The Voice - Match preview Most liked posts in thread: Bradford City vs Walsall Saturday 3 September @ 3:00pm

Just seen two minutes of highlights and the Cook goal/ Young goals. The first, he could have easily given up the chase for that ball, but his determination to not only get it but execute a superb cross for Cook was tasty as was the strike by Cook.

I’d like to see the Young goal from a different angle, but the shots bending in towards the far post from the flanks are becoming a potent weapon.

Great finishing …both!

 

Gilliead and Walker are big misses for me in/through the middle. Coping ok without either but when they return we should really kick on. Gilliead offers more than Sutton, East and Songo at CM. Smallwoods best choice partner.

 

Making runs beyond Smallwood is fine at the right times. He was leaving Smallwood on his own and we were getting overran.

Any player can run it’s what you do with the ball that makes the difference and he just isn’t good enough for a team that has AUTOMATIC aims.

 

Hopefully we’ll see a change of personnel starting from the off against Mansfield. Chapman, Banks and Young are capable of moments of genius but can’t carry that threat over a sustained period of time. What we need is for one or both of the wingers to step up and get at the fullbacks, just like Reid or Marshall used to do. Get the opponents on the back foot. I thought Wright looked good from cameo he provided, maybe he could give us the outlet we need. As for Sutton, maybe I’d start with Songo’O in there just to shore up the protection in front of the defence away from home.

 

It's one of our rare moments of agreement. I've no idea what midfield role Sutton was playing. If it was to bomb forward whenever he could and leave Smallwood constantly exposed - he achieved it.

I like Sutton, but puzzled how you play him in central midfield in a two, without getting constantly exposed. We saw this last season as well.

Gilliead becomes more of a legend, the longer he's unavailable

It's quite simple. We need to use the correct three attacking players behind Cook, give them the ball quickly (Smallwood was busy defending, but one cross field pass he did was a thing of beauty - so it can be done) but they then must be brave in their attacking play. Out of the three only Young was brave. Chapman in particular, was poor and frankly doesn't look fit.

 

I don’t generally like blaming refs. Their calls aren’t generally as big as people make out. Against Doncaster, the lad should probably have seen red for the tackle on Osadebe. But they were down to 10 not long after; we played more than half the game against 10 men and never looked like making the advantage count. We didn’t make tactical changes, we didn’t get in behind them, we didn’t stretch them. We were toothless and that’s on us, not the ref. Against Crewe I’d say we had 1 reasonable shout for a penalty when Oliver was pulled down. But I wouldn’t say it was nailed on and in fact, if we’d had a penalty against us for the same I think there’d be uproar. I’m not saying the officials made perfect calls, I’m saying we bossed possession in both but never looked like doing anything with it. I applaud our attempt to play football ‘the right way’ but so far it’s a little too slow and predictable, and not penetrative enough.

 

why because we get peed off week after week that a sub standard ref is turning up to spoil yet another game


So please tell me how in the first half did the ref not say a single word to the Walsall players during there blatant time wasting during the first half yet magically was all over us during the 2nd half is that not right ............. or the reality is that he was nothing but an attention Twit who probably craves booos to make himself look good .........

 

It was obvious last season that Sutton has certain attributes, namely his energy levels and his pace. Will come on and do a job if required but isn't the guy you want in a two man midfield. Lacks positional awareness at times due to his assets of non stop running which can leave his midfield partner exposed.

 

...and be more smarter in getting free kicks around the opposition box and then be goal productive from the set pieces. Corners too.
This is sometimes what you have to rely on to get a break through - we score the game it generally opens up to our advantage - as you say.

 

Eisa doing some running on the pitch. That's good to see. Poor lad, hopefully he can put all the injuries behind him.

 

Walsall are the far better team it's a little embarrassing at the moment.

 

we should be 3-0 down

 

How the f**k are we winning 2-0? Madness. We’ve been awful for 40 mins of that half. I hope they still get a rocket at HT cos that wasn’t good enough.

 

The times we have battered teams and then on the receiving end of a sucker?

 

Not happy at all with Harratt just watching their defender run out with the ball

 

Nearly Harratt could have done better one on one.

 

3 points and two good goals plus an outstanding performance from Lewis. Otherwise it was pretty poor stuff.
Walsall will come away from this game wondering how they lost given the amount of chances they created.

 

If winning when we're poor is the exception, then it'll be an important part of our season. But our performances need to improve. We've generally been underwhelming in the league so far. Plenty of time to go, but we need to up things, because our performance levels so far won't be enough for a promotion campaign.

 

Well MH wanted a team to come and have a go at us, and he certainly got that from a powerful Walsall side. I could only see them scoring from a set play though and that proved to be the case.

Fantastic performance from Harry Lewis, what a signing he is proving to be.

Not sure what Sutton offers, he was very poor, and until Songo'o came on, we were bullied and outfought in midfield.

Impressive cameo from Wright when he came on and great to see Pereira back.

I'm starting to feel a bit uneasy about Crichlow, far too casual at times and he is not very good in the air. He needs to improve or I can see Odusina taking his place soon.

Definitely a game we would have lost last few seasons. So fair play for battling and seeing us over the line when we were second best for most of the match.

 

Songo'o rarely lets us down, both Walker and Osadebe were sat just behind us unfortunately both on crutches.