirchner hook, line and sinker and they all seemingly pop up in this article without much criticism. It’s also poor that the article has no reference to the fans and what we were going through because of Kirchner’s actions
I also find it poor that supposedly Preston’s board are unsure about Kirchner but seemingly do not raise any alarm bells to the EFL. If you want to see a part of what’s wrong with football then I think that’s a good example. 
Like most football journalism today, it about scratches the surface on a subject but there is zero depth.

Good post, and if I may say it’s the type of content I’m here for and we don’t see enough on here!
What id say is that I think over the course of a season you are somewhat expected to drop points away from home where teams fancy their chances of an upset. Also you can expect a bit of leggyness/mental exhaustion after a big win like the Bolton one, it’s a really difficult league to find consistency in and I’d say all teams have suffered from that and hence it’s so close at the top. 
 
What’s becoming more of an issue I think is the points dropped at home. There’s been atleast 6-9 points, and that’s being kind, that we dropped. A better home record and you can excuse a trip like Saturday as one of those days and move on.

I don’t think it’s about taking the blame because that indicates that someone wasn’t working with good intentions, and I think at that point almost everyone was. It wasn’t one person/organisations fault what was happening with Kirchner, but you have to accept some responsibility for how it went wrong. That’s what becomes apparent to me when reading that article, they have spoken to a lot of people and none seemingly took any responsibility, the writers didnt question them on it and they didn’t cotton on to the idea that they all played a part in getting Kirchner so far down the line. The people don’t take responsibility and the writers don’t make them take responsibility when it’s obvious when reading that they should. 
My point about Preston isn’t that they did anything wrong particularly, but more that its similar to what is being said by @therealhantsram about MM, it’s ok for people to say they smelt a rat with Kirchner but at the time they didn’t raise any alarm bells with the EFL. It should be in Preston’s interest as much as Morris’ interest to declare to the EFL that they had doubts over Kirchner’s suitability. A Preston source calls Kirchner a tyre kicker in the article, well again they contributed to that tyre kicking when it came to Derby County! The article again, in my opinion, kinda shows an issue that helped Kirchner get further down the line but doesn’t delve further into the significance of it. Or both the Preston source and MM’s source are saving face which should be  rebutted in print, because they were both willing to try and sell to him!
The article brings up a lot of issues but doesn’t give them any significance essentially.
 
 

Yes I thought the MM bit was most interesting, I do hope we do end up hearing a bit more from his side. Although the idea he was sceptical yet still willingness to work with Kirchner to agree a sale of his club seems a bit of a stretch to me. 
I’ve got to be honest I just don’t think it’s a great article though. There’s a pretty obvious ‘joining of dots’ here that isn’t addressed in that whether its the supporters groups, MM, Garry Cook, The EFL, the Administrators or Stretford , none of them take responsibility for what they nearly did to Derby County. No one goes ‘we got this wrong and we added to the months of limbo for Derby County fans who didn’t know whether they would have a club by the of the season’, and I think it borders on disgraceful from those who fell for Kirchner hook, line and sinker and they all seemingly pop up in this article without much criticism. It’s also poor that the article has no reference to the fans and what we were going through because of Kirchner’s actions
I also find it poor that supposedly Preston’s board are unsure about Kirchner but seemingly do not raise any alarm bells to the EFL. If you want to see a part of what’s wrong with football then I think that’s a good example. 
Like most football journalism today, it about scratches the surface on a subject but there is zero depth.

I don’t think it’s about taking the blame because that indicates that someone wasn’t working with good intentions, and I think at that point almost everyone was. It wasn’t one person/organisations fault what was happening with Kirchner, but you have to accept some responsibility for how it went wrong. That’s what becomes apparent to me when reading that article, they have spoken to a lot of people and none seemingly took any responsibility, the writers didnt question them on it and they didn’t cotton on to the idea that they all played a part in getting Kirchner so far down the line. The people don’t take responsibility and the writers don’t make them take responsibility when it’s obvious when reading that they should. 
My point about Preston isn’t that they did anything wrong particularly, but more that its similar to what is being said by @therealhantsram about MM, it’s ok for people to say they smelt a rat with Kirchner but at the time they didn’t raise any alarm bells with the EFL. It should be in Preston’s interest as much as Morris’ interest to declare to the EFL that they had doubts over Kirchner’s suitability. A Preston source calls Kirchner a tyre kicker in the article, well again they contributed to that tyre kicking when it came to Derby County! The article again, in my opinion, kinda shows an issue that helped Kirchner get further down the line but doesn’t delve further into the significance of it. Or both the Preston source and MM’s source are saving face which should be  rebutted in print, because they were both willing to try and sell to him!
The article brings up a lot of issues but doesn’t give them any significance essentially.
 
 

Yes I thought the MM bit was most interesting, I do hope we do end up hearing a bit more from his side. Although the idea he was sceptical yet still willingness to work with Kirchner to agree a sale of his club seems a bit of a stretch to me. 
I’ve got to be honest I just don’t think it’s a great article though. There’s a pretty obvious ‘joining of dots’ here that isn’t addressed in that whether its the supporters groups, MM, Garry Cook, The EFL, the Administrators or Stretford , none of them take responsibility for what they nearly did to Derby County. No one goes ‘we got this wrong and we added to the months of limbo for Derby County fans who didn’t know whether they would have a club by the of the season’, and I think it borders on disgraceful from those who fell for Kirchner hook, line and sinker and they all seemingly pop up in this article without much criticism. It’s also poor that the article has no reference to the fans and what we were going through because of Kirchner’s actions
I also find it poor that supposedly Preston’s board are unsure about Kirchner but seemingly do not raise any alarm bells to the EFL. If you want to see a part of what’s wrong with football then I think that’s a good example. 
Like most football journalism today, it about scratches the surface on a subject but there is zero depth.

Yes I thought the MM bit was most interesting, I do hope we do end up hearing a bit more from his side. Although the idea he was sceptical yet still willingness to work with Kirchner to agree a sale of his club seems a bit of a stretch to me. 
I’ve got to be honest I just don’t think it’s a great article though. There’s a pretty obvious ‘joining of dots’ here that isn’t addressed in that whether its the supporters groups, MM, Garry Cook, The EFL, the Administrators or Stretford , none of them take responsibility for what they nearly did to Derby County. No one goes ‘we got this wrong and we added to the months of limbo for Derby County fans who didn’t know whether they would have a club by the of the season’, and I think it borders on disgraceful from those who fell for Kirchner hook, line and sinker and they all seemingly pop up in this article without much criticism. It’s also poor that the article has no reference to the fans and what we were going through because of Kirchner’s actions
I also find it poor that supposedly Preston’s board are unsure about Kirchner but seemingly do not raise any alarm bells to the EFL. If you want to see a part of what’s wrong with football then I think that’s a good example. 
Like most football journalism today, it about scratches the surface on a subject but there is zero depth.

I've never subscribed to The Athletic but they do send me emails.
This link allowed me to see the full article:
The $25m fraudster who came so close to buying an English football club

The one thing I’ll say re:Hourihane is that it did surprise me to see him get so much flack for a performance where I thought he was one of our more ok players, compared to Adams and NML who I thought kept losing the ball in key positions. Or say someone like Wilson who put in a lot of crosses but a lot fell to the heads of their defenders. It may have been an issue with how they were set up. Waghorn kept coming deep, NML was too central at times and in Thompsons space etc, which probably comes with having to play an unsettled side due to injuries. 
I get the Hourihane criticisms and given out enough of them over the last two seasons, but I didn’t think after Saturday he quite deserves the criticism he got over a few others.
To think, I clicked on this to see if there was a video of Bradley’s incident!

It’s taken me almost two seasons of us being in League One, and ruminating over the last couple of days on what happened in the Northampton game and others we have lost, to finally twig what being in L1 means. Before this I was baffled when people spoke of different types of football being played in different leagues, thinking it shouldn’t matter what style of football you play, whatever league you’re in, as the ‘better’ team will mostly win. Just play your own game and good will conquer evil, as such, but this doesn't seem to always be the case.
In ‘The Numbers Game’ book by Anderson and Sally, a passage about Tony Pullis stuck with me, concerning his tactics as manager of Stoke. In the PL in 10/11 the ball was in play an average of 62.39 minutes. For Stoke, this figure was 58.52 minutes. For Man U, it was 66.58 minutes. So, Stoke had the ball in play for 8 fewer minutes per match than Man U.
Pullis knew Stoke only really had possession when the opposition put the ball out of play, so he maximised this time and worked on set pieces.
Long throws by one Rory Delap were an extension of this, with the time taken to retrieve the ball, gather it in his hands, dry it with a towel, then throw it long, the clock ticking down the whole time.
Of course there are new laws of the game to try to limit such time wasting, with multiball use, the ban on towels, 30 secs off the pitch if a physio used for treatment, more added time used etc.
However, what we have seen in L1 is an attempt to circumnavigate this, with players going down as if seriously injured, the ref stops play, the clock ticks away. As the laws have changed, the feigning of injury seems to be the new time wasting tactic. I recall that in the first 3 minutes of the second half on Saturday, they had players down requiring a stoppage 3 times, and this set the tone for the half.
Then the mascot fiasco at Northampton. Using a mascot to delay giving the ball to our player, then to try and wind them up, just shows what their tactics were. They weren’t to play football, but to waste time and aggravate our players, that worked a treat and culminated with the sending off on Bradley. Job done.
The mascot activity was reported by the media as being hilarious, but I do wonder if in a key game for us at home Rammie kept the ball from being retrieved by the opposition whether the referee and EFL would find it so funny. Should L1 really be such a pantomime?
These things didn’t happen spontaneously or by accident, they were a concerted effort to stop us playing football and to use anti-football to win, and they worked.
Not that I necessarily consider us to be the Man City of L1, but it feels like the cliché of when teams try to play football against MC they come unstuck, however deploying other tactics rather than playing MC at their own game can work.
So… the point of all these ramblings… how can we beat teams who know they can’t beat us playing football, but can beat us by employing the ‘dark arts’?
My suggestions are:
1) There should be a DCFC member of staff specifically tasked during a game with timing how long during a half has been lost to time wasting tactics such as players going down either requiring treatment or not, that seems to be the de facto new method of running the clock down as is employed in particular in the second half of games. This info should be relayed to PW, who, if we are chasing a game, could then put pressure on the 4th official to liaise with the referee so at least a semblance of this decent amount of time is added on before the board is put up.
2) The players need desensitising to being aggravated by opposition wind up and time wasting activities, and leave it to the management staff to deal with this as above. The more they argue with the referee, the more the clock ticks down and they aren’t playing football.
Unless we learn how to deal with such tactics by the ‘lesser’ teams in L1, I feel we are always going to struggle against them as it causes our play to become disjointed and haphazard. It feels like the marginal gains scenario often quoted in sport, and is an aspect we don’t obviously seem to be addressing.
Hopefully this isn’t news to PW and some consideration is being given how to handle these games that aren’t necessarily being won on pure footballing terms.

The one thing I’ll say re:Hourihane is that it did surprise me to see him get so much flack for a performance where I thought he was one of our more ok players, compared to Adams and NML who I thought kept losing the ball in key positions. Or say someone like Wilson who put in a lot of crosses but a lot fell to the heads of their defenders. It may have been an issue with how they were set up. Waghorn kept coming deep, NML was too central at times and in Thompsons space etc, which probably comes with having to play an unsettled side due to injuries. 
I get the Hourihane criticisms and given out enough of them over the last two seasons, but I didn’t think after Saturday he quite deserves the criticism he got over a few others.
To think, I clicked on this to see if there was a video of Bradley’s incident!

Finally in the company he deserves

Finally in the company he deserves

The one thing I’ll say re:Hourihane is that it did surprise me to see him get so much flack for a performance where I thought he was one of our more ok players, compared to Adams and NML who I thought kept losing the ball in key positions. Or say someone like Wilson who put in a lot of crosses but a lot fell to the heads of their defenders. It may have been an issue with how they were set up. Waghorn kept coming deep, NML was too central at times and in Thompsons space etc, which probably comes with having to play an unsettled side due to injuries. 
I get the Hourihane criticisms and given out enough of them over the last two seasons, but I didn’t think after Saturday he quite deserves the criticism he got over a few others.
To think, I clicked on this to see if there was a video of Bradley’s incident!

The one thing I’ll say re:Hourihane is that it did surprise me to see him get so much flack for a performance where I thought he was one of our more ok players, compared to Adams and NML who I thought kept losing the ball in key positions. Or say someone like Wilson who put in a lot of crosses but a lot fell to the heads of their defenders. It may have been an issue with how they were set up. Waghorn kept coming deep, NML was too central at times and in Thompsons space etc, which probably comes with having to play an unsettled side due to injuries. 
I get the Hourihane criticisms and given out enough of them over the last two seasons, but I didn’t think after Saturday he quite deserves the criticism he got over a few others.
To think, I clicked on this to see if there was a video of Bradley’s incident!

Bit of fun, but they put up a quote attributed to ‘fan of socialism’ Brian Clough yesterday as a tribute on his birthday. I mean I’m not saying there is a capitalist agenda behind doing this but you can see for yourself here:
Anyway, they have had a special guest at the City Ground today…

Hourihane has made a career out of scoring important goals out of nothing, or at least providing assists. We are at a time of the season we need someone who can score important goals out of nothing and we are a side with depleted attacking options.
 
Warne has managed Hourihane well this season and there’s enough time for him to provide more than he already has.

Bit of fun, but they put up a quote attributed to ‘fan of socialism’ Brian Clough yesterday as a tribute on his birthday. I mean I’m not saying there is a capitalist agenda behind doing this but you can see for yourself here:
Anyway, they have had a special guest at the City Ground today…

Hourihane has made a career out of scoring important goals out of nothing, or at least providing assists. We are at a time of the season we need someone who can score important goals out of nothing and we are a side with depleted attacking options.
 
Warne has managed Hourihane well this season and there’s enough time for him to provide more than he already has.

They have no idea who they are signing these days…

"Rebel City" FFS
😂

Bit of fun, but they put up a quote attributed to ‘fan of socialism’ Brian Clough yesterday as a tribute on his birthday. I mean I’m not saying there is a capitalist agenda behind doing this but you can see for yourself here:
Anyway, they have had a special guest at the City Ground today…