Pre-Season 2024/25

I didn't bother with Altrincham instead choosing to take in the Sunderland Marseille friendly.
Excellent game from a neutral perspective.
Good goals and skill on show Infront of around 3,000 spectators.
Final result 2-2

 

Haven't posted all summer as I don’t see the point in speculating before the start of the season. But now we're a week away here are my thoughts.
Goalkeeper: Walker (Doyle, Hadi)
RWB: Halliday (Johnson, Gilliead)
RCB: Baldwin (Johnson).
CB: Byrne (Stubbs)
LCB: Kelly (Shepherd, Richards)
LWB: Wright (Richards, Gilliead)
CCM: Smallwood (Gilliead, Pattison, Sarcevic)
ATM: Pattison, Sarcevic, Pointon, Walker, Odour
F: Cook, Oliver, Kavanagh, Smith, Young.

That seems a pretty good squad to me. We're covered everywhere to cope with injuries and suspensions. The potential problems are if the LWB options prove a weakness or the defence proves to be as weak as some suspect. But I thought it looked just like normal against Sunderland and only conceded when we were disorganised by the substitutions. I'm pretty sure we'll start with Cook and Kavanagh up front and with Smallwood at DM so that just leaves two spots at AMF. I can't see that he'll leave out Sarcevic so that leaves one and on his pre season form that would be Pattison. But then we're leaving out Pointon and Walker who were such a feature of our late season good form. I wonder if Walker's blotted his copybook a bit in the contract negotiations and will only be used as and when given his injury record.
So, a guess at our starting line up next Saturday would be
Walker
Halliday, Baldwin, Byrne, Kelly, Wright
Sarcevic, Smallwood, Pattison
Cook, Kavanagh

For what it's worth I'm in the optimistic side, and I'm far from a happy clapper.

 

Sorry if it’s been asked but how did shepherd do?

 

He didn't have much to do, so difficult to comment.

He slightly misjudged one high though ball, but had enough pace to correct that pretty quickly. Looks a unit as well.

 

From our matches, what are our strengths? (Meaning not on paper). How would we "give it a good go"?. I'd love it if your scenario came true BTW! Maybe GA has some mastermind strategy to not give away any secrets in pre-season and then unleash them all next week. Seems unlikely though.

 

It’s almost impossible to give secrets away when we had 18 different players on the grass in 90 mins and a bench bigger than the Conservatives . Ridiculous to gain anything from the game other than another step in fitness .

 

Well I believe they announced 480-ish Bradford fans, quite a few puzzled faces behind the goal as there looked to be significantly more than that. Maybe the cash turnstiles had a sway on that figure….

We didn’t play out much from the back, Sam Walker was pumping the balls up with ease, I do like Walker, commands his area and constantly shouts at his back line

I don’t usually read anything into pre season friendlies, but we need to look more interested and be sharper. I only recall 3 tame efforts on target! On the whole we were fairly devoid of ideas

Having said that, Altrincham are only a league bellow us and were play-off participants only a few months ago, so it was never gonna be a pushover

 

If only I had a quid for every post I've seen saying 'take the shackles off' in the last few years.

Maybe hire a manager who plays progressive, attacking football. Revolutionary idea, I know.

 

The worry for me is the lack of creativity which is the same as last season. Nothing down either wing will have us low scoring again.

 

Thought Young would have got longer than 12 mins for this one. Mmmmmmmm

 

As long as he is replaced adequately and the price is right, then it’s time he was sold off. All the uncertainty and seeming lack of game time is doing nobody any favours ?

 

It's not ridiculous to gain anything from the game other than fitness. That's a ridiculous statement in itself.

We've had our new central defenders playing together, getting to know each other's game. Obviously, that's the other main benefit of pre-season games. Playing together to learn patterns of play in matches where the result doesn't matter unlike the first match of the season. Unfortunately, our attacking players don't seem to have been as productive in building their relationships and working together to create chances.

 

I’m talking about anyone paying attention to the score and “ performance” as being ridiculous , not sure if your comment adds anything different, other than it was slightly obvious to
what I was alluding to. “Other than” in my post is a gigantic clue.

 

This has to be one of the most underwhelming pre-seasons in recent memory.

Hopefully it means nothing come next week as the happy-clapper ultras suggest but I'm not feeling overly optimistic about the start of this season.

 

At least Young 'curled one out' that might make him train harder.

 

Tell me about it

I got into a bit of a heated discussion with a certain former “city gent” at yesterdays game, him and his crony were basically arguing with me that Rupp is investing adequately, as I was having a moan that there is a severe lack of investment. The only thing he could throw at me was the pitch investment, and they were trying to buy the ground. My point straight back to him was that I don’t give a chuff about the ground, it’s something we haven’t had for 15/20 years so I’m not gonna miss it now. Regarding the pitch, that’s been an ongoing issue for as long as I can remember. The only thing I want to see is squad investment to get us out of this god damn division, instead of been dusted by the likes of Crawley and Stevenage every season. Then one of them piped up about running costs of the club…well blow me down, every other club must run for free then(!). Then he gave me the old “I’ve been watching city for 64 years”….and??! I offered my hand in congratulating him for his service with a very sarcastic “well done mate I’ll get you a medal” which he didn’t take too kindly to

Happy clappers indeed

 

Ahhhhhh the old ‘running costs’ chestnut.
Well in any walk of life you have to cut your cloth accordingly. This has been said a million times but if VP is too expensive then the options are to put up prices or to leave..
Nobody wants either so sadly much of the income we’d love to use in the playing squad is spunked away on rent and the maintenance of an old decaying structure.

 

Underwhelmed from the start is better in a way. It means the inevitable disappointment of another bad season won’t be quite as painful as other years where expectations have been sky high. And you never know, if we have a good season it will be an enjoyable surprise!

 

It can take a lot of training to curl one out in the right place at the right time.

 

This pre season has smacked of analysis paralysis by the management team. We should now be at the stage of knowing and playing our first 11 yet we go to Altrincham and appear to still be fannying around with the team.

Time will tell but this preseason has been one of the dullest I have known.