Match Thread Away V Carlisle Saturday 13th March 3.00pm

Exactly! People clammering for a GJ type of player in midfield, and yet when I mention a 34 year old, it gets turned down. You can't have experience and youth. But you can have both. Younguns making up the majority of the team, with some old heads to guide them. Totally the way forward in my opinion.

 

Yes a good option. My post was more a nod to Macca's insistence that there's no good out of contract players out there. If Sheff Weds are looking at him, then he's not going to be useless. Surely there must be more out there, and not just Simpson in this out of contract wilderness. But I get it. Don't want to upset the current team/take a punt/pay wages/panicpurchase etc. Was just interesting to see for me, that a Champ club are also exploring the out of contract market.

 

Think it was before the Mansfield I suggested on here resting a number of players given the opposition and the matches that were coming up. Plenty scoffed at that idea but its proven squad rotation is key to keeping the season from crashing and burning early.
Why none of the so called back 6 haven't been looked after is beyond me.
Wood has looked battered for ages, both Watt and Sutton have put real shifts in and are now making daft mistakes like the handball against Newport.
The distribution across the back line is slowing rapidly and now reliant on long aimless balls.
And to top it off, Cooke has been run into the floor.
So now when the squad isn't as confident as it was 3 weeks ago, we need to freshen things up whilst in a mini losing run??!!
All this 'oh well, we aren't good enough this year' crap and 'we were looking at next year' bollocks.
This side, managed correctly are good enough to reach the play offs from where we are even now.
If the squad had been managed correctly these last 4 games then things might have looked a lot better.

 

The first eleven picks itself, after that this squad is still painfully weak. If we'd changed the team as you suggest we'd have lost more games than we have.

 

I don't think the squad has been mismanaged but I do think we still lack options and quality in some positions, and I'd question our tactical approach of late. The long ball thing - we've been playing like that for a while, even in the games we've been winning. The xG analysis on the WOAP last month indicated that our results we're perhaps not built on performances as convincing as the scorelines were suggesting. I think that's fair. Our winning run was largely down to our defensive resilience. A couple of games where that's slipped and we've struggled badly, because our performances aren't as fluent as they need to be. That's not to throw the toys out of the pram, but its reasonable to expect a few bumps given that T&S are very much new to this, and we need probably 4/5 more changes in and out. I do think we need a performance on Saturday though, one that's on the front foot and more effective at demonstrating a goal threat.

 

Parky made a living out of teams that won but didn't create much.

 

Very true. And there’s probably been an over reaction to the last 3 games.

Bolton at home - They were much better with the ball, but we had 2 real chances each. Neither keeper had more to do than the other
Newport - We had more control than they did. Didn’t create much, but still had the better chances of the 2.
Carlisle - well beaten, but if we’re honest, we had as many chances. At 3-1 down, we had 2 great chances inside a minute, with about 20 mins left. One of those goes in and who knows what happens.

So even in games where we don’t control the game or create much, we’re still creating as much as the opposition.

 

To be fair we’d have a decent squad if we didn’t pick up so many injuries. Take the team that played at Carlisle, if they were all fit we could have picked the team that played there and had a bench of Callum Cooke, Danny Rowe, Pritchard, Clark, Novak, Staunton, O’Donnell. Then the likes of Stevens, Burrell, Cousin Dawson, Scales, Hosannah would be just trying to get in the match day squad. Won’t be many league 2 teams with that sort of back up. Unfortunately Pritchard, Novak, Cooke, Staunton, Hosannah, I doubt we will see again this season,

 

I don't know who that is, but I assume he's at Carlisle now.

 

I wish we could leave Stevens off the list. At the moment he offers nothing and looks a mile away from being a competent league 2 footballer.

 

I've heard rumours of a name long forgotten, but to me those are just whispers and mystique.

What's a Zeli anyway?

 

Completely forgot about him.

 

Change the team for 1 game to give many a well deserved rest??
Going into games like Newport we would have been fresher and seen that game out.

 

You don't know that, it's pure conjecture.