The Voice - Match preview #7: Bradford City vs AFC Wimbledon Saturday 21st September 2024 3:00pm

Its a park thing.

 

I like the slow start and the Jammy sod Alexander may have stumbled into a good defensive outfit ... we shall see. Cook and Sanderson are both good and I like Pattison and our club captain Smallwood is finally realising his potential and limitations.... Its all okay boys ten games in lets see .....

 

We should sign that Notts Centre half, Platt or something.

He's really made a difference, especially after they also shipped out their under performing centre halves.

 

I think agree, I don't see any reason we shouldn't be competing towards the top. We are hardly underpowered. It's just about maximising our performance as opposed to playing catch up on anyone else.

 

Both clubs charged for an incident that resulted in not a single red card being issued by the ref, and wouldn't have happened at all if he'd officiated the game properly in the first place. Ridiculous.

 

Or maybe we should raid Gillingham, if a player can score for them they can almost certainly score for us

 

The FA should be investigating the ref first

 

It's a standard charge for incidents like that, we'll accept the charge and we'll get a standard £1k fine.

We can blame the ref all we want but he wasn't the one who made Smallwood make an awful challenge like he did and we should be thankful he didn't give Smallwood a red card.

 

I thought it was a brilliant challenge by Richie, the late great Micky Kennedy would have been proud of that one

 

I disagree that refs are not responsible for players reactions. Seen many games where Ref's have been so poor that players have lost it-as a direct result of sheer incompetence of the officials. I did say at the time Smallwood should have been red carded for that tackle.

 

A bit of a ruckus is good entertainment for the fans, and can do wonders for the players team spirit. After the Crawley incident you could see the belief that the players had and the crowd got behind the team with additional enthusiasm and belief

 

It was high,scissor action through the back of the opponent, that might have been allowed in the 80s but it's not anymore. It was right in front of me and as soon as he made it I said he'd be lucky to stay on the pitch. If that was in front of the kop we'd be screaming for a red card.

 

It's that kind of scissor tackle where the trailing leg hits the player that the FA don't like even if the first leg clearly wins the ball since the trailing leg is seen as potentially putting the opponent at harm.

 

The only thing wrong with the tackle was that it wasn't round the odous Hippolytes neck!

 

This is what I don't understand about Smallwood. It's almost as if he's trying his best to get sent off in some games. Some of his tackles are very poor or he's too slow and ends up bringing players down and gets booked, therefore walking a tightrope for the remainder of the match. Knowing we have no direct replacement for his position and seeing the injury count rise, you'd hope he would think about the greater good before lunging in and giving a good side like Wimbledon a chance to go on and win the game, and then miss the next 3 matches.

 

As in 'late tackle'?

 

Football has become far too soft and minimal contact now. I do realise that you can't go in like that now.

In my playing days that would have been deemed a good tackle and used to love the likes of Mickey Kennedy and Rod Johnson a generation before him taking no prisoners.

 

At the entrance to Reading FC offices there used to be an enlarged print of Phil Parkinson in his playing days taking out Roy Keane, both players in mid air, happy days.

 

Reruns of 60’s and 70’s match of the day type games are not for the faint of heart (especially our younger readers), and don’t get me started on same time period European competition games. Most of them would have been abandoned before halftime using todays officials and criteria.