The Voice - Match preview Bradford City vs Crewe Alexandra Saturday 27 August @ 3:00pm

It wasn’t very good, I won’t single players out as it was one of those performances where nothing clicked. Lack of movement when we had the ball, slow passing and terrible crossing around.

First half wasn’t too bad, not entertaining but we out played them and Banks had a few good efforts, when we’ve been down on our luck I’ve seen teams score very similar.

Second half the changes didn’t work, but I respect the effort to change things.

I’ve cooled off since earlier, looking for positives we’ve still yet to concede at home in the league and don’t look like doing. Obviously negatives as well, we need to play the ball in the final third much quicker.

The boos at full time were ott imo.

Onto next week, need 3 points.

 

To be fair to Halliday, he overlapped Banks on several occasions and wasn't used. Banks was bright and he was our only threat, but he's a bit one dimensional, always wanting to cut in and shoot with his left foot. Sometimes he needs to vary it a bit and when Halliday is running beyond him, use him.

 

I think we should get someone in next week then.

 

Not the most entertaining afternoon, that’s for sure. We need to be quicker moving the ball forward - lots have said it. Looks like lots of teams will sit in from the start and we simply have to find a way to move them around quicker to create spaces. It’s all a bit too predictable. On positive note, a clean sheet and Lewis’ distribution was really good at times.

 

Superbly put.

 

i was surprised Hughes didn’t switch the wide men over for 15 mins. Banks barely got on the ball second half and Young kept getting it on left but kept coming inside and didn’t whip in many, if any successful balls into the box. I think he might have won a few corners.

I can understand Hughes likes Banks cutting in - he smacked the bar and looked dangerous doing so first half, but I just thought it might have been worth rolling the dice in that second half, with Oliver on, to try open up a route to get him involved.

 

I see you're living up to your name

 

I don't understand the criticism.

Honestly, I kind of hate our fans.

The levels of expectation are moronic.

I feel like we could go undefeated at home all season and some would bemoan and boo draws.

 

This is the kind of breakdown I expect from Man City fans after every game they don't win.

I'm not in any kind of agreement with you, to be honest.

We were the best team today and a lick of paint away from another win.

Totally unrealistic in my view. What are we trying to prove, that we recognise it could be better? Of course it could, it's L2 football played by L2 footballers.

 

We were shite

 

I guess we lost then.

But I don't remember us losing, so its weird to me.

 

Young looked scared stiff to make a mistake which is a concern.

 

You can not lose a game and still be shite.
As I said before we could be still playing until Tuesday and we wouldn’t have scored.

We we slow in build up.
Forwards were not creative
Crossing was poor.

We were playing at home and it’s up to us to set the tempo.

Shite!

 

He was shite.

 

Cause for optimism perhaps but the key to whether or not these provide useful omens would be to consider their performances. I remember Nigel Clough saying that Mansfield had been playing very well but just hadn't been getting the rub of the green. If we'd been playing well I'd feel more optimistic. Even if we'd bagged a scruffy one nil win courtesy of a late penalty I wouldn't feel any different. Its not the results that bother me as much as the performances at this stage. I agree with you later on your post mind. I can't see us conceding many this season. I agree we'll probably end up as the leagues draw specialists and based on what I've seen so far, our season will be over by the end of March.

 

See, I think we'll win as many as we draw and lose fewer.

Let's say 18 wins, 18 draws, 10 defeats approx.

I find it harder to choose the defeats than the wins.

That's 72 points.

Naturally, if we improve, we'll convert some of those draws into wins.

We should be aiming for around 80 points. But as I say, I think we'll draw a lot.

Season over by March? Nah. More likely down to the wire, be that for autos (higher estimate) or play offs (lower estimate).

 

You could quite easily go undefeated at home all season and get relegated. What should are levels of expectation be? Should we expect play offs? I don't think that's unreasonable. If we perform like that every week, we'll be well out of reach of the play offs. We never looked dangerous.

 

You could draw every game at home and walk the league too, but who cares about hypotheticals that won't come to pass?

If you want the math, it's 23 at home + 69 away, a nice haul of 92 points.

My expectations are the same as yours, I expect play offs. I haven't seen anything that tells me we won't make them.

Two last minute defeats, a couple of draws we should have won (including today if we get a pen or Banks hits the net instead of the bar), and boom. We're up there.

Bottom line is, performances are good, we're consistently the better team, the better chances are falling to us, and we haven't hit our stride.

Every season I feel I make the same points - our form, results wise, is temporary. Our form, performance wise, is likely to be more important. If we were getting outplayed and winning, I don't care what the Gary Neville-esque clichés say, that's going to come to an end. If we're the better team most games but not winning, that will correct itself in the long run.

Overanalyzing individual games is fine if you don't believe in the methodology. Go for it. But I see little issue with the methodology apart from it gets a bit predictable at times, but still: are we getting thumped because we're predictably lumping crosses in? No.

So what's the issue?

 

I don't think we were the better team today though. Crewe had a game plan to get a point and they managed it very easily. We didn't create a single chance that would muster an expected goal. Don't assume that our possession and territory was any indication that we were dominant. The game panned out exactly how Crewe wanted it to. If I'm going to draw any positives its that away from home we may have more joy. We could play that game today 10 times and maybe win once or twice. I wouldn't knock the side. I think we are well organised and technically we did alright but I guarantee that replicating that performance across the season will leave us 10 points off the play offs. Nothing I saw today gave me optimism for any more than that. Let's see how we get on next week!

 

For the record I totally agree. It's 100% about performances rather than results which is why today has left me feeling a bit dejected about what's to come.