The Voice - Match preview Most liked posts in thread: Leyton Orient vs Bradford City Saturday 3rd December 2022 @ 12:30pm

Three big issues for me.
1. We cannot continue with two sitting midfielders who don't create and don't link the defence and attacking players together. At least one of the two deeper midfielders has to be either a Doyle type quarterback who pings accurate long passes without dallying on the ball, or a McCall/Jones type box to box runner who can break lines. With Smallwood and Gilliead together everything is so slow, predicable and easy to defend. By the time the ball reaches any of our attackers the opposition defence is back in numbers and difficult to break down.

2. Cook is appalling at holding the ball up. Time after time today the ball just bounced off him or was poked away by the CB behind him. We all know that his first touch is often poor when back to goal, but how can such a big bloke be so terrible at shielding the ball? Given his goal record he is currently undroppable but, as others have commented, if he doesn't score then he offers next to nothing. Playing a lone striker system needs that player to be able to a) hold the ball and b) accurately lay it off to the three attacking midfielders behind him. But Cooky, despite his size, is a penalty box goalscorer, not the target man he's being played as, and simply isn't capable of doing either of those things on a consistent basis. So we continue to cough up possession and our attacking moves fizzle out.

3. In a 4231 system, the attacking three midfielders have to be scoring regularly. Ours aren't. That is partly due to 1 & 2 above. But the fact that Chapman can't hit a barn door from two paces doesn't help either. We badly need Walker fully match fit, both to help link play better and to provide a goal threat from midfield.

 

On the train back now and for me it's a similar story to last week. After 15 minutes I'm wondering how we're not one up and then at half time I'm wondering how we're two down and at full time I'm wondering how we haven't lost 5-0.

First goal looked offside, second was a belter but no excuse for not marking him. They'd done nothing to that point yet are two up and the game is over.

Our mentality is so poor when we go behind which is why we need to score the first goal every week otherwise the best we can hope for is a 0-0.

I sort of agree with Hughes, Orient weren't that good. They had some luck on their side and we imploded in the second half which meant they didn't really have to do much to see the game out as we were doing it for them. I'd say they were efficient. Made less mistakes than us and capitalised on the ones we made.

I still say our biggest issue is midfield. Smallwood and Gilliead is a terrible combination who don't offer enough in possession to build attacks. It means we're slinging it out to the wing everytime which makes us so predictable as nothing ever goes through the middle.

 

3rd goal - AGAIN happens because we leave a man spare on the edge of the area. We can talk all day long about where to improve the squad, but Hughes is NOT getting the most out of this group. He’s underperforming. He had a strop mid 2nd half when their centre half made a robust challenge on Cook - Sparky, its League 2. Your centre halves need to gladly eat grass for breakfast and then look forward to sh*tting it out later in the day.
Losing away to the leagues top team doesn’t determine anything - but it’s this same script too often. And Hughes isn’t learning.

 

Safe journey home City fans,you deserve a bloody medal watching that today.

 

I think a lot of our failures are down to the recruitment.

You can't go up if you've only got 3 players who can score.

Stop the front 3, and we have absolutely nothing outside of an occasional goal from Smallwood (who is off form).

The rest of them are costing us by offering absolutely nothing going forwards.

 

I’m a long way from ‘Hughes Out’. But I’m definitely ‘Hughes wise up and adapt because it ain’t working’.

 

I genuinely don’t understand what Hughes sees during the week that makes him think that the Gilliead/Smallwood combination in midfield is capable of playing his preferred way.
Gilliead will never be a midfielder as long as he’s got a hole in his arse.
He can’t tackle
He doesn’t bring the ball forward with any conviction.
He doesn’t score goals.
Yet Hughes keeps persevering with him.
Smallwood is obviously out of form but his record at his previous clubs shows that that is probably just a blip.
Gilliead doesn’t have that past record and unfortunately what we are seeing now is what we will
see week in week out.

 

Good job we don't have those World Cup Prediction threads clogging up the main page to detract from all the riveting discussion about this weekend's crucial game...

My gut is telling me this will be a draw, and that wouldn't be disappointing.

If we can get 4 points from Orient and Gillo away, I think that's a solid haul.

And SURELY we'll beat Rochdale at home, right?

To quote @Fordy117, THEY'RE SHITE!

 

I said it pre season and I'll say it again, we'll win nothing with Gillead as a mainstay of the team.

The guy is a complete passenger

 

Not read through this entire thread but listened to us today while grafting away in my garden in a rare nice December day. I'm normally fuming and annoyed after any City defeat but today seemed different, for some reason I'm not too fussed, and I think I'm putting it down to reality has kicked today to how far we are away from the top of the league. But once you get over that and you realise we're a play-off side at best, it's seems not so bad compared to recent history.
We're miles off top end of this league obviously but let's stay calm and no knee jerk reactions, anywhere in the top 7 gives us a shout, and the only 2 teams so far to give us a spanking as it stands will be automatics not playoffs.

 

Our CM is a real problem.

 

What I can't get my head around is that when Hughes first came into the club, the atmosphere and football dramatically changed - all within one week.
The football was good, we saw attacking, entertaining football. We could all see the immediate impact that he made. It was a pleasure to go to VP again.

Now.........for some reason Hughes seems to think that he can play Premiership stuff when at home. This boring tippy tappy stuff that bores the pants off us all (well me at least!).
Teams now know how to play against us when at home, as results have proved, and as such it is becoming very hard to get enthusiastic about going to the match.

It appears as if Hughes is now of the opinion that he is untouchable because of who he is.
I really hope that I am totally wrong here but surely someone else can see the difference in play - if so, why has it changed??

 

5th in the league with 78 points to play for and only 6 off the top 3 and we will no doubt strengthen in Jan. far more positives than negatives for me. We were never walking the league.

 

A defence splitting pass by a midfielder, oh how we wish we could do that

 

Gilliead brings nothing, An absolute passenger

 

That half perfectly encapsulates our season. More good than bad at first glance, but the good is ultimately toothless and wasteful, then bad means teams only need to do a little to score - 2 shots on target and two goals. A goal given away through a sloppy pass and a direct ball that cuts us open and another by leaving a man free at a corner. Penalty shouts denied. Chances passed up. We’re so, so frustrating to watch because I look at Orient and similar teams and don’t think they have better players particularly. They just make better use of what they have, they’re more clinical and make fewer mistakes.

What I would say though, is we don’t half overplay. Other teams make attacks happen with 2 or 3 passes. We take 9 or 10 and end up shooting ourselves in the foot.

 

He's not wrong.

Even the play offs depend on our home form improving.

I think we can write off the autos, unless we make 4 or 5 significant improvements in January, which seems extremely unlikely.

 

That’s harsh. They’re frustrating but not dislikable. Of everyone, the one who needs to up his game most is Hughes. Its not good enough, in so much as our shortcomings have been clear since the first game of the season and aren’t being addressed.