Fleetwood at home 9th February

I can't help thinking Hopkin changed personnel over the last few games unnecessarily. Shoe horning the lad from Leeds into the team, chopping and changing when the side were playing with understanding. Why not give the new recruits a couple of weeks to see how things work before putting then straight into a side and upsetting the balance. Despite the recruits who came in we still lack leaders.

We have one winger who's going to take a few weeks to get back up to speed, that's after he's returned to training. Maybe he's waiting on Mellor to return so the defenders can launch cross field passes. Maybe O'Donnell thought he was still on the pitch.

Teams will know that taking the tempo out of the game (like Fleetwood did from minute one), will frustrate us, get the fans on their back, the referees back and eventually our own players backs. Hats off to Barton, not pretty but effective.

 

**Winner**

 

We didn’t want Sammon. He was offered but we turned him down. You’re obsessed with him

 

I wrote at the close of the window, that although we had slightly strengthened the squad - our limitations were still there, regarding a lack of options.
What Hopkin needs now is to change his own options .......... And use other tactics during gametime.

 

I’ve already answered this further back in another thread.

Get wood back on the left and ball on the right and we can look to play some football using wide men as an out ball.

The team we picked yesterday we were only ever going to be direct. Works against some teams but not the better sides.

 

What would your full line up be?

 

O’donnell

Caddis
O’Connor
NKP
Woods

Ball
Butterfield
O’Brien
Wood

Payne

Doyle

 

Also, what has happened to the pressing football we have been used to seeing? For the last few weeks it's been one man at a time jogging about, half hearted with no real results. We now seem happy for the defenders of the opposition to have time on the ball to launch it long, a tactic our defence is hopeless at dealing with.

It's another change from a winning tactic from Hopkin which is just mind boggling.

 

We desperately need someone of his ilk I don’t know enough about him to know if he is good enough. But we need a physical presence our forwards are getting bullied out of everything

 

disagree with your bottom paragraph. We played well for the first 20 minutes of the game yesterday and we did it without the constant hoof.

 

He was the target man Sheffield United brought on when we were beating them 2-0 back in the Parky days, he caused havoc in our defense we had no anser to him and he helped Sheffied get a 2-2 draw, I might have seen him in other games where I didnt notice him but he our CDs on toast that afternoon.

 

Is he without a contract?

 

Not sure I just remeber reading he was avilable to come to us, I think he could be on Motherwells book but not sure.
Wiki says he's at Motherwell on a season long loan, but hes a Hearts player.

 

Spot on,I was thinking exactly this yesterday and also our fitness we keep hearing about.

 

Gutless display but having seen this group all season I’m not surprised to see this sort of performance at all, they can all go in the summer non of the permanent players have proved themselves in the slightest.

The worst thing about it was Fleetwood were worse and scored with their only real effort on goal, and we still lost without a fight, they were begging to be beaten.

Hopkin made a terrible mistake playing Miller as a loan striker the kids got non of the skills required for that role, I’m not really sure what skill he has full stop but that’s a debate for another thread.

Can’t wait till this season is over, terrible from game 2, at this point all we can do is hope by some miracle we scrape across the line in 20th. Although I’d rather watch league 2 football than this lot in league 1, shambles of a squad.

 

agreed. fleetwood had a pretty simple game plan yesterday and carried it out very well.

first 15mins miller got in behind their centre-half and full-back a couple of times with some good in to out runs. as soon as fleetwood scored their whole team dropped 10 yards deeper; any passes in behind were then either running through to their 'keeper or out for a goal kick, anything in front of their back four and there was no nonsense - get it out and defend the throw / next ball in.

their midfield then dropped onto ball, payne and o'brien; their forwards dropped on to akpan and butterfield allowing our back four to have possession knowing there was no space for them to play into making us try and force the play by going longer, but again as they sat so deep those passes were easy to deal with.

ideally in that situation your defenders would keep the ball rather than just force the play and they would try to probe passes into midfield pulling fleetwood players out of position to create space but there was no movement from payne etc. then there's the groans and moans of "get it forward" from the masses in the stands and it just comes straight back, with more negativity.

but this is third tier football we're watching; the only consistency is inconsistency.

 

Have I dreamt it, or were we linked with the giant who played at the back for Fleetwood yesterday, Harry Souttar, who joined them on loan from Stoke last month?

 

Exactly my point. We were offered Sammon and turned him down to sign Jack Payne MkII (Clarke). You said we had no money to do such deals but now confirming we did but chose not to go down that route.

Make your mind up

 

You seem to be arguing with yourself again.

We had the choice of one striker due to our budget and we chose Clarke over Sammon because Sammon is garbage.

 

I think it was mentioned on here. He was very impressive, strong and obviously good in the air, would've been an upgrade on NKP that's for sure.