The Thorney issue

[Ram a lamb a ding dong]

As much as we are pleased that GT has overcome his serious injuries he most definetly is not the player he was. Yes he is still young in terms of games played but his fitness and lack of pace is a concern. I would have Hanson agead of him everday of the week at least until he gets 100% fit.

[Van der MoodHoover]

The team as a whole seem less fit that for the last couple of seasons. They look to be blowing after about 60-70 mins. This suggests (obviously I don't know) that our conditioning has not been as good.

Couple that with George's occasional niggles this season and it is perhaps not surprising that he doesn't look back to his very best - his halcyon period with us was a run of what 12 or 13 games after he had benen laid off for some months?

[Will Hughes Hair]

Still think George is a class act.  Admitted it wasn't his best game on Saturday (but he wasn't alone on that score), but what do we expect when he's been out for the best part of a month?

Happy with him getting an hour and happy to see him taken off.  The more baffling part for me was not bringing Hanson on to replace him.  At that point we had started the second half relatively well, but after the substitutions we completely lost the midfield battle and the result became inevitable.

[Carl Sagan]

Had George stayed fit I was certain we'd be promoted last season and it was the cruellest of blows to lose him in that first pre-season friendly. What this season has shown is that it takes a really long time to get over an injury like that, which also should colour our expectations over the return of Will and Fozzy.

If Thorne gets to the end of the season unscathed and has another good pre-season I think he'll be much closer to the player he was. As has been said, everybody needs to get fitter, but that's a very hard thing to do at this point in the season. We do only have 4 games in March compared with 7 in April, so maybe it's possible. I was surprised when the players were doing ball work from day one of pre-season and I suspect that's come back to haunt us.

[Van der MoodHoover]

1 hour ago, Carl Sagan said:

Had George stayed fit I was certain we'd be promoted last season and it was the cruellest of blows to lose him in that first pre-season friendly. What this season has shown is that it takes a really long time to get over an injury like that, which also should colour our expectations over the return of Will and Fozzy.

If Thorne gets to the end of the season unscathed and has another good pre-season I think he'll be much closer to the player he was. As has been said, everybody needs to get fitter, but that's a very hard thing to do at this point in the season. We do only have 4 games in March compared with 7 in April, so maybe it's possible. I was surprised when the players were doing no work from day one of pre-season and I suspect that's come back to haunt us.

Fixed that Carl

[Anag Ram]

On Saturday we had George patrolling DM and Butterfield, Hendrick and Johnson all coming back to him too.

This left Martin and Russell rather isolated.

The tone of our play is set by the speed at which we play from the back and at present we are playing a lot of sideways stuff which illustrates how reluctant players are to take responsibility.

This is the key area where we miss Will who keeps the ball flowing.

GT is easing himself back and it shows but he is a good player and his team mates need to step up to compensate for his lack of mobility.

[Seth's left foot]

Thorne will be back to his best after some more training and only having weekly games in March will do him good. I agree that Hanson should've replaced him at Wolves,square pegs and that...