The Voice - Match preview Bradford City vs Newport County Saturday 27th April 2024 3:00pm

I thought he had a very good match yesterday.

 

I wouldn't read too much into it as I doubt he knows where he'll be next season. Brentford have an option on him which i think they'll take to try to sell him to recoup some of what they paid for him, it's then down to who else wants to bid for him.

 

He and Platt switched places yesterday.

Oyegoke basically did everything tidily, Platt put on a horror show under little real pressure.

Not very invested in his future. If he stays, he's young and can cover a couple of positions, so that's fine. If he goes, also fine, he was okay.

 

If we started next season’s opener with the same starting XI, Young and Pattison on the bench plus a few other options on the bench I would be ok with that. In reality I’d guess Young starts over Kav and if we had a better quality CM then he probably starts too but the main team isn’t that bad, it’s the squad depth / competition that’s been an issue.

 

I just hope the folk at the club aint suckered in of whats gone on over the last few weeks like some of our fanbase .............ok turning up when the pressure is no longer on is it ?

Folk like Smallwood being hailed as not really that bad when he and a fair few of them players are the reason we stand at this level yet again.

The season is based on 46 games not 5 games and that squad on the whole have failed when it really mattered.

 

A lot of what Smallwood does gets ignored, he's ended the season joint 9th in successful tackles/90 minutes of all players in this division. There's also a lot he will do behind the scenes Monday-Friday that fans don't see which Alexander has mentioned. The formation that we play now suits him perfectly as he just needs to sit deep, mop up the ball and give it to the danger players like Walker and Pointon ahead of him then let them do the creative work.

 

I bet the majority on here wanted him gone before his cameo at the end ..........i really am sorry but i wont be upset if he and a fair few others go when it really mattered him and a lot of these went missing .........all good being a leader when things are going well and good but when you need a leader to drag you out of the dumps he simply aint that man.

I really hope im wrong but based on the last two seasons he simply aint been up to it and as the so called dead ball specialist he on the whole is really poor at it

 

Lets not get carried away with yesterday's result. We were playing a terribly poor Newport team who must have finished the game with their lowest average age ever! At one point I thought a ball boy had slipped on a Newport shirt and snuck on.

Let's see what GA can get out of them next season. Looking at the league it will be a fairly weak one so we MUST be identifying a top 3 finish. We need to find another 20+ points than we did this season. That's only 7 more wins and is perfectly doable. We need to win roughly half the games we play and lose under 10 to get promoted.

 

Fair points. Do you think he is captain material though? Hasn't really driven the team on the pitch from my own personal observations. Maybe relieving him of the captaincy might be better and let him just focus on the game plan you allude to.

 

And remove from set pieces

 

From what Alexander says he is a great leader around the training ground and changing room. There seems to be this obsession in football that if you don't scream and shout you can't be a good captain, some players are naturally quieter and lead by example. Stephen Darby was never questioned as a captain but he was never loud on the pitch.
I think a lot of people expect Smallwood to be something he isn't similar to how Josh Cullen got a lot of stick for not scoring. I think Smallwood has been made a bit of a scapegoat and people don't look past the set pieces.

 

Smallwood has been ok in recent weeks as a holding midfielder but thats just a handful of games in another underwhelming season. For it to work with Smallwood he absolutely needs pace and mobility around him.
Personally I wouldnt keep him on as on the salary he is undoubtedly on I think we need much better.
GA appears to rate him though so I fear we will see him again. If we start with Smallwood and Gillead it will prove we've learnt nothing

 

Doesnt mean anything one can read into that would say anything.

He wouldn’t know his future either way. We couldn’t offer him a deal at the moment because he’s contracted to Brentford and we would have to negotiate with them as there are “options” at the end of his deal.

 

He does point a lot I will give you that. And set pieces-was Saturday the first time he has actually put a decent set piece in for Cook to score from?

But has he returned value for money to the club? It would be hard to agree he has.

I wonder why all of a sudden is GA quite overtly talking him up publicly?

 

I don’t think anyone would disagree, our problem was the faux pas start that Hughes oversaw right through to his dismissal. GA got it right in the post match interview yesterday. Clubs have to get off to a sound start. We didn’t because players were wrongly selected and wrongly selected in the wrong position. Promoted teams have to be consistent …..we weren’t .

 

I would argue the season is based on the last 30 matches under GA

 

Amusingly I'm blocked from reading that twitter account even though I have no idea who it is? Probably another one on twitter who can't handle anyone questioning them.

 

To be fair he nearly pulled it off, although it did need the biggest bottle job I've ever seen from Barrow. As Hughes showed there's no guarantee you'll carry the form forward to next season but I look forward to seeing what Alexander does with a new squad next season..

 

Hughes tried to change from 4-3-3 to 3-5-2 recruited for that then reverted to 4-3-3 which was disastrous.

 

One and the same perhaps? He was sat in front of us at Colchester last season from memory .

https://youtube.com/@SHD07?si=Af_ZHz0cYkMOVRck