Match Thread Most liked posts in thread: Newport County (H) @ 15.00 26th March

You watched a different game to me

 

I thought we played some good stuff today and barely give Newport a sniff. It's just a shame we are so toothless up front.

I thought Songo'o had his best game in a City shirt today.

Pereira showed some classy silky touches, shame about his end product though.

Walker should have buried the best chance of the match that fell our way.

Roll on summer now, will be interesting to see who Hughes brings in and also releases

 

What a dick of a comment! Fortunately most fans can see beyond the end of their nose

 

Newport were far worse, we were the better team just not the quality in front of goal. Newport offered very little, the fact they’re near the top is just another source of frustration.

 

Why? So far he has managed to get significant improvement in a squad of players that looked like they were taking us into oblivion! He is not a miracle worker, he cannot wave a magic wand and make everything that is wrong go away. So Rayner ripping into him is a non starter as far as I am concerned.

 

What could Hughes have achieved with these players if he had a full season with them? It shows that they are capable of much more than they have shown. I lay much of that at Adamszzzz door. It borders on ridiculous as to what he did with this squad. im not saying we don’t need better. We do. But based on the turnaround of style and pressure I’m enjoying watching city again and the bond between the fans and players when they have a good go is there.

 

Hughes said that the recruitment for next season is starting in the next week or so.

You can see how he wants to play.

Thought we showed some class in midfield today but needed Vernam on much earlier as we were very slow in our build up play. Periera looked to make things happen.

All in all a decent game and for once we looked in control for long spells.

 

Hendrie is alright. Good enough as a backup and a better quality backup than we've had recently but not good enough as a starter next season.

 

Another promotion chasing side I thought were average at best going down every time they didn't get the ball in a challenge, you'd have though they'd have upped their game when they started to press the last 10 minutes but they didn't seem interested in trying to take the corners etc quickly, looks like they were happy with a point.

 

Enjoyable game of football. Lack of a cutting edge ultimately cost us the win but won't get complaints from me if we try and play football.

 

I think considering the amount of players out of contract in the summer, it's happening. Hughes needs to bring his own men in to play his way of playing. Fair play for him getting a tune out of this mediocre lot, and here's to next season when he's got the team he wants. Until then, he can only make do with what he's been given.

 

We can talk all we like about tactics, bottom line is that we have very poor options up front and we will never score enough goals to be consistent.

Let's wait until next season before we start questioning Hughes if things are not going well, after he has assembled his own squad.

The squad he has inherited from Adams is nowhere near good enough, I would have thought you would have got that by now.

 

Totally the opposite, as a coach MH has a fundamental style of play and he wants to see which of the players can fit this plan - this will form the basis of his retained list.
Hughes will also be starting to train adaptions to this style so the team has ways of negating the opposition and again he will assess who can cope with this.
But as he said you don't just change everything overnight as the group was low on confidence after Adams, he knows the current squad has limitations and the time to start to ask questions is when we get to the back end of August. By then we should have a new squad in place, a style of play that is more ingrained and players who can be a bit more flexible to utilise tweaks to the system

 

I presume you have some magical formula for winning, then MH can go back to the plan of assessing the squad? Don’t hide your expertise under a bushel, gives a clue….

 

Thought the team in the first half was unbalanced. Too many of the same ball players but nobody to run in behind or drive the ball forwards. Fullbacks need to provide width in an attacking sense when the midfield is narrow as it was today but the game highlighted that Foulds and Hendrie are very much defensive minded. Both need to be upgraded on in the summer.

No surprise that we were much better when Pereira and Vernam came on and we really started to push Newport backwards.

Generally a promising performance, night and day to the shite Adams came up with.

 

After watching the games played yesterday on Quest today, it is amazing how many teams, when attacking have three/four men in the box waiting for the cross/shot coming in. We hardly have anyone there.

An example was Jamie Walker who broke into the penalty area, had a good hard low shot parried by their 'keeper - but where was the player(s) following up??
No one there for the tap in - that's criminal, no wonder we can't score.
It took until the 38th minute yesterday before we had a shot on goal. Second half was better but hell, let's have some bodies in the penalty area when attacking.

 

Bollox!

 

Plenty of effort, some neat and tidy play, just not enough threat

 

Shows how bad this league is if Newport are joint fourth.

we could have nicked it today on another day. Pereira looked lively.