Pre season friendlies

Town had a lad in midfield, name sounded like Dihara or Diwara (I think).... he looked quite decent, put himself about a bit, carried the ball well and made some decent challenges.

 

The lad Rowe looks like the sort of athletic player we need at RWB

 

I wouldn’t say that was largely a Championship’s team’s development squad.

First half XI: Ben Hamer; Jaden Brown, Harry Toffolo, Richard Stearman, Demeaco Duhaney; Josh Austerfield, Alex Pritchard (c), Juninho Bacuna; Karlan Grant, Danny Ward (Steve Mounié, 31’), Josh Koroma

 

Well defo need a striker rb and a leader in middle of park before season starts. I'm actually worried if guthrie gets injured at min. That's what strength in depth we've got up front.

 

More positives than negatives for me. First half was definitely better than the second, which is a bit strange considering second half was their academy. That may be because we were up against fresher legs in the second half but think it also shows you can't read too much into pre-season.

Thought Cooke, Wood, POC were the pick of our lot.
Could easily have been 2/3 up in the first 5 minutes and how on earth Novak didn't equalise in the second half Im not sure. For all of Town's supposed superiority in the second half I don't think they created any more than we did. Listen to it without the Hudds commentary and I bet you'd have seen it differently, particularly the second half.

Stuff to work on for sure and a couple of signings needed but I'm more optimistic than I was this morning.

 

Equally, it was their first pre season match so that's why they looked rusty in the first half. Not had a competitive match since a month ago and just trying to get back into it.

 

I’m no big happy clapper, but can we get a bit of perspective on this please!!
1) Our first team have barley kicked a ball in anger for six months......in the other two friendlies I understand that we swapped out the whole team at half time, so none of our players have played more than 45 mins for six months
2) we played well in patches before half time, nothing to get overly excited about but tidy, thought we took the goal well and didn’t look 2 leagues below them.
3) they were still playing competitive football a month ago so forget the its our first friendly nonsense
4) As expected in the first half they moved us around well and we had to dig in at times, thought we held our shape especially in Midfield, however some of our players were blowing out of their arses by half time.
5) they then threw on a whole team of very young very hungry academy players and we couldn’t compete, I’m fine with that we competed really well with their first team!!

Now.......the downside, I’d kill for their academy, I’m pretty sure had McCall thrown on our youths in the second half we’d have been murdered.
The seasons nearly on us and it’s pretty clear we’re no where near match fit.
We’re desperate for a right wing back, On this performance it’s not Zeli.
After all the seasons working with him Stuart still can’t get a tune out of Clarke.

 

Nice to see a city game for me, win or lose
Thanks Udders for the free streaming
Why cant we do this for a fee instead of having Ifollow asking for a big wedge and failing to provide value?

 

70% of that "big wedge" goes to City.

 

Football is a 90 minute match, not 45 minutes. The fitness, or lack of was particularly alarming this close to the season, closely followed by sharpness and the ability to pass to a team mate. Friendlies don’t mean nothing, biggest load of hog wash I see people saying each summer.

 

If it’s any consolation Bolton lost 5-1 at Wigan last weekend and James Vaughan’s Tranmere lost 3-0 at home to Warrington. Friendlies are just training exercises. I remember City losing 4-1 at home to Burnley at the start of McCalls last spell, we were woeful yet ended the season unbeaten at home.

 

First half they had a strong team with players like Danny Ward second half was about getting ninety minutes agains a young and talented set of players

 

Yes we need a bit of pace up front and definitely a right back but there was plenty there to give optimism. As Parker says in his report the last half hour was about getting 90 minutes into the legs.

 

Yes because they probably had a double training session yesterday it’s about fitness

 

Means nothing!

Pre season..Good work out..Move on to the next.

 

Cheers for the clarification mate.

 

Only managed to get home just after the start of the second half and can only say that Stuart has plenty of work to do with what I saw. Will have to wait and see what happens although I agree with a lot of posters that he could do a lot worse than take some of the Terriers youngsters on loan.