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

When you're at home in the first leg, it's important to offset the disadvantage of being away in the "deciding" second leg, by maximising your lead.

We sat back on a 1-0 lead and employed time wasting tactics in the last 15 minutes, to protect that slender advantage.

If that had been a normal league match, that would have been acceptable. But it wasn't.........

 

From memory (and its not a good as it was) there weren't many times other club beat us without conceding, maybe Hughes thought Carlisle had to win by two clear goals and the form Cook was in I could understand the logic, the daft thing about it is it nearly worked, bringing Darbyshire on who got us back on level terms, the mistake he made (which has been commented on many times) was taking one of our few attacking threats off inviting Carlisle on, that substitution not being the first time Banks off Platt on .
Lets see if Hughes can deliver after his comments at the end of the Carlisle game "We are a different club now and we can use this disappointment next season. We came up short this season but next year we won't."

 

I mean, you saw what I saw in terms of a lack of character and leadership last year.

We fell apart every time we got close to tangible success.

That's why we've brought in McDonald, I'm assuming, because without him the same thing happened this season at Morecambe - pressure get cranked up, players fell apart.

I really don't think that's tactics, I just think we had some wimps leading the line last season. I'm optimistic that we've challenged that culture of disintegrating the second we're almost looking good.

 

That's just not true. I'd say 99% of the people who are losing or have lost confidence in Hughes are taking a view over his full 18 months in charge. We are no further forward now than we were this time last season.

 

Is that last sentence meant to be serious? After how many games? Three of which were away?

Add to that 3rd round of the League Cup beating TWO fancied teams away from home. Say again ? Slower?

 

I hear what you’re saying but 3 of the next 4 league games are at home with the other a very winnable game at Newport. If we win them all 1-0 we’ll be top of the league but for me I also want to be entertained.

 

True, and the first one...Grimsby. A team that I'm sure lots of people will say "oh we should beat these" but have despatched Salford and Gillingham 2 nil in the last four games and drew against Mansfield (a result some were lauding us for). Won't be an easy match and hence why we should have put Mansfield to the sword when we had the chance.

 

Yes, I'll say it again and as many times as you need it repeating.

Last season was a failure, albeit we did come close to achieving our objectives. Since then, we've ripped up what brought us close for something that simply hasn't worked. We lost two of our top five performers and they have not been replaced with the same or anywhere near the same quality.

You may accept the likes of Ash Taylor being brought into the football club to replace Romoney Critchlow or that we are the joint lowest scorers after the first month, but others do not see this as progress.

So yes, we are no better off than we were last season and there's a compelling argument to be made that we're worse.

 

Cheers , I feel corrected

A compelling argument aren’t facts. It’s an opinion.

Yours are different to mine. My conclusion are pragmatic, based on the big picture, not a knee jerk overreaction some are making at this extremely early stage. Odd most are dismissive of our Cup progress? Maybe it doesn’t fit a narrative. That’s an observation not an opinion.

 

Pattison is better than anything we had last season in that area as will McDonald some of the others it’s far to early to judge. Still big doubts about Hughes though

 

Agree, so you'd think with a bigger threat up top playing last seasons formation would produce a better return, a blind man can see Cook is struggling in this formation.

 

Incorrect. You will not find anywhere that had Mansfield as top 4 or even 5 in the betting.

Wrexham, Stockport, Notts County were clear favourites.

The rest were Gillingham, ourselves, Salford, MK Dons, Mansfield etc.

Bookies had them down as a play off contender, not a promotion favourite.

 

Pattison, Walker, Lewis, Stubs and possibly McDonald (still) are all good enough to play a division up. Unfortunately we need more than that to even get 7th this year. Hope some of the others can step up and prove me wrong and of course there is time. I am not at all confident in MH signings any more and at the moment can only see mid table. Could be something to do with my being on the wagon for a fortnight but we will see.

 

How exactly? We were without Cook and Pattison, our two biggest goal threats (even allowing for Cook's poor form so far) and Oliver is also injured.

What exactly would you have done differently, with the players available, to 'put Mansfield to the sword'?
It wasn't down to tactics. We tried to win. But due to a combination of injuries and pathetic striker recruitment we simply didn't have the firepower available to 'put Mansfield to the sword'. I don't think that's down to Hughes. I suspect he's as frustrated as we are that we didn't recruit another experienced L2 striker this summer

 

Oh FFS. If they're likely to be in the playoffs then they are amongst the favourites for promotion. No one said 'favourites for automatic promotion'. The point is, they are one of the better teams in the division and will likely win a majority of their home games. So a point away there is a decent point for any team in the division, including those expected to be in the autos.

 

It’s deeper than that he wanted the team to high press this season and changed to wing backs but after leaking goals he is still playing the system but instead of pressing we are sitting back and the wing backs are now full backs and it has become five at the back

 

Oh so you now narrow it down to around 4. Righty oh. Why not narrow it down to just one to give you more credence. There weren’t among the favourites after all…my mistake.

 

Thanks Offy. Goalposts are shifting already!

 

Except it wasn't five at the back at Mansfield. Both the full/wingbacks got forward plenty. We weren't just sitting back. But we massively lacked goal threat because Smith up front, with Odour and Walker supporting, isn't a potent enough forward line to beat decent teams like Mansfield at their place. Without Cook and Pattison available we simply don't have good enough attackers to score goals against decent L2 teams.

I, and I'm sure plenty of others, kept waiting in the summer for us to sign another decent striker to compete with or complement Cook, but it never happened. Smith is quick, and makes good runs, but doesn't look anywhere near like scoring in double figures for the season. From where I'm looking, we simply don't have the depth of firepower to get auto promotion or, possibly, even playoffs. Let's face it, we only got to the playoffs last season because of Cook's annus mirabilis. Lighting was never going to strike twice so we needed to recruit serious competition for him, and we just haven't.

This is where the lack of owner contributions is hurting us. Any decent striker coming to us to compete with Cook is going to want good wages. We probably need to push the boat out a bit to persuade a good striker to come here, knowing that they might be on the bench a lot of the time if Cook starts banging them in. You'd expect a club of our size and stature to be able to pay good wages to attract such players. But, without contributions from Rupp, we seem limited to journeymen or untried wannabees.