Match Thread Home V Crawley(Creepy) Tuesday 13th April@7.00pm

He has said when interviewed "I'm a big lad but not a target man".

 

Agree with most of that but the POC point. He has improved but needs to cool down or he’ll leave us a man down. The captaincy seemed to have an effect. The hangover analysis is right too.

 

100% correct, unfortunately a lot of people on here are blinkered to this fact and will defend Rooted ROD whatever he does or (as is usually the case) he doesn't.

 

I think you raise a good point about conditioning,nearly all teams have had to play twice a week,but nearly all look to be in better shape fitness wise than City.Wonder what Allenby is doing now,we need someone of his quality for next season.

 

Rowe and Cook have to play on Saturday
If T&S want to know how to play them they should watch some old videos
of messrs Campbell and Hawley promotion winning strike force

 

Not sure about that most of the leading teams have been struggling even last night. We have set a high standard over the time hey have been in charge and it was always going to be difficult to keep that up

 

One of the main reasons we are going to miss out on the play offs despite a great effort in getting that far after the start of the season is defending set pieces but probably more importantly the lack of success of attacking set pieces. This is an area we need to improve drastically for the future I understand with no pre season and little time in the packed fixture schedule to work on this but next year it needs to be a lot better.

 

Couldn't agree more. Our defence whilst Hornby was in goal looked solid, knew what they were doing, trusted Sam to come when he needed to and let them know when he was doing it. ROD and the back four too often look like strangers, not sure who's responsible for what. But what really peeves me is that when ROD gets the ball in his hands and the lines have been cleared, he waits for bloody ever to release the ball, which is then usually a speculative long hoof, which loses any hope of swift, accurate counter attacking. He needs to be quicker in his decision making - and frankly, most of the rest of our team need to be, too. We're just so sluggish and slow, give the ball away far too often.

 

Couldn't agree more. Our defence whilst Hornby was in goal looked solid, knew what they were doing, trusted Sam to come when he needed to and let them know when he was doing it. ROD and the back four too often look like strangers, not sure who's responsible for what. But what really peeves me is that when ROD gets the ball in his hands and the lines have been cleared, he waits for bloody ever to release the ball, which is then usually a speculative long hoof, which loses any hope of swift, accurate counter attacking. He needs to be quicker in his decision making - and frankly, most of the rest of our team need to be, too. We're just so sluggish and slow, give the ball away far too often.

 

I agree that set pieces have been a problem at both ends of the pitch. But much much more of a problem is our slow decision making and speed of thought. We labour everything, instead of going for the incisive. Too often recently, I get a sense of a few players not knowing where they should be for throw ins, for example. There was a point in the second half against Crawley where Wood was high into their half trying to take a throw and no-one was showing for him, it took bloody ages for him to find someone and thus all momentum was lost. We then immediately lost the ball.

 

Nick Allamby is still at Sunderland

 

And may well be in the Championship with them next season, so he ain't coming back.

 

Unfortunately, Rowe and Cook ain't no Campbell and Hawley.

 

Fair point but i think we had too much to repair in one window in Jan that’s all

 

I live in hope !!!
Be good to see them both have a run in the team together played to the correct system
Hopefully they might surprise us

 

Jesus Christ.

Ever get the feeling he's dammed if he does .........

 

There's nothing to lose by playing them together now. It's not working as things stand but if T&S aren't willing to give it a go, they might as well try and offload Rowe in the summer. It's a complete waste of time rotating them for each other.

 

Not sure Cook is our player
May be wrong but thought he was on loan till the end of the season
In which case Rowe will be 1st choice

 

You're correct, but his Manfield Contract expires 30th June, so will be a free agent thereafter

 

The problem is people think everyone can start every game but they can't. Look what has happened with Sutton and Watt, even others with niggles because they're overplayed.

These days there's so much data available and the emphasis is on pre-empting injuries by making sure players don't play themselves to exhaustion and injury. We have no idea what the data is showing but there's literally zero benefit in disagreeing if the manager says "they need to rest/rotate" as we have zero data to dispute that other than "they're only playing footy for 4 hours a week" which is a nonsense argument.

Also, the players are not robots, they have good days and bad days, high energy days and low energy days - just like all of us that are trying to work and live in this weird world at the moment. We can't just assume that they work up in the morning with 100% energy like a fifa football game.

All players understand that ALL SPORT squads (not only football) need rotation not just football. The level of data and analysis and sports science available these days is just at a different level to even 5/10 years ago.

Where we seem to be going wrong is being inflexible in the formation. It needs to change to suit the players. Not every week like Stuart did but we need to have a more go to plan B that suits the players and flex away from the 4-2-3-1 that isn't really working attack wise.