kevinhectoring

How thats not a foul is beyond me, Leads with his elbow on Collins. Sloppy defending again though, shows our depth is crap

We need to get the ball in the box more..they won't cope with that..

Due to the injury to Hourihane, one of Bird, Knight and Sibley were always going to start.
No matter what some of you want, a lot of people (including our manager) still want to win this game and hopefully win the competition as a whole. We won't be playing anyone outside of our first team squad if we can avoid it.

Brilliant ball by McGoldrick 

Think it's a false 6 he is walking on his hands..

What an idiotic post do you have any idea how good this lot is ? 

What an idiotic post do you have any idea how good this lot is ? 

Get in....1-1
Didz with a screamer from 2 yards...

What an idiotic post do you have any idea how good this lot is ? 

What an idiotic post do you have any idea how good this lot is ? 

these Man City youngsters will have masses of talent. But they can still be bossed and bullied by seasoned pros. I think Warne had that in mind when he picked the team 

Shouldn't be too mobile at that age

Hourihane wasn't dropped, though based on overall form rather than for giving a penalty away, he possibly could have been. Knight gave a clumsy penalty away at Lincoln which led to us losing the game, so that's two mistakes - does that equal one stupid handball. 
It's a daft proposition anyway, dropping a player for one costly error. It's not as if they're a load of Claude Davises. 

Ligament damage. No idea how serious

Someone handles the ball for no reason in our own area, not under pressure, to give away the penalty that leads to us losing the game, and you don't think that should lead to being dropped? I can't think of a better reason to be dropped. I would not allow such utter stupidity if I were manager and players would need to see there must be sanctions for losing your head. 

Yes ! That whole make yourself available ethos. Put yourself in a position to receive a pass. We didn’t do enough of that .. it was more like “here I am, now make a once in 10 games raking defence splitter, avoiding the 3 players covering me” 

This is why under Rooney and LR we played lots of sideways and backwards football. Midfielders were not energetic enough and did not offer a forward pass option. It’s still a problem for us. Hourihane does not look for the ball as he should. And it’s not Max Bird’s strength.  
 
As for the long ball, if it’s all long-ball-down-the-middle then you need a Shearer or at least a Chris Martin. Which we don’t have.  We’ve been quite effective with the crossfield long ball (eg to NML, Barks also looks for it) which is less likely to lose possession. 
 
If you’ve got a balanced squad, surely mixing it up is hardest to play against 
 
 

Big Willy?

Will he know who it’s about? I doubt he’s been called Mr Osula in his entire life 

1. Most comments tend to relate to having control of the game (or not as the case may be). Long balls, to forwards to don't win the ball in the air very much is pointless as the ball ends up coming straight back and having to defend against another wave of attack, often without resetting in time.
2. The occasional long ball behind the defence is useful, but it has to be with purpose, not aimless into the corner with little chance of getting something from it.
3. A quick glance at the stats will show teams towards the bottom tend to have less of the ball than those at the top. This is shown by actually looking at the stats in more detail, where only 3 sides in the top half of the table are in the bottom 12 possession stats. Ipswich are the leaders in possession and are 2nd, whereas Morecombe are 24th in the table and 24th in the possession ranking. 
The other thing is, having possession doesn't mean you can't go long very often, just like having little of the ball doesn't mean you go long all the time. Yet, we see a similar trend. 5 out of the current top 6 are in the bottom 12 for long balls per pass attempt (Portsmouth are 13th lowest), whilst only 3 of the top 12 are in the top 12 for successful long passes per pass attempt.
You also have the belief that possession means fewer goals. However, there's a general trend of more possession = more goals. Ipswich are the obvious example, leading the charts in both, whereas Morecombe are bottom in both. Only 3 sides with less than 50% possession have scored more than 15 goals, whereas 6 with more than 50% have.
4. Since you're asking people if they want to stay in L1 for a long time or having a better chance of going up, the answer would be choosing the option which involves playing a possession based side with shorter passing.

The answer to the second question must be ‘no’ (I think there’s a separate 6 second rule that applies to the keeper).
 
Look forward to someone answering the first question. I suspect there’s no offence but that if anyone did it, the obstruction rule would be changed to cover it (don’t think it does at the moment) 

Who needs Hourihane and his match winners eh?

Based simply on the highlights, Osula looks a really good prospect. Two very well taken goals. He certainly will help push Sheff Utd’s promotion bid on after Christmas.

That's where plain stats can be a bit misleading though. Two of those shots were the penalties; one third of the remainder were from outside the area and iirc didn't trouble Wildsmith; half of them came after Collins was sent off, which is understandable as we were a player short; only 3 shots on target, including the 2nd penalty and the winning goal. Wildsmith made one save, a shot from distance that was straight at him. None before the sending off. 
I think allot of views have been distorted by the 32+6 minutes that followed the sending off. Port Vale handled that period well, DCFC didn't. We went "long" without the players to do so successfully. The game became messy, our tactics increasingly desperate. I don't think we were second best, or performing terribly before the SO : afterwards, we were, unquestionably. 

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