That Substitution

Hughes said he was running out of steam and made decision to sub before the goal.

wonder if he realised you are allowed to change your mind???

 

It was a monument howler for sure. Banks may well gave been running out of steam but the adrenalin he would have got from that assist I'm sure would have got him through the last 15 mins:
To replace him with a defender though just defies belief! And to add insult, their lad gets a free header when we have 3 centre halfs on the pitch!
All in all a shocking day. Only saving grace is at least it wasnt at Wembley

 

It was an insane decision, taking off our only wide attacking threat. He was clearly trying to defend for a penalty shoot out, there is no other reason. We’d just scored so had the momentum. Banks had his full back on toast, and adrenaline alone would have got him through to the end. As an ex player, I’d have thought Hughes would know no that.

 

It's up there with "McMahon should have squared it" levels of WTF just happened.

Hughes said in the interview he was running low or something along those lines..... if he's running low, you had Nevers and Pereira on the bench, we'd just scored and the place was shot. Completely changing the shape and bringing a defender on just have them free license to go forward. Monumentally stupid management.

 

His post match interview was a load of nonsense. Broncs posted the link in another thread.

he got all defensive and putting words into Raynor’s mouth at one point with regards to the progress we’ve made.

said some other gibberish about tactics not mattering, just that they scored more than us.

with respect to the sub he said Banks has indicated he was ready to come off before the assist. While thats fine, it does not justify why he had to swap a winger for a centre back.

obviously he caked his pants rather than trying to go and win the game. Ironically we then concede a header when there isn’t a CB in sight to head clear and Derbyshire loses his man.

slept on it but feel the same. Time to go Mark.

thanks for your efforts and well done on the progress we’ve made - but it’s not been good enough and you’ve still no idea what it takes to achieve success in L2. Immobile midfield, short goal kicks, no width or pace and an isolated striker.

We’re not playing PL survival where you dig in and keep it tight every week. The mindset needed here is attacking football and winning automatic promotion. Take the safety catch off for god sake man, or walk.

 

Another legendary bradfordism. We always do it. Help the opposition. You haven’t won in 20 games. Okay is. We can help…. We are cheating a result after a OG and actually getting back into a game we should be so far out of.. hang on banks off extra defender on but your man gets the freedom of our pen box with another of our centre half’s on. I give up.

 

Maybe Crewe away got in his head.
We kept going for it and conceded. With hindsight, he'd have brought another defender on that day.

The real question is why their lad had the freedom of the penalty area when we had 3 big centre backs on the pitch?

 

On the interview,did you notice he walked away angry before the interview was finished,not a good look.

 

Hughes said in his interview he also expected a lot of balls to start heading into the box so the extra CB was there to help manage it. Ironically it was exactly that which beat us, a ball into the box.

I can’t remember which game it was but the last time we went 3x CB’s we looked confused who was doing what. That was already alarm bells for me though i understand the logic.

It’s another example where this season we’ve approached defensively rather than offensively. As much as he’s failed vs last season, I still cannot understand why we haven’t seen Pereira since Chapman got injured. None of Chapmans replacements have worked and one think Pereira gave, like Banks, was the ability to go at the opposition.

 

I didn't watch the extra time but hearing about the sub in retrospect, I'm as baffled as everyone else. Having said that, I did think at half time it might be an idea to bring Platt on for Clayton and go 3 at the back to give Halliday and Ridehalgh more opportunity to get forward, but I get your point about us looking a bit confused the last time we tried it.

 

Hughes will never live it down

And neither should he

 

He was annoyed , like the rest of this forum.

 

Manger talking bollocks shocker. Didn't look out of steam 2 minutes earlier when he ran 30 yards and did the defender for pace. Our best bit of attacking all game creates the equaliser, then straight back to the approach we had second half of the first leg. I shouldn't think about it, it still really annoys me.

 

Gillingham I think….?

 

and another thing; why can’t our defence manage set pieces or balls coming in via free kicks or actually anything coming into our box at height? Answer that one MH? It has been an obvious one all season.

can you imagine Parky allowing that being a thing in his team. Not to mention he would never have replaced Banks with a defender in that situation.

 

One word for that substitution Idiotic

 

Said Banks was tired so why not replace with another attacking player?

Absolute shambles of a decision and MH has clearly lost a lot of respect because of that.

Hope he learns from it and fast.

 

It wasn't a well worded question I don't think Raynor was suggesting there wasn't any progress but I think that's how Hughes took it and was annoyed.

I would have been annoyed too if i was hughes and thought someone was suggesting that. We've gone from a club where there was a toxic relationship between the team and fans to a point where we are challenging at the right end of the league and for the most part a good connection between the club and fans.

The talk of him needing to go seems a bit knee jerk to me.

 

Yes a shite decision but on the unlikely chance we won on penalties, could you really see this team winning at Wembley? I certainly couldn’t and said that months ago

Keep MH in charge, we can only hope he’ll learn from it for next season