The Voice - Match preview Newport County vs Bradford City Saturday 23rd September 3:00pm

They've scored 16 league goals so far, we've scored 6. Can't see them not scoring, can't see us scoring. It's coming to something when you start thinking that if we manage to lose to Newport by just one goal we will have done well.

 

Thats the problem when you dont create chances or look to create chances. I’m not quite so pessimistic but I think we’d be more likely to finish 17th than 7th under Hughes, that I will concede.

 

Got a bad feeling about this one, I feel like we are the perfect team for Newport to get a result from. I was looking over the OPTA stats for the season so far and in the "Control Zones" only Morecambe, Newport, MK Dons and Walsall have graphs like this. The zones in Blue are the zones of the pitch that their team controls the ball, in red its the opposition. They are very happy to not have the ball and just counter with pace up top, and their 16 league goals is only bettered so far by 3 teams so it's working. As said, they look to have a similar tactic to Morecambe, and we all know how that turned out. Although it seems Newport attack down the right and forget the ball can go on the left.



Our zones so far this season for anyone interested is below. We control the pitch apart from anything central in the oppos half. Teams with a similar control to us are Mansfield, Notts Co, Salford, Stockport and Swindon. Although all those teams have more blue and contain teams deeper than we do.


The aim for Hughes' control the ball and build up tactic is probably to have an output like the below. The execution is far from it.......

 

Weren't Mansfield and Crewe the same, though?

Scored loads, neither scored against us.

Not sure I can see us scoring either, mind.

0-0?

Put it this way, we seem better at making teams play at our level (1-0, 0-0), rather than other teams dragging us into a 3-3 thriller.

 

Luckily it looks like being a season filled with mid table teams.

17th could become 7th in the blink of an eye.

Everyone looks pretty equal this season.

Nobody is any good.

 

I get you're being optimistic Jon and I don't want to sound harsh but that's the sort of post I expect from @banbrotam .

Not a single thing we've seen from this squad all season suggests we're about to embark on any sort of positive run and that was also before we had any injuries so there's no excuses, we've just been consistently poor from the outset.

 

It doesn't need to get massively better. It's not like we need to turn 4-0 defeats into wins.

We need to turn 1-1 draws into 2-1 wins.

We don't need to reinvent, we just need to improve. Will it happen? That will largely depend on our forward players clicking, for my money.

But we absolutely need to look past current form, which is mediocre at best - but form isn't permanent.

 

Unfortunately that is the most frustrating thing about it - a division of piss poor teams. If we started the season with a half decent team we could have comfortably walked this league, similarly to the 21-22 season. But we haven't, and we won't

I know it is only 8 games in but to be already playing catch-up at this stage speaks volumes to me. I honestly cannot see where/how we will improve until all 3 of Cook, Chapman and Pattison starting regularly

 

No, the problem is that we're scraping 1 1 draws, not just struggling to grab wins.

We're miles off and the improvement will need to be far greater than you're suggesting to even threaten the play offs, never mind challenge for the top 3 which was apparently the aim this year.

 

2 out of those 3 have started regularly for 3/4s of the season already.

If you're thinking these two are some sort of magic wand for the team then you going to be massively disappointed.

 

Trying not to split hairs here, but i'd say more like half the games, not 3 quarters

But anyway I certainly am not thinking it'll be a magic wand. I am just saying the addition of all 3 of those players can only improve us, no matter how little, anything is better than what we have had for the last few games

 

Gateshead...

Meanwhile, City fans after pass number 6... "Ger it forrad!!!!"

 

I can't argue with that but I'm very doubtful it improves us enough.

 

Probably because we concede far more chances playing as we do than we make.

If we actually saw an end result and pressure then I think we'd all be happy but it very rarely even ends with a successful pass into their half, never mind one into the box.

 

Small steps.

 

The teams expected to be up there are all starting to put wins together now. Stockport, Wrexham, Notts, Swindon, Gillingham all winning 2 or 3 on the spin. This narrative that the league is a lottery and anything could happen is getting weaker every week. We don't look remotely like putting 2 wins on the bounce together. Love your positivity pal but you're just making things up. How can you even claim that nobody is any good having watched probably 0 minutes of most teams in the league?

 

They're not all playing well.

Imagine if we were scraping wins, do you figure it would diminish the moaning?

I suspect it wouldn't.

The real false narrative is that we're performing massively worse than those teams. Even Gillingham have, by rights, played pretty poorly.

 

Prediction: Newport 2-0 City

With no Cook/Pattison I don't know where the goals are coming from.

Since we don't create a lot, why don't we play Bobby more centrally? Let him be the play maker.

 

I think he's looked good out wide in the second halves of both games. He looks to have a bit of time and space out there, and the freedom to try things.

Not sure how well that would work in the middle?

 

I do agree but sometimes he's not in the game because he's out there.

If things aren't going our way (which they don't tend to be at the moment anyways) I'd try him central in a 10, he's too weak for centre mid just now.