duncanjwitham

Just now, kash_a_ram_a_ding_dong said:

He runs around a lot...but he has lime green jelly where his brain should be.

The thing is, if you get a bunch of balls to him in the box, he'll stick enough of them away to justify his position in the team (as he did in the first half, by the sounds of it).  If you ask him to do anything else, the rest of his game (work-rate etc aside) is pretty dire.   We don't do anywhere near enough of the first thing, and do loads of the second.

2 minutes ago, TomG said:

It appears that Tuesday was yet another 'false dawn'!

I for one am truly shocked that a glorified friendly, against a reserve team, didn't turn out to be an adequate predictor of future performances 🤷‍♂️

1 minute ago, oodledoodle said:

Well, Wildsmith is in goal. I'll let someone else explain the rest.

I think it's basically this...

Embleton injured already though…

To answer my own question…

2 minutes ago, jameso said:

I'm guessing not 3-5-2 with NML as RWB because surely after Tuesday that would guarantee Wilson a start (?)

I’m assuming Wilson is just being rested. He’s been out a month or so, so starting 2 games in 4 days is not worth the risk.  
 

Is Vickers injured? I was expecting him to start mid-week, and he’s not even on the bench again today.

1 minute ago, Kokosnuss said:

We haven't got all day to list and evaluate them all (well I certainly haven't, can't speak for anyone else) but bloody hell do we really need to keep covering old ground and making useless comparisons?

14 minutes ago, Kokosnuss said:

Painting the team last night as our reserves is funny.

Nah, you can tell they were our reserves because we made so many changes, and thankfully all the players we bought back from injury really made a difference.  Hope that helps 👍 🙄

3 minutes ago, McMuffin said:

Nyambe?

Nah, we're selling hoodies in the club shop now. The hoods are extra large so you can pull them over your eyes during matches,

8 minutes ago, Andicis said:

We're in a similar sort of position, if you were willing to give him time in the previous poll there is little reason as to why you wouldn't now, it's just football fans being typically reactionary and I believe that if the poll was run after 2-3 positive results it'd flip right back again. Doesn't prove a lot.

I don't think it's really results that are driving this though, it's performances.  I suspect a fair few people were of the mind that we had 2 clear weeks to work on stuff, try get some pattern of play into place or something, and then we served up a performance that was as flat and disjointed as anything we've seen so far.  If people can see signs of things getting better they'll get behind the team, but there's just nothing, and a lucky 3 points last weekend, or against Bolton wouldn't have changed that for many (IMO anyway).

4 minutes ago, Srg said:

His stats are decent because he takes every set piece. His open play stats are average at best. Before he went off injured on Saturday, he must have aimlessly hooked balls over his head on the stretch 4 or 5 times and also put one of the lamest tackles in in the middle of the pitch - and no, this wasn't Warne's fault, it's because his legs have gone and he can't move well enough.

He's just an example though.

He's clearly being told to play those kind of balls though, the same with Cashin and the big diagonals.  They weren't really playing them at all when Rosenior was in charge, and they started almost as soon as Warne got here.  Whether it's exactly what Warne wants or not is open to debate, but it's pretty clear (to me anyway) that this is how the players are interpreting what they are being told.

He was obviously signed to sit in the base of a 4231 alongside Bird, where his lack of mobility wasn't as much of an issue.  It's only because Warne wants the entire team doing death-sprints between both boxes, that his lack of mobility gets exposed.  For what it's worth, I think with him and Bird in there under Rosenior, we had the same set of issues as when we played Rooney and Bird there - in games where we had lots of the ball and they could just stroll around and play passes it worked well, but in the more frantic games, they weren't mobile enough (as a pair) to deal with it.  But we never really got to see how Rosenior would have adjusted to deal with that because he was moved on so quickly.

21 minutes ago, G STAR RAM said:

Well if he played like that at Rotherham and got promoted 3 times from this division, would that not seem to say otherwise?

I’d say “we aren’t getting the best out of these players” is the relevant bit. I certainly don’t see this particular bunch of players winning enough games purely based on running around and hoping someone does something.  Maybe the squad he had at Rotherham were good enough at the running around bit that the rest didn’t matter, I don’t know, I didn’t really watch enough of them (bar when they played us).   Whatever he was doing certainly didn’t seem to work at championship level though.

WhoScored's automatic match summary thingy seems to have us figured out too:

48 minutes ago, ollycutts1982 said:

I guess I'm just hoping that with the return of some of the injured players we might have an added dimension. If Sibs can hit some kind of form (though I have been saying this for the past 3 years) and Barks can start to perform we might stumble on a formula. I say stumble as I am not confident Warne can figure it out. I don't know where Ward fits in if we continue to play a back 4. Maybe a little more advanced. NML looks devoid of any confidence or ideas. When was the last time we saw him knock it past a player utilise his pace? How long can we use - it's early days, injuries, fitness and tough fixtures as excuses.

We definitely looked a bit better on Saturday with Sibley and Barkhuizen on, and we'll probably look even better with Ward, Bird etc back and everyone fully fit (if that ever happens).  But IMO it's still just papering over the cracks.  We aren't setting to get the best out of these players, we don't seem to have a coherent game-plan, it's all just run around a lot and hope somebody does something good. And that's not a recipe for consistently getting the results you need to get out of this league. 

10 minutes ago, Chris_Martin said:

is the whole team not completely ineffective?

Fair point, but NML has certainly been better since he's been back on the right.

23 minutes ago, FlyBritishMidland said:

Administration and points deductions were a symptom.  The cause was constantly changing managers - sacked or not - with no thought, continuity, changing styles and throwing money at it with huge fees, wages, etc.

That's my take on it too.  The issue with applying it to Warne, is that do we really think the squad we have now is really a Warne squad?  If we went and put say Rosenior back in charge (not suggesting this, he's just a convenient recent name), would we need to make more or less signings to get the squad to how he wanted it than we think Warne is going to have to make?  I definitely think a decent manager could get this bunch playing a much better brand of football pretty quickly without any signings.

And given the make-up of the squad (mostly free transfers, many out of contract in a year or 2), the actual cost of changing the squad to suit a manager is much less than when they were all £5m players on 5 year contracts.

3 minutes ago, G STAR RAM said:

Id be interested (but not sure where to find) the stats on long balls.

Other than the occasional punt from Cashin, Nelson and Forsyth, I don't think we actually play long balls.

I think we just play football at a chaotic speed which often leads to passes going astray.

Happy to be proven wrong with official stats though.

It's not long ball in the sense of hoofing it to a big man up front.  It's the aimless balls over the top and the forced forward passes to nobody that really kill us.  It's like every pass just has to go forward, even if there's no one there to get on it, and it feels like 90% of the time they're just giveaways.

23 minutes ago, PistoldPete said:

Isn't Fozzy our left back?

He played left back in the 4, then moved to the centre of the 3 when we went to a back 5.  

I can understand the logic of say taking a striker off and dropping a 3rd centre half in the middle of your existing back 4, but when you're moving half the defence around to make the switch, it can't be a good idea.

38 minutes ago, Chris_Martin said:

if the entire playing style hinges on ward, then theres something not right

Not to mention, Ward plays in exactly the same position as NML, who's been a lot better since he moved back out wide.  If Ward comes back, is NML going to end up stuck in that weird inside left position again, where he was completely ineffective?

If cinema has taught me anything, it’s that getting into a fight with Tyler Durden only leads to bad, bad things.  Just remember everyone, he doesn’t really exist, ignore the voices in your head and he will go away 😉.

Just now, bcnram said:

I am sure the players (or majority of them) are very capable. I think they are just confused by what this manager is trying to do. I am of the opinion that the sooner he goes the better it is for the club. 

Oh yeah, I’m sure there’s the core of a more than decent side in what we’ve got. But Hourihane is not a box to box midfielder, Elder is not a wingback, Bradley is not a mobile centre half etc etc.

11 minutes ago, SSD said:

I think with LR at least you could see the improvements and progress within a short space of time, in terms of entertainment and creating good chances.

I’m sure I’ve posted this before, but the thing for me is that it’s obvious how you turn that Rosenior side into a really good side. There’s a bunch of stuff you need to do like 5% or 10% better than we were doing (move the ball quicker, be more clinical in the final third, cut out a few backwards passes when we’ve already broken the lines etc), but that’s basically it.  You don’t need to radically change anything.  Obviously actually doing it in practice might be another matter, but it’s clear *what* needs doing.

But as to how you get this bunch of players into a side like Warne’s Rotherham, I just have no clue.  We seem a million miles away from it.  Barely any of the players, including the ones we’ve signed this season, seem capable of it.

4 minutes ago, alram said:

My biggest worry is our record against top half teams under warne is shambolic, I would love to know our record top half v bottom half under warne.

 

It’s impossible to get out this league without beating top half teams regularly

It’s more of a case of strugglIng against the teams above us in the league, and doing okay against the teams below us.  The problem is, the number of teams in the first group seems to be expanding at a slightly alarming rate.

10 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

He just got in Sibley's way half of the time!

But with instructions so vague... Are there any tactics at all?

We certainly don’t seem to be trying to actually change anything with all these subs, just get fresh legs on to do the same thing the last guy was doing., whatever that was supposed to be.

Just now, enachops said:

I struggled to understand our formation in the first half. Was it a 3 or a 4 at the back? If it was a 4 which it seemed it was on occasions, where the hell was Elder playing? I struggled to understand his role all afternoon. If it was a 3, Elder and Smith have to be the worst 2 wingbacks going forward I’ve seen. They made  Richard Jackson and Paul Boertien look like Carlos and Cafu for Brazil. Very odd tactics today.

Thought Sibley did well when he came on, linked well down the left. Embleton looked like he couldn’t run, very one paced. Collins did well but drifts to the left too much. Washington is terrible. Despite this, we came closest first half. A point probably fair. Thought the ref was decent, but linesman was awful.

It was a flat 442 for most of the game, with Elder left wing. We switched to a back 5 after we scored.