Most liked posts in thread: Richard Smallwood

maybe they don’t work together ( Oliver/Cook ) because they simply don’t get enough game time or training time together .............if Oliver did well at a higher level along with Smallwood then surly it’s down to the way we are playing ........... before they got here from higher level clubs they where both highly rated so somethings gone badly wrong down there

 

Good point. If Hughes is so insistent on 4231 then I'd bet he never sets training up to play with two up front. If he's so scared to play 442, he should try 352 with Halliday & Foulds as wingbacks, Timi/ Platt/ Critchlow at the back and a centre mid with legs - Songo'o, East & Sutton.

I appreciate that means no place for Wright, Banks & Chapman, but its not working with them and he could always play Wright as the second striker.

 

You have your trousers round your ankles then?

 

When I referred to the midfield general, I wasn't particularly thinking about the stats. Let's be totally honest, we want to see a skipper who screams & shouts, points, directs, dictates the play, dominates his position, flies into crunching tackles full blooded, drives play forward. Dare I say it....another Gary Jones, something we ain't had a sniff of since he left us. Smallwood in comparison is a wimp of a man, gets bullied fairly easily in my eyes and that affects his confidence and passing

Statistics mean very little in Leagues 1 & 2. A team can be absolutely hammered all game and then sucker punch the opposition in the 95th minute with a long ball, and take all the points. Several people on here used to bang on about how good Watt was "statistically"....got us nowhere

 

Do many modern players do that though? I remember Morais last season saying something along the lines of Gary Jones type players are all but died off. I can’t think of any team that have come to VP this season and thought there’s a tough tackling midfield general tbh. Most are more technical these days.

 

I can't remember names, but the lad in the middle for Swindon was impressive, as was the AFC Wimbledon midfielders

Maybe they have died out at the prima donna level of Prem/Championship etc, however they are very much still around in the lower leagues

 

Thing is though Jon, it appears he has become crap overnight!

 

I don't think he did.

Bottom line is, we had two good wins followed by a bad defeat.

Nobody said Smallwood was crap against Mansfield or Sutton.

And I'm not counting Salford, because bollocks to that.

We're back to every single defeat being the end of the world.

 

100% agree with this. Ironically this is role Clayton did well for the immediate games when he arrived, before getting injured. My hope Macdonald comes in to do this role and more, which if so sparks my question, what happens to Smallwood…?

Hope you're wrong about the two up top. He’ll have to try it since he’s spoken about it too many times. The truth will be in the resolve if it doesn’t work and also how to build Pattinson and Walker into that formation.

 

Might be time of day for the route planner, but Redcar to Woodhouse grove is a 1hr28m/69.5mile drive according to Google. Where as Redcar to Barnsleys training ground is a 1hr37min/92mile drive.

That extra 20 minutes a day for training isn't probably a big thing to most?

 

Understand where you’re coming from with that theory but it’s very difficult to question Smallwood’s commitment when he probably played the most minutes of any outfield player last season. I don’t have the actual stats but I’d assume if he didn't play the most then he was certainly top 3. He only missed two EFL Trophy games and the Mansfield game in February when he was suspended. Not sure what else he can do in that respect.

Smallwood should benefit from increased competition in the middle as it’ll allow him to have the rest time that he probably could’ve done with last season as well as being used in his favoured role. Smallwood has said himself that his role had to change last season because of a few separate reasons and that showed on the pitch. Now we have extra numbers in centre mid, we’ll hopefully see players used in the roles that they are most comfortable in. For example, I don’t think we should be expecting McDonald to play every game but think he’s been brought in to try and give us a bit more when teams sit in a low block, an area that Smallwood struggled with last season because its not really part of his game.

 

That's my thoughts too around the pressure, which seems so strange for a man who the season before started 40 games in the Championship captaining a promoted Hull side to safety, actually safe by 14 points.

A move I'd get if he was 33/34/35 and looking for 1 or 2 years to see out, but he was 31, and had offers to still play at the high L1 level. But there's still pressure here over a Barnsley/Peterborough as he's likely to be playing in front of more fans here than either of those 2 as well as being at the biggest club in the tier which demands a level and success which admittedly few have been able to reach in recent years.

 

I don’t think Barnsley was a serious offer. I was told his offer in League One was Posh but he didn’t want to relocate from the north east, so he approached City and then the deal happened, as we offered him a longer deal.

The Barnsley and Derby interest might just have been tentative.

Charlie Wyke and Gillead must have kept in touch as they were on a night out in North East with Smallwood not long before he signed.

 

Perhaps he doesn't like (or rate) Hughes' style of football ?

 

Could be but he is a professional?