The Voice - Match preview Bradford City vs Walsall Saturday 3 September @ 3:00pm

Think that time has arrived don. In for Crichlow for me.

 

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.

 

Agreed. Great advert for L2 and in fairness we too could and should have scored more. Wouldn't want to be Flynn's missus when he got home

 

Mansfield, etc will be more attack minded, meaning we will always create chances as our attacking players simply have more room.

I'm not dreading any matches. Of course we'll lose and of course we'll play poorly at some time - but that's L2. Look at Forest Green at our place last season.

 

The ref was poor against Doncaster and this one yesterday is the attila the hun character, who refereed in the Forest Green game (at home) last season.

He preens around and wants to be the centre of attention - hence the early dubious penalty award.

I thought Crewe deserved a point, but I do think a better referee would have helped us with Donny's obvious timewasting and we were deserved more.

But then again, we didn't really deserve a point yesterday

 

Agree with that. Never going to concede, never going to score. Hence, 0-0 was a fair result in both games.

 

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.

 

Spot on Dennis, as usual.

 

not long after between both incidents ????? Yeah just an extra 37 minutes and you seriously think that wouldn’t have made a big difference ?????? Least the Donny manager could get them sat down and told them all what the plan was due to Tomlins red card being just before HT ..............

 

The ref should have been booked for time wasting, strolling out a few minutes after the players were lined up and ready to start the 2nd half

Definitely a 'look at how important I am' moment from the idiot

 

looking how bad there getting it in the Premier league then you wonder why we end up with this shite at our level

 

I’ve got no idea whether it would have made a difference. I’m saying that when you’ve had 80% of the ball and a man advantage for more than half the game, it’s a cop out to blame the ref for not giving an earlier red. We only took a point because it was a very flat attacking performance. That was by far and away the most pressing factor, not ‘being unlucky’

 

Agree FB. Every ref will make decisions that the fans don't like but if we have promotion aims then it us up to us to overcome them. Our dropping points against Donny and Crewe were not the refs fault but ours alone. Similarly, Walsall didn't take their chances yesterday, we did and I feel no embarrassment about that especially as both goals were class albeit in different ways.

 

Yeah but on both occasions the ref to a certain point did affect the results but it’s down to us to know that these refs at the this level are simply poor and we cannot rely on them to make the right decisions .............. it’s down to us and us alone to get a result and that means us being on the front foot from the first minute especially when we are at home ............. I actually thought the crowd was brilliant yesterday considering yesterday’s performance under Bowyer and Adams I can guarantee that the crowd would have been on the players back all game ..............

 

Not sure many would be happy with that if we used those tactics only one side tried to play so only one side deserved the win in my opinion. Not that I thought we played brilliantly

 

He acts like one of those dodgy scout leaders, making sure lights out in the tents are at exactly 10 O'clock. If he was a traffic cop, everyone would be getting a ticket for going at 30.1mph and he's be telling his colleagues how great he was with his 'arrest' record.

 

A ponce?

 

2 City players in the league 2 team of the week (Lewis and Halliday). Not bad going that when we didn't play that well.

 

I'm not having this criticism of Sutton even though he's not my first choice. I expected a 4-2-3-1 but we seemed to run the whole first half as 4-1-4-1 with him running his socks off because others weren't putting the effort in. He was knackered in the second half.

I dont know if it was meant to be 4-1-4-1 or it just ended up like that because the 3 attacking midfielders were making little attempt to close down their back 4, especially the fullbacks who pushed high and were still left too much space. Cook was trying to press on his own with zero effect. Sutton quickly ended up higher than the other 3 and it helped a little bit but we were still mostly under the cosh. I was calling for any of the other 3 attacking midfielders to be subbed at half-time for lack of defensive effort then Young went and scored a worldie. I suppose he earns the right to be next week's luxury player that we can carry but they all need to pull their fingers out. Their first half closing down was very poor and Sutton should not have had to cover their lack of effort.

Very well done to the defence for conceding only a flukey comedy goal with only Smallwood protecting them at times. I'm not sure it's fair to criticise any of them (Critchlow) either when our opponents were given so much space to operate in ahead of them and they occasionally had an extra unmarked man to deal with. Sometimes the defence looks dodgy because the rest of the team is not keeping up with its defensive responsibilities. Get all the midfield protecting them properly again and Critchlow might turn back into the player we don't want to lose in January. He gets a pardon from me for this game because I saw too much laziness further up the pitch. We can't carry so many players not working off the ball and I'd drop at least one of Saturday's attacking 3. It won't be Young if he regularly contributes goals like that , though!

 

The referee stuff is pathetic most of the time.