Match Thread Home vs Colchester United Sept 12th

Didn’t play bad I thought, both strikers and DMH let us down. Play French at least he tries to cross! Novak should score no excuse and Guthrie looks a bit lazy to me. Desperately need a news striker, also Ismail looked uninterested when he came on. Defense kept them relatively quiet and I think they’ll get goals this season.

 

If we need 3 or 4 with more quality it hardly says much about the current squad. Games hinge on chances, if Novak takes that one first half we have a different game on our hands.

 

Fully agree with your last sentence I thought DMH did alright first half but disappeared after the break. Don’t think overall the performance was as bad as some on here are making out but I do agree we very much have a shortage of pace

 

Not on the wind up but like I said when he joined, Guthrie is tall but he's not a target man, he likes to link up play and has good feet. Problem at the moment is that he has an immobile group around him. He tends to look to come deep, connect with the midfield, allow Watt/Cooke to get the ball on the front foot and play the other striker/wingers/wing backs in behind the defence. We'll only see the strengths of him when players run ahead of him (E.g. French v Bolton) and Novak is too slow unfortunately. Sorry @ahar964 but Connolly would play well with him running on behind the defence. DMH needs to run on in front. Wood is more Beckham-esque at the moment, he's not fast enough to get up the pitch and back down again so unless he has support to work with/overlap he won't get far enough up the pitch.

Thing is we have some elements of a decent team here but the lack of pace or lack of willingness to push players on behind the defence is killing us.

 

Tuesday night will be a real test we know who round three brings to Valley Parade there couldn't be a better incentive but Lincoln wont be easy they beat a very good Oxford side today.

 

We didn't play that badly but we are were the home team and need to produce more.

The problems we all knew issues and they haven't been addressed. We lack pace and our attack is weak.

 

Plus we can't really change the formation until we have a right back because clearly Stuart has no confidence in someone partnering Paudie in a 4-4-2 while AoC plays right back.

 

I think Sutton is the RB mate.

 

I thought the system of three centre halves worked well But they had two very good full backs who blocked most of our crosses today

 

We were effectively playing 4-4-2 today as DMH never figured defensively and AOC never got forward to support him as Staunton did on the left. We were very lobsided and all the Colchester threat came down our right where there were acres of space. Not unlike the last time Stuart was here.

 

I think we would have produced more, unlike Bowyer it wasn’t the tactics more the personnel. As you say we need more pace, DMH has it but is looking very poor.

 

There was not enough drive from midfield. Cooke was way off the pace and i lost count how many times he gave the ball away with sloppy passes.
I thought the defence coped quite well against a team that made the playoffs and Staunton looks very promising.
They had pace to spare , but rarely hurt us with it.
The less said about the forwards the better, Novak should have burried that first half chance. How ofren have we said that , over the past seasons. Six out of ten , improvement needed.

 

Agree this 100%. Thank goodness for you, Park and Wilsden. So much doom on here, I was thinking of going onto the Southend and Cheltenham sites for a cheer up. First game of the season against a good side that contained a mixture of good pros and pace. Both sides played some good stuff at times and on another day, the linos flag would have stayed down. DMH SHOULD have had an assist and when he went off, they had much more joy down that flank. His replacement was a waste of space. We are all(including Stuart) aware of our problems up front. The 2 starters appeared to be on different wavelengths so we will have to see what happens there. One bit of good news(whisper it), We may have dug up our biggest diamond since Deano, about 30 years ago.

 

SM appears to think he's Mourinho ( Tinker man).
Leaving French out after last weeks performance was a massive error IMO.

 

I was meaning that bit of strength in depth. Any injuries to our midfielders and were in deep do do!

 

That midfield still looks unbalanced. Cooke needs to be further forward if he's to be effective, not sure him and Clarke can compliment each other.

 

I presumed it was Ismail that got flagged for offside

 

Add to that hes always injured Ismail. Will surely be released at the end of this season if he doesn’t sort himself out

 

I think Clarke's inclusion means he'll naturally end up drifting further up the pitch into more advanced positions, and Cooke finds himself further back even if he'd prefer to get forward himself. Clarke impressed me today though, maybe they'll click after a few games. I like Watt too, he looks comfortable playing from a deeper position. Definitely a bit toothless up front. We should be looking at 2 strikers not 1