Home V Cheltenham 28.01.20

Loads of effort. Can’t question that. Their goal wasn’t that sloppy, McGhee made a v good save initially, lucky the rebound fell where it did.
Connelly never stopped running.

Have to say though, the ref has probably kept bowyer in his job. He was just one big excuse after another.

 

Is Devitt a central midfield player??

I'm not sure he should be playing in the middle of the park.

Bowyer needed to play ONE of McCartan and Devitt today. If attacking minded players are played centrally they are always likely to commit fouls.

It was careless selection for me. Should have been Taylor in there and one of McCartan or Devitt with the other being able to be brought on centrally to push for goals if needed or further up the field as a direct swap.

Those saying Bowyer shouldn't be blamed for the poor tactics in recent games shouldn't be so quick to point at Devitt for two yellow cards when he's arguably being played in the wrong position.

 

I have no idea what you're trying to disagree with to be honest.

 

100% agree. Our only goal also came from one of the worst and most blatant dives I've ever seen. Any competent ref would have booked McCartan
11v11 Cheltenham had 2 great chances to score while we created nothing.
Second half was all about defending the lead and i can accept that but I don't understand people thinking that tonight was in anyway an improvement. It wasn't.

 

Nothing changed Devitt got sent off that changed the game completely, we were 1 - 0 up no problems even accepting they had a boat load of possession, they had 17 shots and 4 yes 4 on target that was a brilliant defensive effort , did you want us to try and out football them with 10 men.
Bowyer did no less that what most managers would do give that situation and it nearly paid off, give the lads a bit of credit.

 

This
Wow, Cheltenham were absolutely shocking.

Seriously, we must go up this season. Never seen owt like it. Dire.

 

I honestly don't know what you were watching. Are you ignoring the 45 minutes of dreadful football before the sending off or just concentrating on the fact we did a good job of not conceding two in the second half? Either way its baffling.

 

Utter useless performance again!

Second half was shocking.

 

Dire, dire excuse for football.

 

Never ever ever have I seen us give the ball up so easily, zero effort to score a second (or spend more than thirty seconds in their half) after the red.

 

Unbelievable!

 

That was 100% better than Mansfield, there was little desire from the whole team were as tonight that defensive effort was great.

 

Yes but that doesn't matter.. You must clap harder, you c...

 

Before the sending off we were poor- we weren’t creating chances and our possession/ passing accuracy statistics are a joke. People are getting excited because donaldson won a couple of headers and connonley ran fast- but there was no quality to support this.

After the red card the quality lowered even further- being down to ten men is not an excuse to not retain possession (I would be surprised if we made more than 20 successful passes in that second half) or play on the front foot. Instead of pressing, we sat embarrassingly deep. To Cheltenham Town. Personally think bowyer should have taken off a centre half, put in an extra midfielder and kept two up top- as it was we had no outlet and so no chance of scoring.

And personally I thought Cheltenham had a lot more quality than us- they passed it neatly and played well out of tight situations- if they had someone to finish they would have won comfortably, even against 11 men.

 

City will have a strong finish to this season, 16 to go and no one running away with it. Two surprise signings to help us get there.

 

Ditto

 

I will give credit for the passion of the team tonight with 10 men but with eleven i still think we would have sat back and made bugger all in chances.

Big 3 points on saturday needed with hopefully new signings.

 

Can’t fault the effort of the players, but second half that was tactically one of the worst 45 minutes I have seen. Cheltenham were appalling in the first half so instead of still trying to play in the second half we default to attempting to just defend for 45 minutes and invite the opposition to have as many attempts as they like at our goal. Donaldson as our only out ball in the squad was only ever playing an hour so at least we should have tried to play for the first 15 minutes of second half and try and get a second before we just defend!!!! We weren’t playing Barcelona there was no need to stop even attempting to play any sort of football for the whole second half. Absolute joke.

 

Being in the upper Kop, can anybody who watched on I follow tell me if that was a foul on Oteh towards the end of the game, as it looked a certain yellow and free kick...