Wycombe Wanderers - Saturday August 25th

Our worst type of games.....

 

The last news I saw on Reeves was that he is "not a million miles away", I agree that O'Connor is primarily a CB but we've a load of cover in that position and he's played in midfield in the SPL so he is an option and as for Colville, we're meant to be developing young players so we're going to see some of them play at some point and Collins seems to like him. If we could get a loanee in for 1 or 2 months then I think we'd see some cover come in but that's not an option, anyone coming in is here until January and I think we'll save our money for now because I wouldn't be at all surprised to see us bring in someone permanently in January, especially if we've not seen much sign of Devine.

We've got to factor in ER, it's all about the long game for him, unless something bad happens to Wright/Akpan before the end of the month then he won't spend money on a short term fix when we've already got short term fixes available in the squad, he'll be saving as much money as possible until January when we can sign players that add long term value to the squad.

 

Where's this loads of cover at centre back comer from?

 

O'Connor
McGowan
Killa
NKP
Isherwood
Mellor

 

Can't believe some are still talking about 33/34 year old defenders that we had 2-3 seasons ago.

 

Davies is at Hartlepool because he wants to be at Hartlepool, not because he should be playing non league. Some things don't change though as he's currently injured...

 

Add Chicksen to that list, he started at CB against Barnsley. Admitedley it didn't go too well and he was soon moved to full back when we switched to 4 at the back

 

I would put Wright as the defensive midfielder and let Akpan do the attacking midfield role as he's supposed to be the box to box midfielder. At the moment they are both dropping to deep so the defence are having to bypass them with the long ball. When we had Doyle and Jones in our side a few years back Doyle played Defensive whilst Jones pushed forward which worked a treat, so I think we should be doing that now with Wright and Akpan.

 

Utter ball axe, Ricc ...........
Has Bruenker played just one minute, so far ?
Also ................ When your leading goal scorer (Payne) is out scoring your whole forward line, how can you object to something different ?

If the 'Beast' can do it for others ............... Why can't Kai do it for us ?

An' I don't want a sarcastic or shit reply, OK ? [/QUOTE]


Blimey, bit of a vicious response there Ron.

Kai played plenty of minutes last season - and he's not in the team this season for a good reason - mainly because he's not good enough for this level of football.
I've seen enough of him to know he's not up to it. I'm at a loss to understand why we've signed him.

The Beast can do it for others, and has done for many years now because he's a better footballer than Kai.

 

Andrew Davies is at Hartlepool because he's 34 in December and has only ever played regular first team football in seven of the seasons since he turned pro, and has never managed more than 31 games in a season. We got the very best years out of him, he was absolute quality for us, but he would really struggle at this level. Much in the same way Akinfenwa will struggle to make any impact for Wycombe over the course of this league one season.

 

He is a handful of the bench though brute of a guy

 

Can't imagine this has happened very often but looking at Wycombe's matchday eighteen from their previous fixture, they had seven players that are older than our manager (El-Abd, Bloomfield, Mackail-Smith, Makalambay, Saunders, Bean & Akinfenwa). Its rare to have one player older than the opposition manager but seven!

 

Of course it'll happen every now and again with Collins only 32 but it shows that Wycombe are certainly prioritising experience in their squad to have that many.

 

Do Darlo even exist anymore ? Don't some local league RU team play in that wonderful stadium Reynolds built

 

Good chance to build some momentum and bank our first back-to-back wins since January. Akinfenwa is definitely a threat, despite his height and age...4 of the 5 goals we have conceded this season have come from headers, and I'd expect Wycombe will be focusing on this stat. As someone already pointed out though, cut off the supply and we'll be fine.

You can say all you want about the team gelling, and about it being early in the season, but if we want to do anything this season, this is a game we should be (and need to be) winning.

Suggested Line-up: O'Donnell, Mellor, O'Connor, McGowan, Riley, Chicksen, Akpan, Wright, Scannell, Payne, Doyle

...perhaps too negative of a formation for a home game, but I suggest it's the best counter to Wycombe's style of play.

Score: Bradford City 2 - 0 Wycombe Wanderers

Referee: Mark Heywood (14 x Yellows, 1 x Red in 3 games)