The Voice - Match preview Bradford City vs Accrington Stanley Saturday 25th November @ 3:00pm

He's anorexic when he gets a hat-trick.

 

Who picks that crap. Kelly the best centre back in the EFL this weekend? Do me a favour

 

As nice as this is, these team of the week's are based on stats alone so often don't really tell you a lot and can often be far from the reality. Kelly got his high rating as the team got a clean sheet and Cook missed his header so Kelly gets credited with the assist for the goal. Our sponsors got MOTM whereas according to the stats from Whoscored.com which these are based on he was our worst player.

 

Don’t know about best but was very good yesterday

 

I thought he was excellent too. Objectively, a really good performance yet opinions will always be swayed by prior feelings about a certain player.

 

Its amazing isn't it. We win ans suddenly Cooks been on a crash diet according to some. The crap on here sometimes....

 

Have it the way you want but Cook was leaner and fitter last season than the season before. This season I think he has been playing through an injury. Yesterday was one of his best displays of the season

 

I think it was the name V Oliver on the bench that did it.

 

The back three was very good yesterday.

A couple of errors, but generally mopped up very efficiently, particularly in the second half.

Platt getting shrugged off the ball very easily by Adedoyin and Taylor with a poor back pass are the stand outs, but we got away with them.

 

Its a lazy, now boring stereotype thrown at Andy Cook whenever he hits a lean spell or has a bad game. Its a professional football club ffs, don't these people know we have a physio and fitness department that will be monitoring all these aspects of the players games. There is no doubt he's been playing while not at 100%, no player ever really is.

 

Lean spell lol - pun intended?

 

Is it?

Imagine looking at data and judging misplaced passes, tackles lost, aerial duels lost and a low amount of interceptions and thinking, yeah, that's irrelevant anyway. Let's sign him.

Are you Stephen Gent?

 

It's not lazy, it's just park being a bit thick. There's actually no nice way of putting this any more.

 

That’s simple. He’d play alongside Cook in a front two. He’s clearly better than Smith.

I was quite critical of Young before he was loaned out. He kept running down blind alleys and giving the ball away in dodgy areas. But it now seems that Hughes’ one up front system didn’t suit him. He was being played out wide on the left, which is clearly not his forte - he’s an out and out striker and is scoring for fun for Swindon when played in his correct position.

The parallels with Doyle are striking (pun intended). We played Doyle out of position in a target man role and (despite still being our top scorer) it was a waste of his talents. Swindon used him in his preferred role as a goal hanging striker and he couldn’t stop scoring. Hopefully, that’s where the comparison ends. We recalled Doyle and again played him as a lone target man and, unsurprisingly, his goals dried up. If we recall Young I’m sure Alexander will play him in his proper striking role up top alongside Cook.

Hopefully we recall Young and Vadaine Oliver stays fit. Then we go into the second half of the season with two genuine options for both striking slots, which is exactly as it should be. We should always have at least three, if not four recognised strikers in the squad for competition and in case of injury. It’s crazy that we’ll have played the first half of the season with only two available strikers.

 

I hope you are right Offy.

 

First half was poor, but the defence stood firm. Accrington didn't look anything special really and apart from the save Lewis had to make I don't recall them having any great chances.

Every time I see Taylor he does an alright job for me. EXCEPT MK. I didn't go to Notts. Saturday he did really well, he may not have won every header but the guy he was up against was an inch taller. I read further up that Taylor is 6ft 7. He must have grown then as wiki and other sources have him at 6ft 4. He did enough to put the lad off everytime.

Ciaran Kelly had a fantastic game. I love that he can put some proper tackles in. He was my MOTM, which is no slight on Gilly as either deserved it.

Walker was everywhere and I love his dark arts, he took out one of their lads after they got away with one on ours. Proper teamwork.

Overall the two games I've seen under GA have looked miles better than under Hughes.

Brad Halliday is just a class act too. As is Smallwood. The latter I even called it before that under Hughes he was doing as he was asked, now the shackles are off he looks much better.

 

Ash Taylor is dominating at 'ball steals' lately according to PlayMaker Stats.

I would guess that is basically him mopping up long balls, which he did very well on Saturday. No surprise to see him ahead in the stats for that.

 

We are having to re evalulate some players who were poor but are responding to GA. After the shambles of Hughes where clearly Youngs alleged comments seem valid

 

Nah, he played 2 if not 3 games with a load of strapping on his right leg. We didn't have an alternative.