Southend ( H )

I've had a lot of time for Hopkin and had started to think we finally had a manager whose judgement I could trust, but last week and this has severely shaken that. Mystifying selections and tactics, and listening to him after the game he sounded just like Stuart at his worst. No explanations, just descriptions of what happened, as if we didn't know. Very depressing. Unless we get some size, height and physicality into this team we've had it.

 

Jack Payne?

 

Hopkin got it massively wrong yet again today. A 1 man midfield against their 5? Jesus, what was he thinking. We just couldn't touch the ball all game and when we did, we resulted to that utter nonsense hoofball. A blind man can see we should never, ever, ever, ever play like this but he still persists with it and refuses to change it. Why? You'd think after the December we had when we played free flowing football on the deck, smashing nearly every team we played, he'd realise how to get the best out of these players. To change it over the last 2 games in ridiculous.

Two weeks in a row now we've played square pegs in round holes for absolutely no reason. Caddis and McGowan last week, NKP this. He's not a left back David, not a chance.

Our transfer window so far has been pathetic, we need 3 or 4 quality players THIS WEEK. No more pissing about and letting other clubs mess us about, whilst more games go by and we lose more points.

 

Tough oppo are Southend.................

 

3 shots 1 on target against Southends 11 shots 10 on target and we were the home team !!!!
Time is running short to sign the backbone of our team Centre Half Attacking Midfielder and Striker if we don't do that then it's time everyone gave up !!!!
Easy to say I know but everyone has known this since October surely we should have identified and secured these players to be in place before now

 

Deary me, that was awful. Truly poor. I really do try to be positive but unless we sign three players (prob centre half, centre mid and centre forward) then we are doomed Captain Mainwaring!!!

 

****WINNER***

 

I'd be happy with just 'spend wise'

 

Saw that. OB played the back pass then peeled of and was shouting for the ball in 30 yds of space. O'Donnell didn't even look, just focused on hoofing it ip

 

He is exactly the type of player we should be signing. MOM all day long.

 

I'll get ready for the flack. I thought NKP didn't do bad at left back. I don't think playing Wood there from the start would not have made any difference. One of our problems is that when either full back has the ball, none of our forward players makes the wide run to enable the ball down the line, leaving few options other than hoof. Gray example again would be their 39 who played down both lines as well as through the middle

 

Agree - pace, power and and an aerial presence. Everything we're missing.

 

I'm not the best with Scottish accents but does Dave Hopkin say around 20 seconds into the interview "we conceded 4 very poor goals", The first from Cox was an exquisite shot that the lad bent around the keeper, the second from Mantom was hardly a tap in we were right behind him when he hit it and saw it curling right into the bottom right corner, the third was another great strike this time from Humphrys, and the 4th was great center forward play drew the keeper out dummied him walked around O'Donnell and still had time to pick his spot with players coming back.

https://audioboom.com/posts/7148511-david-hopkin-bradford-0-4-southend

 

He was poor for the first goal but other than that he did what you’d expect from a centre half at full back. The spine of the team was the problem.

 

I agree NKP wasn't the worst player, but he did severely limit us as he's about as likely to get forward as O'Donnell.

Hopkin was naive to say Wood would have made no difference, in my opinion, as we literally had zero forward thrust throughout the game today outside his opposite number, Caddis

 

The defending was routinely poor, particularly the first and last goals, but we were punished very harshly by a strong display of finishing.

On another day we could have been let off a little more lightly.

Would still have lost though, 2 0 maybe more likely given the quality of finishing.

 

I accept that Nkp was severely limited going forward but he was playing as full back not wing back. We would have gained some more forward momentum with Wood but i think his defence would have been weaker. That said he has bags if energy and potential so maybe we should persevere with Wood

 

That's what I saw - 4 good quality goals.

 

I posted this at half time https://bantamtalk.com/index.php?threads/southend-h.1939/page-6#post-161918 we had nothing to lose by IMO replacing Akpan who offers little for a big lad, I accept he wasn't by himself but over all our midfield offered little today, the front two were getting more and more frustrated as they were expected to compete with 6'+ defenders, did we win a header today, on the other hand the lad Humphrys did everything today brought people in with his domination of our back line as well as score two cracking goals what a debut for the 21 year old kid.

 

Weaker? We lost by 4 goals. Surely if you have a left back in your match day squad, the sensible thing to do is to start them, not stick them on the bench and put a player not used to playing in that position there instead?