Match Thread Vertu Trophy - Bolton Wanderers (A)

Nope, and thats my point!

 

Maybe man citeh and fulham can loan us some defenders to improve the squad,

O, on second thoughts

 

Exeter got hammered at Luton tonight.

Plymouth won at Orient and Port Vale hammered Barnsley.

 

Because it's working so well with Humphrys?

 

At least Humpherys moves around.. cook is sooo static, like the guy will never move and wants the ball passed directly to him..

 

Humphrys is a lazy b*stard. He spends more time stood still than GA.

If all we need is energy and running, play Swan. Not that it would change the end result of being toothless up top.

 

Humphrys

 

Tonights showing didn't surprise me. As mentioned before by a few, if the press doesn't work we offer little in terms of free flowing football. And bar the best starting eleven the squad is lacking in quality. Fair play to Alexander for.getting this squad to third in the league, he now needs time and resources to reshape this team to take it to the next level.

 

Plymouth will beat us easily on Saturday. It's the city way. The Morecambe of last season.

 

Byrne talks a lot of rubbish in his post match interview.

 

Cliche’d nonsense

 

Alexander saying not picking Halliday was tactical has me a little worried. If you ain't picking Neufville but you'd prefer to pick Lapslie out of position instead of the natural right back cover for.some sort of strange experiment it clearly didn't work. Don't get me started.on players being in their best positions, it makes Lapslie look worse than he is and shows Halliday his time is probably up.

 

After all Halliday has done at the club and never letting us down, to be left out for an attacking midfielder is a massive slap in the face. GA reminds me of Parky in that way, you’re either flavour of the month or out in the cold.

 

He will have seen how it worked in training so it will be based on something, I do think it's a fair point from Alexander that Lapslie did look decent when he played that role in the league game so I can see why he's looked at it especially with the upcoming window. This was basically a competitive game trial for Lapslie to see if he can do a job there, if he could then it allows Halliday to leave as we have a back up for Neufville.
If one of both leave in the window I think it will be tough to find a replacement as Neufville will still most likely be 1st choice so you are trying to convince someone to come in as a back up and have a fight to get on the bench as the wing backs tend to miss out on the bench a lot.

 

Massive overeaction yet again i bet the like of Cardiff and Barnsley are doing the same on there forums we have escaped League 2 by the skin of our teeth what did you expect that we would ride our way to the title this season .............folk aluding that we have to many league 2 players now unless Rupp and co where gonna throw millions at it to completly overhaul the squad then this was always gonna be the case ...............but hey let me guess the folk now pulling them to bits now where probably praising the same lot after the Hudders win ...........and will no doubt be back praising them again should we hit a bit of form the flip flop life of a City fan who now regard this comp as a be all and end all rather than the shite trophy it is

 

Fair enough that. I'm stuck in the middle mind. I think our league position is wildly unrepresentative of our actual level. We'll probably finish mid table but you won't hear me complaining about that for one minute. I'm delighted with that prospect.

 

Alexander is a far better manager than I will ever be but playing George Lapslie out of position like that is hanging him out to dry. The training ground stuff don't wash with me, he doesn't get much game time as it is. If it looks like Halliday is surplus to requirements we need a replacement, not square peg in a round hole.

 

Humphrys is frustrating.

He's pretty strong, he's quick, he can press, and he can control the ball.

But mentally, it's just all missing. Saturday was a prime example. I actually thought he played pretty well first half with minimal service, he did what he could, then he got frustrated and started hogging the ball for reasons I can't begin to fathom, and was quickly hooked.

I thought he was awful against Newcastle, clearly wanting to make an impact in a big game despite fundamentally not being good enough (which is fine, it's Newcastle for goodness sake). His desire to make an impact led to him selfishly trying to do too much time after time after time and I've seen it plenty since.

A real flaw. If the lad was a team player he would literally be twice the footballer.

 

Selfishness is not an uncommon trait of a striker. The difference right now is he’s not delivering the end product to mask over it. Cook has been the same throughout his city career, he’s just delivered the main part of scoring goals. Once you do that, often the assists/goal contributions also increase as you become “less desperate” , something we also saw in Cookie.

I’ve no problem with him being selfish if he’s delivering on what he’s there to do.

 

I don't disagree. But those players are at most competent in L1 and no more. Of those players you've listed; Pointons first season at this level, only Cooks second season at this level, Sarcevic has pretty much dropped back to L2 everytime he's been at this level, Baldwins first season at this level. And when you scratch the surface behind that and delve into the squad, it's very much L2 level.

There's no issue with that, it's to be expected after six years in that division. We were never going to change that in a single summer, especially when the recruitment also seemed to focus on competent L1 players (either through choice or ability to attract) rather than really improving the quality.

There's still a lot of work to be done to turn the squad into a truly top L1 level team. But again that's to be expected, it's just where we're at as a club for the time being.