Match Thread Home v Oldham Athletic 3pm Saturday 20th March

Some good points Botswana - as you say people are one dimensional- but people see the young management team being the same way. "One dimesional"at the moment. To be fair they are handicapped with lack depth in certain areas and positions.
In their first transfer window they failed or were not allowed to recruit in these areas or positions - hopefully and the club will know / learned lessons for the summer recruitment - that will address the lack of flexibility.

 

Let's just be clear here. They had 20 shots to our 11 but we had 5 on target to their 6. So let's not get carried away with the bald stat of 20. I could hit 20 shots off target all day long. It's the ones on target that matter.

 

Lackluster,almost pedestrian at times today,is it time to make wholesale changes against Scunthorpe United or do we stick with the same starting eleven.

 

I totally understand why you are suggesting this but it does not often work like that. We only need to think back to earlier this season and Stuart playing some of the youngsters, it was ok if we then got a result but all too often we werent and the bulk of the comments on here were that the 'kids' are no way near ready. A coach I work with is always adamant that the time to give the youngsters playing time is when its going well so they come into a happier and more positive environment as opposed to its not going well so might as well give the kids a game.
The problem for T&S is that even when we were winning games it was very rarely comfortable and (understandably) they have largely stuck with the tried and tested methods, but these are now being found out that we dont really have that many viable alternatives. We do seem to have hit another wall but hopefully this is not going unnoticed by our management structure in the planning for next stage of our development

 

Ryan Sparks

 

Time to forget about the playoffs and experiment. Not going up, not going down. Let's just have some fun and regroup next season.

 

I told you think weeks ago but performances over recent weeks have been unacceptable.

We need to have a plan B
We need to stop playing some that won't be here next year.
We need to not undo the hard work that the club has done since McCall left.

All feels like that T & S got a contract which they deserved but job done for them. They still need to prove themselves.

 

Nothing has changed in the T&S approach, so the contract issue is a nonsense. The problem actually at the minute is, we're missing the key person to make our midfield tick, but we're still playing a five-man midfield based around a winger playing in the false striker/attacking midfield role - and we're making nearly exactly the same changes week in, week out, with the exception of Scales coming on and doing absolutely nothing today.

 

We are doing the same to Rowe as we did to Doyle, sticking them upfront on their own. They are the sort of players that need someone up front with them . Today he got in some good positions and midfield never passed to him, Why? He's the centre forward not them .

 

We’re simply going to have to improve the midfield in the summer. Cooke is the only player with quality in the final third, the others either don’t know how to be in the right position at the right time or are incapable of making defence splitting passes

 

I'd be amazed if it wasn't in the top 10

 

Hi everyone, Cambridge Sean back again (btw you can always tell me to feck off if need be but as I've said before I've always had a soft spot for Bradford because of personal history so thought I'd post)

We played Oldham last Sat and decided to give them a 2 goal lead after 11 minutes! Some of the craziest football I've seen in a long time. One thing we do have though is firepower and Mullin got one back before Iredale (he's a wing back...in my terms a full back who goes forward a lot) scored two to make it 3-2 at HT. Another goal from us in the second half made it 4-2.

Oldham actually aren't a bad side and Curle is concentrating on toughening up their defence. Understandably. In the second half though, when Bahamboula came on he completely shifted the dynamic and looked very dangerous. An earlier poster on here (see I've read through them again!) said Bahamboula doesn't always know what's going to happen next and neither do his team mates....that's spot on and quite exciting.

Finally a word about T&S. I don't know much about them other than what I've picked up on here. If I give you our manager. Mark Bonner, as an example then perhaps it might help (or hinder) your judgement. Bonner had never been a professional footballer and supported Cambridge as a kid. He got a youth job as a coach when he was 20 (?) and then, apart from 12 months at Southend, was in every academy and coaching position there was. In 2018 he became Asst coach to a whole load of underperforming ex professional managers (Shaun Derry, Colin Calderwood etc). So when he was appointed as manager after Calderwood's sacking it was greeted with a collective shrug of the shoulders and complete apathy.

Since then he has created a brilliant , free playing attacking team (you haven't seen it....sorry!) that is just fun to watch. The first half against FGR today was some of the best football I've seen us play in....well about 30 years. But he's been able to create this because he's a fan, he cares and he's been allowed to make mistakes. He gets lots of things wrong too but he's got enough credit that by and large fans forgive him for that. Don't get me started on late substitutions...!

I won't bore you with our season to date but I really believe we're going to get promoted this year...automatically. And that's down to him.

So onto T&S. They strike me as two who care about the club, have already achieved a fair degree of success and want the best for Bradford. That's not a bad starting point. Please give me that over journeyman ex=pro managers doing the rounds. Anyway what I want to say is that if they want to be as good as you want them to be they will....but let them make mistakes too!

Sending love to Bradford .....Cambridge Sean

 

Simarlarly though I could roll 5 shots to their keeper and count them all as shots on target. Ignoring the stats they had the bulk of possession in good areas and certainly made our defence work a lot harder than theirs had to.

 

It not nonsense at all.

If we are saying Cooke is the main man then change formation. Cooke isn’t that good you know? Let’s stop this making out he’s bloody Frank Lampard or Steven Gerrard.

Why are Bradford City fans full of excuses?

Since T & S got the job we have been poor! Lacking ideas. Gone from must win to must not lose. Jumping up and down to a draw against Bolton. Blaming the weather for a defeat. I keep saying it until draws feel like defeats this club will always be a failure.

Seriously, they won’t last until next Christmas unless they learn to change things.

Asking Rowe to be like Messi then like for like subs when we should be going for the win is poor.

Look, you even said yourself we are doing the same changes. It’s all to SAFE! It’s all to Bowyer like and it won’t get us anywhere!

 

My dad always goes by the BBC online stats and I have to tell him just this. The only stat that makes any real difference is the xG stat that some bang on about and that had predicted our run would grind to a halt somewhat. As an attacking side we don't create a great deal, Oldham yesterday looked the only team likely to score. Our defence has been the key to the good run and Cooke has been a big part of that as well as being the only creativity in the side. Yesterday answered a few questions I had about the team and none of it boiled down to physical fatigue. Mentally we've run out of steam, the likes of Bolton and Tranmere haven't. We at least have a solid platform for next season but attacking wise they are going to have to work out how to get the best from the likes of Crankshaw, Vernam, Rowe and Evans because managers deciding to sit deep has pretty much negated anything attacking we do.

 

I think it's coming to the point where we stick with one of Cook or Rowe as the main striker. The constant changing of the two, who are completely opposite to each other in styles, does not lend itself to familiarity with the other midfielders. Rowe coming deep and not being found leaves us with nothing upfront. The opposition then push one or two up from defence and overload in midfield. We're then left chasing shadows and dropping deeper to the edge of our box to defend. My choice would be stick with Cook and get further up the pitch. I'm beginning to see why Kewell decided to offload Rowe, because he really is a luxury player who unfortunately still has the non league mentality of drifting all over the pitch and not being disciplined enough to hold position. When you play one up top, you need one up top otherwise the defenders are going to lump balls out to the wing and there's no one in the middle to aim for.

It's a shame Novak is injured because he plays that striker role so well.

 

No coincidence we started our great run with Novak up top. Like any decent side it has to balanced and with the injury to Cooke the balance isn't there. Your comments on Rowe are interesting because i alluded to this a week or two back, he's a luxury player that is neither a striker or a ten. He'll score you great goals but i question whether he is the sort of striker that gets you promotion because you would have to change so much in the players around him to get the best out of him. Funny though because i think if you'd stuck Rowe in yesterdays Oldham side they'd have won such was their setup, which was far more fluid and contained a far more attacking threat. The likes of McAleney, Nicky Adams, Bahamboula and McAlmont offer more attacking threat than any of our forward set up and thats a worry.

 

Well to add salt in the wounds from watching that absolutely garbage game ifollow have charged me when it should be free !

 

What’s happened to the lad from Boro? Is he injured or just not good enough to play?

 

Looks too me like he's another Austin Samuels otherwise he'd have had a few minutes here and there.