The Voice - Match preview Mansfield Town vs Bradford City Saturday 2nd September 2023 3:00pm

The pleasure's all mine. Here's some facts for you to choke on your sour grapes

1. 6 matches played. Just 2 at home
2. Gone to Stockport and Mansfield in the league plus Wrexham in the cup and unbeaten. Let's be honest all three will be in the Top 8.
3. We've now played 12 matches this year, against our 'key' rivals (to me that's the Top 8 clubs who didn't go up last year, plus Wrexham, Gillingham, MK Dons and perhaps Accrington) and only lost one (of course that was the vital one at Carlisle )

I don't think creating is the major issue, for instance we had more shots on target than Mansfield - but taking these chances is (frankly we should have beaten Stockport and even had decent chances against the two teams who beat us) However, we're going to have to be patient as two of our good goal scoring players are unavailable and I wouldn't be surprised if they were out for the rest of the month.

Promotions are never won or lost in September. The team is solid enough. Now Hughes needs to spend the week and restructure us, as we simply will need to play differently whilst Cooky is out (which in fairness we did against Wrexham)

Good point today. But yes, 4 goals in 6 is not going to get us promotion. Only conceding a goal a game after the games we have - is promotion form however. We need to get the other side of the pitch correct.

Yours faithfully

Deputy Chief Happy Clapper

 

I'm unconvinced @Rcbantam has ever been cheerful!!

 

My reply to @Rogered Tart was exactly that "We got one more shot on target than they did" Lewis didn't need to make a save from the Atkins header nore did he have to stop a speculative effort from range otherwise if they were on target they would be included in the match stats.
There was very little between the two teams today Mansfield have won both their previous home games but they couldn't do the same against a team that not merely shipped 3 goals at Morecambe but were out classed by a very average Morecambe team the difference being Morecambe wanted it more than us, maybe Uncle Derek had a quite word before the game and they responded rather than the bluff Hughes came up with prior the game when asked about the Derek Adams effect.

 

We did attack. We had nine attempts on goal. we also had a lot of forward moves break down outside their box. We may not have been very good at attacking, but we were trying to do so. I don't know how anyone could watch that game and say we didn't attack.

 

Please don't take the stat of shots on target as a credible stat. My dad used to mistakenly do that after looking at the BBC report, yet it's a very misleading stat. The actual truth today was Mansfield had the two only worthy efforts on goal, we could still be playing tomorrow and we wouldn't have scored.
There are positives in that the players looked comfortable on the ball today and we generally look a bit more solid than of late but creativity wise we.look poor. 4 goals in 6 games and last seasons leading scorer without a goal is a better marker of our lack of progress as an attacking threat. Going with 3 at the back has had no effect at all on our lack of attacking prowess from last season.
It's a long season but there's still a lot of work to do to make this side a top three outfit

 

Morecambe's the one worrying performance. Happily we've not been that before or since. I'm most pleased that defensively we're doing fine, which gives us a solid base as it might take a while for this new system to yield dividends - but I do think if it works, that will be a big advantage from January onwards.

Of course we need to be in touch by January!!

 

Attacking means more than getting over the halfway line, we had zero clear cut chances...fact. 4 goals in 6 games haunt us....

 

I mentioned it, because it's not really a relevant stat. After all the three that got auto promotion last season, had a similar SoT to us, supporting your point.

I think we have one or two who can create, Hughes needs to play them.

 

It's just a buzz phrase at the moment.

We have to pretend we're not attacking, even if we are, because we're not scoring many.

 

There are positives in that the players looked com

We have Chapman to come back who can be a serious threat at this level and Pointon who I think is a number 10 in waiting. I'm not despondant as the standard of football at this level is generally woeful so any team in the division who manages to create chances will have a chance of promotion. But I'll put my money on one of them not being Mansfield

 

Anybody who though that was anywhere near comparable with the Morecambe game are watching the wrong sport, maybe my reaction after the game was a little knee jerk comparing it with the Bristol City 6 - 0 thrashing game at Valley Parade or the away game at Blackpoo,when again we were thrashed 5 - 0 at Bloomfield Road under that Championship manager I believe ?, but it was very very poor.

 

Thread

 

Thought Kelly played well today, I’ve not seen much of us so far this season but good to see that after a shocker at Morecambe.

 

We're going to have to deal with the massively OTT negativity until we string a few wins together, Bronco.

It's probably not worth the effort to argue against massively inaccurate reviews of games at this point.

We'll beat Grimsby next Saturday, then on to Harrogate, also at home.

 

Scoring goals don't guarantee winning games but clean sheets do guarantee you getting something from the game, I did hope this season we would see better attacking football but at times today we knocked the ball around pretty well unfortunately not well enough to beat Pym in the Mansfield goal.

 

According to a Mansfield fan today was the first time they have failed to score in 16 competitive matches, stretching back to March.

 

We did attack
The concern for me is that Halliday was involved with almost all of our good opportunities. I like Halliday and he's a strong right back. We can't rely on a right back to put in all the balls to get goals. We need to get Wilson and the other attacking wide players to be in the positions Halliday is getting in where they are more likely to make better decisions.

 

Or you could look at it this way Dave, a clean sheet only guarantees you a point, scoring goals is the only way to get a win.

 

Last season I think we'd all agree that we had a solid defence (put aside set pieces). It's taken us 6 league games to adjust to this new formation and become as solid as we were last season.

The problem is the switch in formation has not yielded more goals yet. The longer that goes on then the more we've taken a backward step really because if we'd maintained the 4-2-3-1 from last season we may have had more points at this point.

Hughes needs to get the attacking players to combine better and score more goals otherwise we won't be in the top 7 at the end of the season.

 

I said he bluffed his way out of commenting with regards the Andy Cook situation, on his last pre Mansfield interview, I've not heard his post match interview as yet.
One or two have had a go at me for highlighting it but something is not right for me, we all know Andy Cook thrives on scoring, a confidence striker were told you have to ask does the change of formation help with regards giving Cook support, has he questioned Hughes how he's expected to score within that formation with little support and been slapped down by a guy who seems like he doesn't like being questioned, a conspiracy theory of course.