Match Thread Swindon Town (H) @ 15:00 5th March

If we played like we did today (in terms of attacking style) with a bit of talent on the books then fans would be throwing money at season tickets

Get a proper recruitment team in ASAP and have targets outlined for the summer and we could really do something next season

 

Interesting point, I was chatting with a match assessor about this last week and we discussed the psychology of refs wanting to show they were not phased by the size of the stadium and not intimidated by the crowd. As he said you are not getting 'the cream ' anyway at our level.
And if I was an opposing manager now I would get in the ear of the referee pre match and say something along the lines of 'be great if you could show you are not influenced by them having a big name manager ref', at our level MH needs to work out a strategy to counter this and keep the refs onside because I'll guarantee it happens

 

I think we'll all breathe a little easier when we have a couple more wins to ensure we're doing all this planning still in the lofty heights of league 2!

 

Regarding the referee, I didn't get the impression he was overly obsessed with the crowd one way or the other.

I thought this was a legitimately poor trio of officials, but I didn't see a specific bias, intentional or otherwise.

They guessed most of the throw in decisions, and he was about as inconsistent as I've seen when it came to penalising fouls with free kicks and yellow cards - but it did seem to work both ways, rather than specifically in Swindon's favour.

Plenty of times in that game Swindon fans were in uproar at decisions, which is generally a sign.

To be fair, they're probably thinking he was a homer!

 

Bloody Bass - what an idiot. No need to make that challenge in literally the last 10 seconds of the game. I timed injury time on my watch, that’s all there was left. Still fuming about it now.

 

And their no.20 looked like a poor man’s Pukki. Was still class though to be fair

 

He’s awful. He’s been found wanting for a lot of goals since he arrived. Awful goalkeeper. Only Adams would manage to make our goalkeeping department worse by bringing him in totally unnecessarily when we already had two perfectly adequate keepers here already. You couldn’t make it up.

 

Thought he was the best player on the pitch.

 

I just want to say as well a massive credit to the fans. Easily the best atmosphere we’ve seen this season.

And a special shoutout to Derek Adams. He’s in contention for one of the most deluded men in english football. How can you have the arrogance to say that we would struggle to find a better manager an to get a better performance out of these players?

We may of lost today but that performance was better than 95% of the games under his leadership. The exceptions being Stevenage at home and possibly Mansfield Away.

Any other day of the week we would of won that game. It just wasn’t meant to be. The signs of progression are clear to see. onwards an upwards

 

I think we'll all breathe a little easier when we have a couple more wins to ensure we're doing all this planning still in the lofty heights of league 2!

Don't disagree today, my comments were more a general point. Would be nice if we did get a 'homer' every now and then!

 

As good as Cooke was today. I would of loved to see what Walker could do in a team set up like this. Playing football on the ground, creating chances. Plenty of chances for players to shoot from range; they just didn’t have it in their locker. Walker clearly does

 

Portsmouth seem to think he's the real deal...

Seems like he's actually beyond our reach, long term, which is interesting to say the least!

 

Give over! It was a camera save. any professional GK would have saved that. His save at Walsall was amazing but not today.

watch the ‘amazing’ save again….around 1 min 20 ish

https://www.skysports.com/watch/video/sports/football/competitions/league-two/12558764/bradford-city-1-2-swindon-town-league-two-highlights

O’Donnell will be back in next week.

 

I was up for us bringing in a new GK as the other two aren’t good enough, but Bass seems to always have a rash moment in him. If he’s highly rated that suits us fine if he returns in the summer. We just need an experienced stopper.

last year Bolton had a young lad on loan. A nervous wreck. Evatt threw him under a bus after his blunders and then brought in an old timer midway through the season. Gilks was it?
Their defence improved massively and they went up.

In the summer we need someone with experience like that. just a solid, safe pair of hands. Not had a reliable keeper for a fair few years now. Even Mclaughlin and Duke werent great in the golden years but they had A great defence infront of them.

 

Agree BL, stupid from Bass. All he had to do was stay on the lads toes, no tackle just usher him away. Instead he dives in and costs us.
No excuses for that and unfortunately it'll cost him his place next week.

 

How did Cook not gent sent off btw? Was right in front of us. He clawed their lad, in the face, to the floor. To not even get a yellow looked lenient.

liner was stood very close to it.

 

Tbf he has made some good saves as well but it was a real sickener today

 

Forgot to give him credit in earlier posts, but thought Gillead was excellent today. was everywhere.

Gareth Evans too, was busting a gut, which was even more impressive given he’d been frozen out by a previous manager he never saw eye to eye with.

in one week Hughes has seen Daly and Robinson are not worthy of starts and that Evans is a better footballer than Sutton.

We played some good stuff today. Cooke was very good too.