Most liked posts in thread: Home vs Crawley Town 19th October

No way should AoC make way for anyone. He’s barely put a foot wrong and his headed clearance off the goal line 2nd half yesterday gained us 2 points

Regardless of how good BRE was before his idiotic red card, he fights for his place like everyone else

 

There are only 4 teams in the league who’ve conceded less than us, two of which have only conceded 1 less. So if we’d not conceded with the last kick of the game yesterday, there’d only be two teams who had a better defensive record than us. Some dramatic comments about how poor we are at the back for some reason. More than made up for in goals scored as we have the joint second best gd and it’s improving all the time atm.

 

We need to start twatting teams tbf

 

BRE has to come back in. We've looked shaky while he's been out and aren't winning the first header from defensive set pieces enough.

Vaughan straight swap for donaldson would be the only other change I'd make.

Oh and Connolly on the right and Ismail on the left please.

 

He was probably scared to start getting his cards out after what happened last time he did that with us!

 

For what it's worth here's my thoughts on the 3 amigo centre halfs.

A O'Connor for me has been our strongest centre half this season winning more tackles & clearing shots off the line on a couple of occasions too.

BRE absolute beast in the air and generally been very good but as been turned a few times when backing off his man that said this is L2 after all so to be expected.

Paudie probably our biggest asset at the club top defender who is going places can pass tackle and score goals a added plus for a defender.

We have also taken 7 pts from the 3 games BRE has missed so for me I wouldn't drop either of the O'Connors at present.

 

Not convinced by Oteh yet. Shay for me.

 

Makes you laugh when you consider how many doubt him. We were crying out for his hold up play and the problem was our defenders were playing the ball as if he was there

Good three points though

 

Bowyer is rubbing off on some of you. We are at home and should fear nobody. Expect and demand 3 points.

 

Well that was a game of 2 halves.

A bit worried that once Pritchard went off we looked a completely different team.

We defended well but panicked and sat too deep.

Credit to Crawley for having a go.

Another 3 points though.

Injuries are now biting hard and a few more and we will be having to play Anderson and Patrick. Gulp.

 

I don't think its complicated. Earlier in the season, our midfield regularly included Anderson and Devine. We didn't control games. We then brought in better midfielders in Cooke and Pritchard, and we control games.

As soon as we need to include Devine and/or Anderson, we're going to suffer. They're not up to it. So the sooner we get back Palmer, Pritchard, Connelly and Devitt, the better.

 

Easier said than done. The damage was done at half time with Pritchard going off. Injuries had robbed us of key personnel to the system Bowyer wants to play. With the likes of Connolly, Donaldo, Devitt, and now possibly Pritchard, the system that showed us the performance of the season against Swindon now lacks some of the vital ingredients. Probably gonna have to tough out the next few weeks with dogged rather than fluent football.

 

AOC has been rock solid since coming in. I think people are still hung up on the armband thing last year with him. He's definitely a better player than he was last year.

Let just be thankful with got 3 quality CBs. Do people need reminding about what we were seeing last year defensively?

 

Can’t believe people are calling for Paudie to be dropped. Nominated for player of the month, has an attacking presence at the other end and oozes class. The lad will be back in League 1 if not the Championship in no time whether we are or not. He’s a player with value we need to continue to develop.

A. O’Connor and BRE can fight it out for the other spot. AOC deserves his place at present.

 

Hoping this is going to be a routine win for us. Not being naive but, like Swindon, we are at home and have nothing to fear whatsoever. Yes they are good scorers but have a terrible record of conceding. Let's put them to the sword from the first minute

 

You play your best players.

BRE is our best defender.

 

Before his sending off BRE had got into a habit of making clumsy/dangerous tackles which had been detrimental to the team. Sitting on the bench will give him time to consider his actions in the future.

 

The second half performance showed the big gap in midfield quality when we start to lose players. Devine for Pritchard stopped us controlling the game.

 

Hard fought 3 points. First 25 minutes we were excellent and then we seemed to take our foot off the gas towards the end of the 1st half. 2nd half was pretty even and should have been out of sight with the Oteh chance but then the last 15 minutes we seemed to lose our way. I thought we were slow to bring Mellor on as our right hand side was where Crawley were causing us trouble.

We need to work on keeping the ball and seeing the game out more effectively than we did today, OD won us the 3 points with a good save at the end from their corner but we hung on and that’s the important thing.

 

You'll have people telling you devine was good today because his wayward shot got a deflection when in truth as soon as he came on we lost any form of control in midfield.