Home vs Forest Green

Saw Akpan for the first time today. It's hard to argue with those who don't have a good word to say about him. The game just seemed to pass him by without any real input from him.
I was surprised that Bowyer kept him on the pitch for the whole 90 mins.
Very disappointed with what I saw of Akpan, also their 'keeper had very little to do, especially in the first half. Get anywhere near the penalty box and shoot for goodness sake!!!

I couldn't understand why their goalkeeper was allowed to almost walk the ball so far up the pitch without anyone closing him down??? What the hell was that all about Mr.B???

Richards-Everton outstanding, what a signing that lad is.

ps...…..the referee was abysmal !!!!!!!!!!!!! ​

 

No it wasn't better at all. You have low standards.

 

No but just tempers silly people like yourselves over expectations. We are where we belong we are not mighty Bradford city we are Bradford city from league two our heritage. Yes it was a disappointing result but there will be lots of similar type matches this season with teams packing their midfield and defence making it very difficult hopefully the new signings when they bed in will give us the edge in matches like this

 

Lets not kid ourselves we were sucker punched by a pub team today. The Parrot FC were shockingly bad . They could barely string a pass together first half and constantly gave away the ball to us. The goalkeeper was literally bricking it in front of the mass rank of the Kop. A wall of noise the like of which hes never heard in Vegansville.

But and its a big BUT we were never going to be savvy enough to win out in this match. Bowyers decision to go with a midfield three of Akpan, Devine and Palmer put paid to that. Why would you go with two defensive midfielders at home to a pub team ? It left The Don out wide and Gibson rarely getting beyond the defender. Leaving Vaughan labouring away up top with little service.

Against a team with a ditheringly slow defence and a dodgy keeper. We should have been stretching the game and whipping balls into The Don and Vaughny. For cripes sake thats where these two are most dangerous. But no we persist with this ineffective 4-3-3.

Eventually he throws on Scannell and Devitt with the clock ticking down and neither were really able to get into the game. Cooke looked capable in his short cameo late on, so that was promising for us.

But really we have to do better than this. To lose one at Home already is disappointing. But to lose to such a poor football team is harder to take. We have to respond at Crewe next week. Its not the end of the World and the team is still coming together but there cannot be more than the odd one or two days like this before it starts to become a long hard road ahead.

 

Dead right. He used the same tactics at Swindon when he probably had the best team in the division. Justice was served when they lost in the play offs. Thank goodness we will never see him or the corpulent one managing at VP. It is disappointing though that we are still unable to deal with anti football. True the ref was too weak to deal with the wwf but we need to overcome such tactics ourselves. Lets hope the new boys will give us the balance to deal with the matter quickly for we need to get out of this quickly.

 

I think time is now for Bowyer to choose a system (442,433,diamond) and stick with it, whatever it is. The time to figure this out was pre season really but thats gone and we need to start getting to see continuity in the side. All successful sides play the same system and pretty much same XI every week, they all know what they're doing and know how to cover for each other. This constant chopping and changing in formations and personnel is not conducive to building relationships on the field. Gary needs to think about Bradford City and stop worrying about stifling the opposition.

 

What’s strange to me is playing 4-4-3 with personnel (Akpan & Devine) who couldn’t adapt to it last season, yet he puts them in again, in front of two players who I assume have been brought in to play said formation. Unless he’s trying to put Akpan in the shop window, why would you continually pick a player who’s going backwards quicker than Aaron Maclean.

If he’s trying to keep morale up by not putting the new players straight in, then he’s running the risk of turning the fans against him.

You brought them in, be brave enough to put them in.

 

Bowyer has given his reasons why he made the changes -the injury to Henley and the fact he didn’t want Scannell having three games in a week.

But to change a winning system was disappointing. Why couldn’t he just start Longridge and Gibson at LB and RW if Scannell needed to start on bench?

Where’s Ismael btw?

 

Which table were you sat at then? We were on 17, 4 of us. To be fair he was way better than the guy who did it last year when we were there for my lads birthday, at least he has some presence.

 

If it's a case that Bowyer picked his fittest players, then there's a case to argue that - but there are some things that simply shouldn't have been adjusted.

Vaughan & Donaldson front two WAS working - even if we switched to a diamond, it would have beaten seeing Donaldson struggling (in the same way Scannell would have struggled) to deal with a more demanding role despite his age.

I don't see any reason whatsoever that Akpan should have played, and his mediocre at best - I'd actually have preferred to see Paudie step in at CB and AOC moved further forward, although to be fair, AOC & MRE have been impressive. Alternatively, put one of those three out left for a game, and keep Wood in a midfield role. Even if that means a 'round peg in a square hole' regarding a full back, FGR clearly weren't very good on the wings - so so what?

But I feel there are a few excuses here, and that Bowyer set up to try and be 'clever' against a side that simply weren't better than us, and didn't deserve the level of respect we gave them.

 

The minute I saw Akpan's name on the team sheet I knew it was not going to be a good day at the office but shifting Wood to left back was the biggest mistake of all for me. I presumed Bowyer does his homework and watches videos of our opponents before we play them but after the way we set up yesterday, I'm starting to wonder. If he'd watched FG's mid week game against Port Vale, he'd have seen that they really struggled with crosses into the box. So what does he do? Moves the player who has provided us with the best crosses into the box so far this season to left back. I get that Henley picked up a knock and wasn't fit to start but how about playing the player we signed as a left back in that actual position instead of not even having him in the match day squad? It's truly baffling, unless I've missed something and he's injured but I haven't heard his name mentioned when we've had injury updates.

 

I suspect Longridge is not good enough, or ready for the first team yet. Not sure if Bowyer had ever seen him play before signing, and if not, on what basis was he signed?

I thought Wood did really well yesterday, that tackle in the penalty box in front of the kop saved a certain goal.

However, if we do play Wood at left back, need somebody else further forward whipping in crosses

 

I like him in both positions tbh, which is good more flexibility.

 

I'm still absolutely livid we played three defensive mids at home. What on earth was he thinking?

 

the problem wasn’t wood playing at fullback; the narrow diamond in midfield gives ample space for the full-back to get in to wide positions and deliver crosses in to the box and he has the energy to do that.

the problem yesterday was that we didn’t even look like trying to control the football and work passages of play to get wood or mellor in to positions where they could get the ball in to the box.

our centre-backs seemed unwilling to feed the ball in to midfield, even when we brought devitt and cooke in to the game and i can’t remember either full-back ever getting ahead of our midfield into crossing positions.

whether this was an instruction from the management team or not i’m not sure but we clearly need to be better with and on the ball.. too static and too reliant on playing direct up to the front two hoping to get something off the second ball.

much improvement needed.

 

It must have been an instruction. The same problems re lack of width from full backs was prominent in the Cambridge and grimsby games.

 

Too late to change it.. yet I doubt the performance would've been any different.

He needs to settle the side down and stop putting sub standard players into the side when we've better on tbe bench.

 

I think we will start to see a settled midfield once Cooke and Devitt settle in. Cooke looked skillful yesterday, Devitts instinct put him into a great goalscoring position yesterday, but whether lack of game time or rush of blood, he just miss hit his chance, on another day, you suspect he would have buried it

No problems at the back, would like to see Donaldson and Vaughan playing closer together up top. I wish we could get Scannell fitter quicker
How long is Ismail out for, seen no recent updates

 

Awful from Bowyer, I'm giving him one more chance. He really should've shouldered most of the blame in his post match interviews but that wasn't the case which I was disappointed with. Gibson in the second half, when O'Donnell pinged a quick throw to him and he had the whole of the left wing to go at and just dawdled at a snails pace to gain about 5 yards and turned to knock it back to the defence just summed up the match. Pathetic. The tempo Bowyer seems to want his teams to play at is a disgrace. No urgency or pressing. Never seen a home team set up so negatively.