Match Thread Most liked posts in thread: City vs Harrogate | League 2 | 12/10/20

We've just been played off the park at home by fecking Harrogate and some are wondering why there's negativity? FFS

 

McCall quoted in T&A this morning as at least thinking about whether he went with the right formation or not (you didn't Stuart). He also says we were beaten by a good, well organised side and a team that know the way they play and every player knows their role. Come on Stuart, if you can see this, learn from it, it's not rocket science.

 

I'm angry no point in venting my anger on here.
Goodnight
Stay safe everyone.

 

I'll be honest, I'm starting to question Stuart now. I had no idea what our setup was tonight. We can praise Harrogate - rightly - but you cant tell me that they have a more talented squad than we do. And they've just outplayed us in every dept.

 

Has McCall, at any stage in the 3 spells, given you any indication that he's learning?

Or we still see multiple players played out of position, constant rotation of formations and shoehorning of players into a system that completely negates their supposed attributes?

Last night we had yet another formation change from the FGR game. We had a seemingly one footed Evans playing left midfield and once Clarke was subbed, Novak used as an attacking CM? We started with two target men up to and a system that allowed for absolutely no width.

The worst thing is though that we've seen it all before and it just continues to keep happening. He just can't help tinkering when in reality it's often doing more harm than good.

 

So if the formation was wrong in the first half, what is half time for? Surely he should have got them in, said "right we are going to change this, they have worked us out let's give them something else to think about". Instead we just carried on with the same formation just changed the participants.

 

Hope you are on the mend soon, mate.

 

It didn't need over analysing. Once again we played two target men and didn't have any width, that's not going to work at any level of football and a completely ridiculous decision by the management team.

 

It doesnt help that he changes his formations and tactics as much as his socks. He needs to drill a formation into the side and stick with it. He supposedly built a squad to play 3 at the back now all of a sudden he has ditched that and have got players out of position/sync all over the pitch.

Pick your best 11 and stick to it, its ok switching it up for man city away but this was harrogate at home for goodness sake.

It was one of detriments to his first 2 stints yet it seems he is still making them same mistakes

 

Had chance to play the full team against Wolves kids, still don’t know why we didn’t considering the gap between games.

 

Both full backs were exposed by the system we played. Wood had a shocker but he wasn't helped by the system, or by Evans being shoed into a role he's rarely played.

And I didn't see an even game. What was it, 25 attempts to our 9? We created 2 good chances, but otherwise we looked disjointed. They looked far more organized and on the front foot than we were. 1-0 doesn't really do them justice, they deserved to win by a couple.

 

Having visions of Radio Harrogate commentator goin all Norwegian on us if they win ,"can you hear me David Hockney, J.B. Priestley, Terry Uttley, Zayne Malik, Dynamo, Frederick Delius" aw, glad Maggie Thatcher was from Grantham

 

Here we go. Losing at home to Harrogate in the League. A new low.

 

The defeat to Bolton had little effect on Harrogate they played exactly as they had done second half against them, knocking the ball around for fun, how hard is it to pass and move, this squad has problems get a formation and bloody stick too it McCall, this is not good enough.

 

Could send our strike force round but they'd probably miss.

 

Quite right. I'm perfectly calm. Im just pissed off at the sorry state of our football club. Fair play to Harrogate, they looked a well drilled side. Better side than us. That's where we are now - a side that's second best to Harrogate Town.

Still, at least we're not Bury.

 

A bit of hard work and organisation from Harrogate was enough to grind us down. Something that was typified with the winning goal. Two loose balls are won by Harrogate before the ball is worked out to the right and neither Wood nor Cooke make the effort to block the cross. Then, despite having five (six including O'Donnell) against three in the box, only the goalscorer is on the move to get on the end of the cross. The lack of communication and awareness to allow their No.17 the space he had is alarming. Switching offensively, the fact that Harrogate had six players in the final third was also something we should learn from because we rarely saw that from us tonight.

What makes that defeat particularly hurtful is that we were at full strength. Haven't seen anything from Paudie O'Connor, Ismail or Mottley-Henry to suggest that they would have made an ounce of difference in that game. If there's one thing that we learned in our last stay in this division, its that teams that show hard work and are organised tend to do well - its on Stuart to consistently find that in this set of players because there will be more like Harrogate to come.

 

Stuart has a problem now he has realised Evans can't play in the position he signed him for.He had to find way of fitting Evans into the starting line-up,so unbalanced everything else to do so.