The Voice - Match preview #44: Chesterfield vs Bradford City Monday 21st April 2025 3:00pm

I found the whole discussion re Baldwin preferring to play CB but GA not been convinced strange. It’s almost as though GA has now made a topic out of it, declaring he can now ‘trust’ Baldwin at CB when none of us knew it was even a topic.

For me, we looked stronger with Baldwin at RCB. In that case either Huntington or Shepherd at CB and Crichlow or Shepherd at LCB, feels our strongest back line.

Agree with others, for me Byrne doesn’t start and I’m confused as to why the whole Baldwin topic needed to be made public.

 

Agree he is, yet I’d challenge that his and the whole back lines distribution suffered the moment he went into CB. For a start, Byrnes distribution is nowhere near the same quality meaning we immediately lost that outlet.

There was a period where Baldwins distribution to Tayo on the left had us troubling opposition, but now that’s dried up somewhat.

 

Baldwin's link up play with Halliday on the right is also a big miss when he plays in the centre.

 

GA himself said in a recent post match interview something along the lines that Baldwin at CB suits the way we want to play. I thought at Accrington Baldwin was looking really frustrated. He made himself plenty of time on the ball but absolutely nothing was happening in front of him so had to play sideways or back. It did change a bit after the subs. That said we are struggling at RCB so probably best available option is Shep in the middle and Baldwin on the right

 

Very nervous about today, hopefully Newport do us a favour in the early kick off so we don't temporarily drop out of the automatic spots. My shift starts at 3pm today too, got to try concentrate on work though!!

 

Setting off in 30 mins to Chesterfield.
Very confident that whatever team we put out, it can beat a depleted, ageing Chesterfield side.
Khela on set pieces again today and a few goals from the centre backs sees us win 2-0.

 

Not feeling nervous about this one weirdly! Chesterfield will need to push for all 3 points which might play right into GAs counter attacking setup.

Wouldn't be surprised to see Pointon dropped today.

 

Never thought I'd be spending my Easter Monday getting ready to cheer on Newport.

 

Possibly for Wright

 

Maybe the last 4 or 5 games. I wouldn’t put it terms of months. I’m not sure how it’s worked out in terms of how many sides in the top 8 have had early kick offs, but Swindon at 12.30 isn’t good. Either all are impacted by early starts or none.

 

Goals like Kelly's the other night are shockingly infrequent. How hard is it to whip a ball in and get a big old for'ead on it. I suppose it's easier said than done otherwise there'd be more goals in general from corners but it seems a really inefficient area of our game.

 

No chance of that ever happening, it's part of football at all levels that have TV games and it would end in chaos as you don't always know a month before who will be involved or not. If you look at the Championship going into Friday's games every game had something mathematically riding on it as every team had a chance of automatics, play offs or going down.
This was the table on 20th March when the TV selections for this weekend were announced, how do you decide from this who is in the promotion race, then when you move some games that means you've got to move the games of the play off teams as Colchester play Doncaster who are in the promotion race then Salford play Morecambe who are in the relegation fight, before you know it nearly all of the league has had games moved.

 

I appreciate it won’t be straight forward, but declare all games start at 3pm regardless. Select the most attractive and show that game. Make the 12.30 games earlier in the season.

 

Its a must win today

 

In theory, I agree it would be fairer to have all matches kicking off at the same time, especially those who are involved in promotion/relegation battles.

However in practicality, given that the early kick offs have to be declared 4+(?) weeks in advance, it is impossible to know who exactly will be involved in crunch ties.

And then you have a scenario where you have all the matches with nothing to play for on at once which draws no interest, or you might have 10 early kick offs because there are still 20 teams who in theory have something to play for.

Just isn't feasible, unless it was decided before the season that say the last 3 or 4 rounds of fixtures will all kick off at the same time, and not just the final round.

 

Byrne and Bobby are lucky to be given another go.

 

Tommy Leigh is alive and well then..

 

Only because Mellon is injured.