duncanjwitham

If I was a player, I’d be very careful getting back on the coach to go home, the rate that Warne is throwing players under buses in this interview…

If I was a player, I’d be very careful getting back on the coach to go home, the rate that Warne is throwing players under buses in this interview…

If I was a player, I’d be very careful getting back on the coach to go home, the rate that Warne is throwing players under buses in this interview…

The thing with Cashin is, yes he's been struggling trying to do that wide-left-centre-back role, but (defensively at least) he's been struggling and still managing to get it done.  He's not been struggling and failing.  He's not made any disastrous errors, or directly cost us any goals, like other defenders have done.  He's doing the right things and that's letting him get away with it.
Long-term, his lack of height and pace will probably hold him back a bit, but you can learn to mitigate them to some degree.  I always go back to Gareth Roberts (the tiny left back we had for a while).  I know he wasn't the best player in the world or anything, but teams used to explicitly target his lack of height - they'd put a big forward out there and smash long balls at him all game. Except it never worked, because Roberts had been around the block enough to know when to drop off, when to get close to the guy, when to give the striker a nudge in the back and so on.  Cashin will learn those things too, and honestly, I think he's already well on the way.

The thing with Cashin is, yes he's been struggling trying to do that wide-left-centre-back role, but (defensively at least) he's been struggling and still managing to get it done.  He's not been struggling and failing.  He's not made any disastrous errors, or directly cost us any goals, like other defenders have done.  He's doing the right things and that's letting him get away with it.
Long-term, his lack of height and pace will probably hold him back a bit, but you can learn to mitigate them to some degree.  I always go back to Gareth Roberts (the tiny left back we had for a while).  I know he wasn't the best player in the world or anything, but teams used to explicitly target his lack of height - they'd put a big forward out there and smash long balls at him all game. Except it never worked, because Roberts had been around the block enough to know when to drop off, when to get close to the guy, when to give the striker a nudge in the back and so on.  Cashin will learn those things too, and honestly, I think he's already well on the way.

This is the average player positions from last night:

That's clearly a standard back 4.  I'm not saying Wilson didn't help out defensively or anything, but we didn't seem to be doing the thing where Niambe tucks in as a 3rd centre half and Wilson drops back to wingback.  He was playing as winger who helped out his fullback at times.

The fullbacks were *definitely* ahead of the centre halves, so 2211121? 😉

It looked more like the McClaren 4-3-3 to me, where Bryson (Sibley) was definitely pushing on more than Hughes (Bird), but they were both clearly playing in front of Eustace (Hourihane).
The key difference with a 4231 compared to 433 is the 2 sitting midfielders, which I don't think we had.  At no point was Bird's starting position alongside Hourihane, he was always more advanced than him and had license to make runs beyond the play (the first goal being the obvious example).

It looked more like the McClaren 4-3-3 to me, where Bryson (Sibley) was definitely pushing on more than Hughes (Bird), but they were both clearly playing in front of Eustace (Hourihane).
The key difference with a 4231 compared to 433 is the 2 sitting midfielders, which I don't think we had.  At no point was Bird's starting position alongside Hourihane, he was always more advanced than him and had license to make runs beyond the play (the first goal being the obvious example).

This is the average player positions from last night:

That's clearly a standard back 4.  I'm not saying Wilson didn't help out defensively or anything, but we didn't seem to be doing the thing where Niambe tucks in as a 3rd centre half and Wilson drops back to wingback.  He was playing as winger who helped out his fullback at times.

This is the average player positions from last night:

That's clearly a standard back 4.  I'm not saying Wilson didn't help out defensively or anything, but we didn't seem to be doing the thing where Niambe tucks in as a 3rd centre half and Wilson drops back to wingback.  He was playing as winger who helped out his fullback at times.

We've definitely done that at times this season, but last night it looked just like a regulation flat back 4 to me.  

This is the average player positions from last night:

That's clearly a standard back 4.  I'm not saying Wilson didn't help out defensively or anything, but we didn't seem to be doing the thing where Niambe tucks in as a 3rd centre half and Wilson drops back to wingback.  He was playing as winger who helped out his fullback at times.

Has Forsyth gone on holiday?

This is the average player positions from last night:

That's clearly a standard back 4.  I'm not saying Wilson didn't help out defensively or anything, but we didn't seem to be doing the thing where Niambe tucks in as a 3rd centre half and Wilson drops back to wingback.  He was playing as winger who helped out his fullback at times.

Literally nobody wants to know about his "magic stick" being harder than he anticipated...

This is the average player positions from last night:

That's clearly a standard back 4.  I'm not saying Wilson didn't help out defensively or anything, but we didn't seem to be doing the thing where Niambe tucks in as a 3rd centre half and Wilson drops back to wingback.  He was playing as winger who helped out his fullback at times.

I think the second thing I've highlighted (partially at least) explains the first.  We set up to counter teams playing against us, press them high, win the ball back high up the pitch etc.  The problem is that most teams don't really do that to us, not at Pride Park anyway.  They sit deep, spoil, and try and nick a goal from a set piece or something.  And we don't deal with that stuff well at all, we just seem to hang around waiting to press a passing move that never comes.  We have no real game plan that doesn't involve stopping them playing first.
So when a team does come along and try to play a bit, we look good.  But it's not going to happen often enough to get us promoted.  And I've no confidence that any of the improvements from last night will translate into the other sort of games.

Ward looked an okay signing (IMO) - I don't think he's a better winger than an on-form NML (other than being able to do it for more than 60 minutes a week) and he didn't really look particularly suited to a wingback to me.  Bradley struggled because he couldn't do the role he was signed for (the central defender in a spread back 3).  That midfield 4 was only our chosen midfield because the previous half a dozen ones he tried were disastrous.  And if pacy strikers aren't available, then don't play a system that requires one.  There are plenty of teams that don't have one and do well - Sheffield Wednesday went up with a strike force of Lee Gregory and Michael Smith last season. And beyond that, we don't even play a system that genuinely needs a pacy striker anyway - where does one fit into our apparent strategy of getting it wide and lumping crosses in?
That's not to say injuries haven't hampered us, because they have, but there's a much wider pattern of players consistently under performing, because they are being asked to do jobs they can't do, or not used in ways to get the best out of them, or not given the setup around them they need to perform well.  That persists across last years signings and this years.  And it's one of the big reasons we're struggling to perform so much.

We got in trouble at one stage for showing a replay of a dodgy penalty decision (prompting the players to crowd the ref when it was obviously a wrong call). So I assume the reason we stopped showing the live feed was related to that.
They now stop at the allotted additional time, rather than 90 (so if the ref calls for +6 minutes, they stop at 96).  So I suspect it is still a similar rule, just enforced slightly differently.

Literally nobody wants to know about his "magic stick" being harder than he anticipated...

Literally nobody wants to know about his "magic stick" being harder than he anticipated...

Literally nobody wants to know about his "magic stick" being harder than he anticipated...

Literally nobody wants to know about his "magic stick" being harder than he anticipated...

Literally nobody wants to know about his "magic stick" being harder than he anticipated...