Match Thread Home V Grimsby Saturday 10th April @ 3.00pm

....and lost.

 

Love this!

 

What joke did I miss?

I think too many forget what the sun actually looks like.

 

Couldn't agree more Stafford. The 'business end' of the season is a whole different proposition. Nerves are kept, or nerves go. Form can go out of the window and crazy results occur. We've seen it all before. None of the bookies had Parky's lads to go up through the play offs.

 

Nobody can say we are fluent at the moment but we are very hard to beat as we have been since T&S have taken over and we are getting results and with one transfer window it’s a very good achievement being where we are

 

If after today we're considering 3-5-2 how about this side when all are fit:
OD/Hornby
AOC, POC, Canavan
Evans, Sutton, Cooke, Watt, Wood
Cook, Rowe.
Evans at RWB because he's played there before and his crossing is better than any other option on the right. It also gets Cook and Rowe into the same side without compromising elsewhere.

 

It's wage / league dependent but all being equal a new contract for AOC is a no brainer

 

He has been consistent and steady away I agree. If you look at the back 4, I’d say Canavan and POC are the centre halves, Wood needs to be upgraded and we’ll surely bring in a specialist right back. That leaves Staunton and FCD as back ups. We must bring in another 2 quality midfielders with Sutton and Watt rotating. I can only see AOC as back up. Would he want that at his age?

 

M'lud, I would like to take the prosecution back to December. Hovering around the relegation places, six losses on the bounce. We were truly going down the pan with erroneous old ideas and old beliefs about how wonderful former players obviously, automatically make great managers. My defendants have taken us to within three points of the play offs. They play fairly conservatively, but are still learning their way in this league. The measure of them will be how they set us up in the last games.

 

Yes, I'd have liked us to have put it beyond doubt in the second half but we controlled that game from start to finish. Yes they had some half sniffs of goal but less than us and of less quality when they did. They had a lot of possession but only because we let them, they could have played for 180 minutes without scoring against that set up.

 

We've struggled massively against teams near the bottom recently (whilst also winning nearly every game against the top half of the table, for whoever was claiming earlier that performance somehow means we'll struggle against top teams!?), I had us down to struggle to a draw today. I'm definitely taking an easy 3 points to close the gap to the play-offs by 2

 

Seriously? So I was the only one expecting an 89th minute equaliser?

 

Spot On, Staffs !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Enjoy your little drinking session tonight.

 

No, I was too... I'd have like us to have put it beyond doubt in the second half, particularly having followed us for so long and seen it all before. But they didn't

 

Well that was pretty dire to watch for long periods today. Given GT's recent run of form I wasn't expecting us to put them to the sword.
As the first half drew to a close I was thinking we"d done well to go in at the break 1-0 up and we'd need to be at our game second half as Hurst would give them a right bollocking.
But then they hit the self destruction button when Payne got sent off. I didn't see that coming. And whilst I would have loved to have been a fly-on-the-wall in the GT dressing room at half time, I thought T&S's team talk just got a lot easier; chuck on Vernam and Rowe from the start and go for the kill.
But instead we chose to continue with our conservative approach. You know its bad when you agree with Andy K and his assessment that we should have been more offensive 2nd half.
But 3 points is all that matters. We'll need to better than that against Crawley.
Two things from the game:
We continue to give away far too many free kicks in dangerous areas.
ROD - is he a vampire? I've not seen someone so averse to crosses since Dracula

 

Not the Don's fault that he had nobody getting near him or making runs for him to find. Time after time he had the ball, being hounded by two or more defenders, and had no positive options available.

 

Not sure what in their 8 game unbeaten run (which we ended) made you think we'd steamroll them