vonwright

Me too, even in the victories against Burton and Lincoln, I was sat looking at the 'front 4' and wondering if an extra body in midfield would be more useful to us. I think if we had a double pivot of 2 Bielik-types, we wouldn't need the additional body in there, but when it's Bird and Hourihane, neither are midfield destroyers so when the opposition deploys this tactic, they get overrun very easily.
I think the game where our midfield looked its best was actually Barnsley (H). Hourihane dropped deepest in the quarterback role and actually ran the game- something he's guilty of not doing often enough. Bird furthest forward, and Smith the extra man aiding transition between the 2. 
So I think midfield 3 is the answer, and a settled one personnel-wise for the rest of the season. Hourihane is always going to drift, and Bird is being instructed to push, we need someone to sit centrally and tie it all together- I hoped that'd be Fornah but we'll see...

I don’t like him as a manager, I don’t like the way that his football is often being played, resulting in us continually giving the ball to the opposition to play with; it drives me nuts. 
 
When we play football and retain possession, we are a much better side. We are capable of that but we don’t see it enough. 
 
I am not critical of him taking the job, but tactically he is outdone by others too many times. I am baffled by the decision of our sole owner to offer the job to him. 

Blimey,is Warne training them that hard?!

It's definitely too soon to smash the panic buttons. However, the way Warne sets the team up means we struggle when we're lacking squad depth - we saw it at the start of this season, we had it when we didn't rotate the squad as much as Warne would have liked last season, and we're seeing it now (6-8 players had been unavialble). It doesn't help that a significant number of signigns are injury prone or have a recent history of not playing much. 
Warne needs to trust the players on the fringes of his squad more (we said the same last season). There's no reason for players such as Ward to have just 30 minutes of football over a 4 week period when he's fully fit and other players are starting to struggle with fatigue a little bit. The use of players such as DBrown and DRobinson at the end of games needs to happen more frequently in periods when we do have a mini injury crisis as it helps keep the senior player fresher. More games for Brown earlier in the season would have meant he'd now feel comfortable playing more of a part now when we only have 1 fit forward. Instead we'll now have to rely on Collins playing full 90s or move Mendez-laing upfront and weaken ourselves on the wings.

Were you there last night? I was and I can tell you that Reading did not ‘get in our faces’. We had the freedom of the pitch for most of the first half but we played like we were trying to throw the game. Last nights result was nothing to do with how Reading played; they were garbage until they got the goal. At half time my friend and I were laughing about how poor we had been but thought that Warne would see that and change things. Imagine our surprise when he sent the same 11 back out with no change in tactics. The mark of a decent coach is that they can identify the issues and changes things accordingly; that we didn’t speaks volumes about Warne and his abilities. 
 

Or maybe get a manager/coach in that understands that a functioning balanced midfield is an alternative to endlessly lumping the ball out wide and into the box in the hope that someone will get on the end of it. Bird isn’t a bad player but is being made to look so by a coach who has no interest in playing football in any way other than his own prehistoric way.

I didn't intend to imply it's all down to Warne. Mereley, a focus on situational passing in training and working on when to make the runs and when not to will improve the success of our passing during matches. If training wasn't a factor, then why do teams bother doing it? The best passing teams in the world rehearse how they're going to pass it from back to front, so much so they can almost do it blind-folded during games. It's no different at our level - the more practice put towards something, generally the better you are at it...

No idea what the strategy is. No idea what the tactical approach is, beyond 'put out 11 "good characters", tell them to get it forward quickly, and see what they come up with'.
Eight points off automatic and heading in the wrong direction, despite the manager inheriting a more-than-decent squad, and being given plenty of latitude to sign new players. Odd, piecemeal recruitment with no long-term vision. A squad increasingly tilted towards technically limited, League One journeymen. 
Anyone questioning any of this jeered and sneered at - as if you can't really care about something unless you believe, contrary to all evidence, that everything is absolutely fine!
It isn't. It really isn't. 

No idea what the strategy is. No idea what the tactical approach is, beyond 'put out 11 "good characters", tell them to get it forward quickly, and see what they come up with'.
Eight points off automatic and heading in the wrong direction, despite the manager inheriting a more-than-decent squad, and being given plenty of latitude to sign new players. Odd, piecemeal recruitment with no long-term vision. A squad increasingly tilted towards technically limited, League One journeymen. 
Anyone questioning any of this jeered and sneered at - as if you can't really care about something unless you believe, contrary to all evidence, that everything is absolutely fine!
It isn't. It really isn't. 

Perfect is stretching it. I think they just expect us to have 1 shot on target in a league 1 match and not put in such abject performances when the players we have are better than the players most in the division have… 

No idea what the strategy is. No idea what the tactical approach is, beyond 'put out 11 "good characters", tell them to get it forward quickly, and see what they come up with'.
Eight points off automatic and heading in the wrong direction, despite the manager inheriting a more-than-decent squad, and being given plenty of latitude to sign new players. Odd, piecemeal recruitment with no long-term vision. A squad increasingly tilted towards technically limited, League One journeymen. 
Anyone questioning any of this jeered and sneered at - as if you can't really care about something unless you believe, contrary to all evidence, that everything is absolutely fine!
It isn't. It really isn't. 

No idea what the strategy is. No idea what the tactical approach is, beyond 'put out 11 "good characters", tell them to get it forward quickly, and see what they come up with'.
Eight points off automatic and heading in the wrong direction, despite the manager inheriting a more-than-decent squad, and being given plenty of latitude to sign new players. Odd, piecemeal recruitment with no long-term vision. A squad increasingly tilted towards technically limited, League One journeymen. 
Anyone questioning any of this jeered and sneered at - as if you can't really care about something unless you believe, contrary to all evidence, that everything is absolutely fine!
It isn't. It really isn't. 

No idea what the strategy is. No idea what the tactical approach is, beyond 'put out 11 "good characters", tell them to get it forward quickly, and see what they come up with'.
Eight points off automatic and heading in the wrong direction, despite the manager inheriting a more-than-decent squad, and being given plenty of latitude to sign new players. Odd, piecemeal recruitment with no long-term vision. A squad increasingly tilted towards technically limited, League One journeymen. 
Anyone questioning any of this jeered and sneered at - as if you can't really care about something unless you believe, contrary to all evidence, that everything is absolutely fine!
It isn't. It really isn't. 

No idea what the strategy is. No idea what the tactical approach is, beyond 'put out 11 "good characters", tell them to get it forward quickly, and see what they come up with'.
Eight points off automatic and heading in the wrong direction, despite the manager inheriting a more-than-decent squad, and being given plenty of latitude to sign new players. Odd, piecemeal recruitment with no long-term vision. A squad increasingly tilted towards technically limited, League One journeymen. 
Anyone questioning any of this jeered and sneered at - as if you can't really care about something unless you believe, contrary to all evidence, that everything is absolutely fine!
It isn't. It really isn't. 

No idea what the strategy is. No idea what the tactical approach is, beyond 'put out 11 "good characters", tell them to get it forward quickly, and see what they come up with'.
Eight points off automatic and heading in the wrong direction, despite the manager inheriting a more-than-decent squad, and being given plenty of latitude to sign new players. Odd, piecemeal recruitment with no long-term vision. A squad increasingly tilted towards technically limited, League One journeymen. 
Anyone questioning any of this jeered and sneered at - as if you can't really care about something unless you believe, contrary to all evidence, that everything is absolutely fine!
It isn't. It really isn't. 

Happy clappers may not be the right term because it’s naturally divisive but there was, rightly or wrongly, a significant number of posts on our good run sneering at any one who dared to question the manager or want him gone during the highs of defeats to Shrewsbury and Stevenage, as if good results masking at times sub par performances does anything to convince people who have long term doubts about the manager.
Performances being less than convincing even during good runs is a large part of why he has been questioned, certainly by me anyway.
In most games we get by because we have better players than the other team. I don’t see a huge amount of the effects of good coaching, I don’t see many tactical tweaks that gain us an edge. We look like a team who have a bigger budget than the majority of teams at this level, and not much else. I think our manager’s level is about where we are now, which worries me.
But alas he is here to stay. 

"Owing to a breach in the maximum permitted number of hyphens in a first-team squad......."

Washington won't be match fit till March providing he doesn't have a set back. Waghorn who knows. At some point isn't really helping.
Smith is proven at this level and offers something different to Collins. Whilst TJJ has potential. Not being able to play 90 minutes isn't really much help at all. 
If we signed CBT, Smith and Arblaster this month I'd think we could give it a right good go to get promoted. Strength in depth is key and being able to rotate and not weaken the side is key. Because last season we ran out of steam as we had nobody that could step in and replace any of our better players. We can't let that happen again.

Ignoring quality of performance and judging players for minutes on the pitch this season against (guessed) wages, you've got to admit our summer signings on the whole haven't been great?
John-Jules, Elder, Ward, Washington and Bradley have got to be towards the bottom of the list. Nelson and Wilson have been the exceptions, with Nyambe, Waghorn and Fornah in the middle of the pack. VIckers excluded due to being a backup keeper.

In fairness, I don’t think many would be bothered if it was a one off, or a freak result e.g their goalkeeper has the game of their life.
However it isn’t and it doesn’t inspire confidence whatsoever for the run-in. In a situation like tonight’s, you would want to see your players up for it and with a point to prove.
What are we going to do when the schedule piles up?
If any of our key starters - Wildsmith, Cashin, Nelson, Forsyth, Bird, Hourihane, Mendez Laing, Wilson or Collins - get injured or suspended, I’d be very concerned.

Trying to get the match abandoned.....

Nice one - second column (ie passes per cross) very useful in this context I think, maybe more so than the third. Thanks!
But yeah this feels intuitively right. Stevenage and us do seem quite 'crossy' in our approach.
 

With the current top 6 crosses only:

Four fairly high-profile signings at the very bottom. 
One at the very top. 
A mixed bag!

Better striker in my opinion.