Crewe (Away)

I appreciate your point but how do we know that he isn’t been told to sell Doyle and scannel if any sort of offers come in?

We do look heavy in midfield but we’ve lost a good back up striker and our only fit right winger in the last couple of weeks. On the other hand would we have kept them but the owners have said we must get rid of high earners?

 

It’s simple, AOC and BRE play until they make mistakes or play poorly and they are dropped. Or injured.

Otherwise we stay the same. Back four was the best bit about our side, to change it was ridiculous

 

Just saying exactly that to @Rogered Tart our defense has looked to be the best unit in our present team, now although Anthony O'Connor was not the best thing since sliced bread last season the lad has done well along side Everton.
For me Paudie bides his time and shows what he can do on the training pitch and when either O'Connor or Evertons form drops off he's in, but it looked very much to me yesterday Bowyer changed the formation to accommodate Paudie.

 

The Akpan situation needs to be addressed. I think its got to the point where a move would be better for all concerned because the level of anger towards him has reached a level where i don't think it will change regardless of what form he shows. Reminds me of the Preston game where a group sat next to me berated Doyle for every mistake anyone else made. Its just completely counter productive.

 

Just beat me to it @How .

 

The lack of plan is clear to see: formation changes every week and over 20 players used so far. Not sure where offloading Doyle and Scannell come into it?

 

More Scannell recently as we had no right winger for this weekend and therefore another formation change was needed. Use the wing backs to try and get width which back fired.

Before we had Doyle in the diamond, he went, change of formation and new players signed.

The point was more about when we sold players, late in the week, have we had to change plan. Just a question/observation

 

Does anyone have the Radio Leeds link to Bowyer's post match comments ?.

 

Yesterday's formation was barely a 3-5-2. When you have AOC bombing up and down the wing and Mellor linking up with the strikers I'm not quite sure what you call it. Even Akpan drifted out wide every now and then whipped in a couple of crosses.

Very rarely did we actually have 3 deep lying Centre Backs in and around our box when Crew were on the attack. Every time a Crewe player played a through ball their attackers basically had a free run at O'Donnell with our Centre Back's nowhere to be seen. If we played 3-5-2 how it should have been played it might have had half a chance of working.

 

Bang on. AOC had absolutely no idea what his role was, Akpan and palmer didn't know when to go wide or stay central, we barely fed the ball into devitt and the wing backs often got too isolated. On paper it looked a better and more suitable system (akpan aside) but it was dreadfully executed.

I'm not sure the limited wingers we have are much cop and I doubt we'll sign another tomorrow. But we need to play with width so maybe wing backs are the way forward. Get a proper DM in to replace akpan, maybe cooke replacing palmer and work on this system hard over the next few weeks and we may have a chance. After all we need some continuity and the players need a structure to get used to.

 

How many players should he have used so far this season? You must have a number in your head?

 

We need a settled side and a settled system. Changing the team and tactics every week is the mark of a man who doesn't know what he's doing.

I'm not interested in specific numbers, I just want to see some stability.

 

Seeing as the match day squad consist of 18 players your criticism of using over 20 players after 6 games is somewhat harsh considering we have had injuries and players leaving and joining.

 

Do you not think 24 players is a tad too high?

It's not just the numbers but the general tinkering within his core 18. Doyle starts for 2 games then gets dropped. Scannell sits on the bench, plays a couple of games on the wing then gets benched again. Anderson and Devine started the season ahead of Akpan but are now behind him in the pecking order. Add in the several different formations we've employed and it's basically just trial and error at this stage.

Amateurish stuff when he had an entire pre season to formulate a plan.

 

So you slag GB off for not having a settled formation and then slag him off for trying to find it.

 

He had it two games ago. Then decided to change it. Went well didn't it.

 

When we won away at Stevenage after being battered for 90 mins? Is that the game you are referring to?

 

It's not that he shouldn't try and find a formation that suits. There's a time and a place for that and it's not 7 games into the season.

 

I agree he needs at least 12 games with his fully fit squad before we can draw any satisfactory conclusions.