Well, there we have it. Much like my post earlier today, trying to get players to play the noble way that MA wants is like asking for a wine list in Little Chef.
Two wingers 'cleverly' playing on the opposite wings to their strengths results in two players out of position and totally uncomfortable with their wrong foot (Allen and Beauchamp level this isn't). Many times the ball was played across the park only to a player twisting their body around to try and manage the ball with their 'correct' foot as they watch it sail out play.
I'm a fan of the noble ideal, but fear that at this level Champagne football isn't possible and instead of a vintage team we have the noble rot...
(Booze fans, I thank you!)
Why? Combe
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recordmeister
- Middle-Aged Spread
- Posts: 1808
- Joined: Fri Mar 02, 2007 11:34 am
- Location: London
Re: Why? Combe
I give grudging respect to our opponents today; their spell of pressure after the break was as good as anything I've seen from a visiting team in the last few seasons and better teams than us would have cracked under it.
That said, our inability to cope with a side that close down quickly, and the lack of speed at which we moved the ball, and the instinct to pass backwards and not forwards, and the notion that plan B consists of brainless hoofing up the park, individually and collectively give cause for concern.
No alarm bells ringing yet, but my finger is hovering nervously above the button...
That said, our inability to cope with a side that close down quickly, and the lack of speed at which we moved the ball, and the instinct to pass backwards and not forwards, and the notion that plan B consists of brainless hoofing up the park, individually and collectively give cause for concern.
No alarm bells ringing yet, but my finger is hovering nervously above the button...
Re: Why? Combe
Well the Yellow Army did come to support the U's in good numbers yesterday
with fans travelling from places like Cambridge, Lincoln, Brighton, Whitby
and saw a poor performance from their team.What a let down!
They saw two ineffectual wide men, a deep lying two in midfield, two centre halves who lack presence
and physicality and front men playing with their backs to goal in the main so
what else did we expect from that shape, personnel and formation?
It looked wrong after five minutes and was always going to be a long
afternoon.
Wycombe - solid but unspectacular - worked out how to get at United and
pressed all over the pitch, feasted on the pieces that fell their way and
outplayed United for large spells. I thought Appy would get us sorted at the break
- getting into certain players and making some changes despite an
unconvincing 1-0 advantage - but instead the canny Ainsworth's and his troops
sensed blood and went ruthlessly for the kill.We had no answers.
We were embarrassingly blitzed and battered for 25 mins.and only came round in the final ten
and had Hylton netted that spot kick it would have been undeserved, surely.
I have no idea what our best shape and formation is, neither does Appy I reckon
and I have to say I am worried for us.We just don't look solid enough
and always look like conceding in my view. Not enough quality crosses to our strikers
and not enough yellow shirts getting into the penalty box are also other bugbears.
What is the tipping point?
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GodalmingYellow
- Senile
- Posts: 5178
- Joined: Tue May 16, 2006 10:22 am
Re: Why? Combe
That was embarassing.
Wycombe play very basic football. Nothing fancy. Nothing clever. Not even much skill. But they play it with total commitment and effort and energy. Classic League 2 stylee. They are top of the league as a result.
I would love us to play the fancy dan stuff, I really would. It would slaughter teams at this level. But we are not playing that type of football. We are not capable of playing that type of football. And the reason is that MApp has not assembled a squad capable of playing that football.
What MApp has done, is taken the best players left from the Wilder/Waddock era, and augmented them with mainly sub-standard loans that he presumably perceives to be of his style. Accompanied with that are several players badly out of form.
To make matters worse, MApp has metaphorically castrated the style of play, by making the left and right back stay back much more in order to try to resolve the leaky defensive issues from earlier in the season where we were being taken on the wide counter attack too easily.
As others have said, plan B is retry plan A.
I'm sorry to say that Ty Barnett isn't good enough. He will not score the goals we need. He has neither the skill nor presence, nor positioning sense, nor reading of the game, to be able to do so. He has to go.
Joe Riley is not good enough either. He's OK going forward, but defensively he is all over the place. He doesn't seem to know where he should be most of the time, which perhaps shows confusion of the MApp style. When he remains back more as of late, he is still poor and easily beaten by wide men, and of course then we don't benefit from his attacking play. He is Damien Batt lite. At least Batt had the pace and stamina to get up and down the pitch. Riley is another we should send back home.
If we are to play with Whing, the other central midfielder must get forward more. Collins doesn't really play that role, so the forwards get insufficient support. There is a detachment between central midfield and the strikers which cannot be filled by using wingers. This is no criticism of either Whing or Collins, both of whom are good players, but it isn't really possible to play both of them in the same team at the same time, unless we want to shut up shop.
Alfie is having a bad time. I really struggle to see what he contributed yesterday that justified him being in the squad even. To make matters worse, he gave the ball away so often and was seemingly unable to cope with being put under even slight pressure. I wonder if there is a more fundamental underlying issue here? He is a shadow of the player we took to Wembley, which is very sad.
Danny Rose is no winger. Playing him wide leaves us unbalanced and loses a lot of his striker support play. On top of that he isn't playing too well at the moment.
Playing Potter and Rose on the "wrong" sides really doesn't help either.
We are relying far too heavily on Hylton and Clarke, to score and prevent opposition scoring. They need a support structure on the pitch, and MApp is not giving it to them.
As I said at the top, I really want it to work for MApp, but we don't always get what we want, and despite his best efforts, we are not getting what we need either. A rolling stone gathers no moss, and it may soon be time for MApp to consider the flora.
Wycombe play very basic football. Nothing fancy. Nothing clever. Not even much skill. But they play it with total commitment and effort and energy. Classic League 2 stylee. They are top of the league as a result.
I would love us to play the fancy dan stuff, I really would. It would slaughter teams at this level. But we are not playing that type of football. We are not capable of playing that type of football. And the reason is that MApp has not assembled a squad capable of playing that football.
What MApp has done, is taken the best players left from the Wilder/Waddock era, and augmented them with mainly sub-standard loans that he presumably perceives to be of his style. Accompanied with that are several players badly out of form.
To make matters worse, MApp has metaphorically castrated the style of play, by making the left and right back stay back much more in order to try to resolve the leaky defensive issues from earlier in the season where we were being taken on the wide counter attack too easily.
As others have said, plan B is retry plan A.
I'm sorry to say that Ty Barnett isn't good enough. He will not score the goals we need. He has neither the skill nor presence, nor positioning sense, nor reading of the game, to be able to do so. He has to go.
Joe Riley is not good enough either. He's OK going forward, but defensively he is all over the place. He doesn't seem to know where he should be most of the time, which perhaps shows confusion of the MApp style. When he remains back more as of late, he is still poor and easily beaten by wide men, and of course then we don't benefit from his attacking play. He is Damien Batt lite. At least Batt had the pace and stamina to get up and down the pitch. Riley is another we should send back home.
If we are to play with Whing, the other central midfielder must get forward more. Collins doesn't really play that role, so the forwards get insufficient support. There is a detachment between central midfield and the strikers which cannot be filled by using wingers. This is no criticism of either Whing or Collins, both of whom are good players, but it isn't really possible to play both of them in the same team at the same time, unless we want to shut up shop.
Alfie is having a bad time. I really struggle to see what he contributed yesterday that justified him being in the squad even. To make matters worse, he gave the ball away so often and was seemingly unable to cope with being put under even slight pressure. I wonder if there is a more fundamental underlying issue here? He is a shadow of the player we took to Wembley, which is very sad.
Danny Rose is no winger. Playing him wide leaves us unbalanced and loses a lot of his striker support play. On top of that he isn't playing too well at the moment.
Playing Potter and Rose on the "wrong" sides really doesn't help either.
We are relying far too heavily on Hylton and Clarke, to score and prevent opposition scoring. They need a support structure on the pitch, and MApp is not giving it to them.
As I said at the top, I really want it to work for MApp, but we don't always get what we want, and despite his best efforts, we are not getting what we need either. A rolling stone gathers no moss, and it may soon be time for MApp to consider the flora.
Re: Why? Combe
Exactly. Whatever the gap in quality between the two teams yesterday, the gap in effectiveness was huge. As others have already implied, you have to optimise the players' abilities to do that. I thought Collins had a very poor game yesterday - and for me Rose looked less ineffective (deliberate double-negative, BTW) when he dropped back into the central midfield after Collins went off. Barnett really started to seriously p me off as the game went on. Time and again he received the ball in good positions, only to turn back rather than take it on forwards. Combined with a general collective lack of pace and drive going forwards, that just repeatedly killed off the momentum of moves. However Alfie played at Northampton, he just did not deliver (literally or metaphorically) and should have been substituted earlier. At least COD drove us forward.
Given the comments on here after the Carlisle game, a common theme seems to be MApp's inability to get substitutions right - wrong players, wrong positions, wrong timing.
Listening to Rad Ox as I departed Oxfordshire, I got the distinct impression I had been watching a different game to most people. Where were all those chances we were supposed to have created in the first half? I simply could not see where a goal was coming from - and even in the first half when people were saying we played well and matched WW, what I saw was (not for the first time this season, eg D&R) an away side playing pass and move football (isn't that supposed to be our game) that cut right through us. In that first half, all too often we were defending for our lives. Inevitably, just a modest upping of WWs tempo resulted in goals. Yet for us, two driving runs into the box, two penalties awarded. Did we create any other chances at all? And why were callers so unwilling to criticise Hylton - seems to me being our top scorer means expectations to at least hit the target - not excuses when he fails to.
Do we stagger on until the next transfer window and hope the management do the necessary transfer/loan deals? Do we stick with a manager whose philosophy is to stick with a system that patently is not working, but who refuses to change things? Or does the modest change in formation recently to more of a 4-4-2 with wide players getting forward and its failure to deliver a sustained upturn in form show the lack of quality players in our squad (again, contrary to what was being said on Rad Ox yesterday)?
The ties that bind are very strong - so I am looking forward (ahem) to a long difficult season and lots more drives home where I listen to Loose Ends to lighten my mood.
Given the comments on here after the Carlisle game, a common theme seems to be MApp's inability to get substitutions right - wrong players, wrong positions, wrong timing.
Listening to Rad Ox as I departed Oxfordshire, I got the distinct impression I had been watching a different game to most people. Where were all those chances we were supposed to have created in the first half? I simply could not see where a goal was coming from - and even in the first half when people were saying we played well and matched WW, what I saw was (not for the first time this season, eg D&R) an away side playing pass and move football (isn't that supposed to be our game) that cut right through us. In that first half, all too often we were defending for our lives. Inevitably, just a modest upping of WWs tempo resulted in goals. Yet for us, two driving runs into the box, two penalties awarded. Did we create any other chances at all? And why were callers so unwilling to criticise Hylton - seems to me being our top scorer means expectations to at least hit the target - not excuses when he fails to.
Do we stagger on until the next transfer window and hope the management do the necessary transfer/loan deals? Do we stick with a manager whose philosophy is to stick with a system that patently is not working, but who refuses to change things? Or does the modest change in formation recently to more of a 4-4-2 with wide players getting forward and its failure to deliver a sustained upturn in form show the lack of quality players in our squad (again, contrary to what was being said on Rad Ox yesterday)?
The ties that bind are very strong - so I am looking forward (ahem) to a long difficult season and lots more drives home where I listen to Loose Ends to lighten my mood.
Re: Why? Combe
I am looking forward to reading Ancient Colin's dissertation - I am sure I saw him
yesterday
yesterday
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Kernow Yellow
- Grumpy old git
- Posts: 3076
- Joined: Thu May 11, 2006 5:16 pm
Re: Why? Combe
I agree with GY that a central midfield pairing of Whing and Collins is painfully lacking in creativity. Whingy may impress the fans by flying into crunching tackles but why's he having to dive in like that so often? Because he's too slow to stand and block, or his first touch is poor and the ball gets away from him. No-one can fault the guy's effort, but I've only ever really been impressed with him employed as a kind of sweeper in a three-man midfield, as Wilder did a few times away from home a couple of years back.
Did anyone play well? I thought Clarkey had a great game, and I've not always been his biggest fan. He commanded his box really well. Holmes-Dennis looked good, but often had little time on the ball given our obsession with playing it short from the back and Wycombe's determination to press and not let us do this. When we went for Plan B it was little balls chipped to tightly-marked forwards with their backs to goal on the half-way line. Unsurprisingly they gave it away. In fact as the game went on we gave the ball away more and more, and this wasn't just down to Wycombe's good organisation (impressive as it was).
Hylton earned and converted a penalty, and had a shot on target before that. Apart from that our forwards contributed nothing until Roberts troubled their keeper once more late on, and then earned our second spot-kick. I've never liked the same player taking more than one penalty in a game, and with Hylton and their keeper playing their ridiculous game of charades in the build-up to the second I had no confidence at all that it was going to go in. But maybe that's because I was already feeling so despondent about our performance generally.
It's quite an effort for me to get to games from Cornwall but I wanted to come and play a part in Yellow Army day and see our apparently exciting play at home against a top-of-the-table side. The whole thing just depressed me though and I'm sorry to say I won't be hurrying back to the Kassam any time soon.
Did anyone play well? I thought Clarkey had a great game, and I've not always been his biggest fan. He commanded his box really well. Holmes-Dennis looked good, but often had little time on the ball given our obsession with playing it short from the back and Wycombe's determination to press and not let us do this. When we went for Plan B it was little balls chipped to tightly-marked forwards with their backs to goal on the half-way line. Unsurprisingly they gave it away. In fact as the game went on we gave the ball away more and more, and this wasn't just down to Wycombe's good organisation (impressive as it was).
Hylton earned and converted a penalty, and had a shot on target before that. Apart from that our forwards contributed nothing until Roberts troubled their keeper once more late on, and then earned our second spot-kick. I've never liked the same player taking more than one penalty in a game, and with Hylton and their keeper playing their ridiculous game of charades in the build-up to the second I had no confidence at all that it was going to go in. But maybe that's because I was already feeling so despondent about our performance generally.
It's quite an effort for me to get to games from Cornwall but I wanted to come and play a part in Yellow Army day and see our apparently exciting play at home against a top-of-the-table side. The whole thing just depressed me though and I'm sorry to say I won't be hurrying back to the Kassam any time soon.
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Ancient Colin
- Grumpy old git
- Posts: 2663
- Joined: Tue May 16, 2006 12:23 pm
- Location: Nowhere near Treviso
Re: Why? Combe
(Thinks: who are you, who are you?OUFC4eva wrote:I am looking forward to reading Ancient Colin's dissertation - I am sure I saw him
yesterday
. Well, yes, I was there, and wished I weren't and could have the 8.5 hours of my life back, really. Having virtually no internet out here in the Fens, there's been time to reflect, but I'm not sure there's a great deal to add, really. Of the games I've watched, seems like there's two very effective ways to stuff us: sit back and let us pass backwards and forwards until we make a mistake or, as per Saturday, get in our face and bully us into making a mistake. Everything's so lateral. They played a very high line so putting it behind them made some sense, but execution was so poor, that didn't help. So, to add a bit of debate here, some thoughts that may go against the conventional wisdom:
(a) both Hylton and Barnett made a lot of intelligent runs to create space, particularly in the first half. However, those runs generally come to nothing as the ball doesn't come through to them quickly, nor accurately (and given most of the crowd are ball watching, they don't see those runs). Plus Barnett won quite a few headers (again mainly in the first half) but they came to nothing much because no-one was close to him nor running through so I guess he's given no credit for that either.
(b) I've not seen that many games, but I've been pretty puzzled as to why people rate Collins so highly. He doesn't boss the middle for me at all and his link play is sloth-like.
(c) Similarly against the grain, I absolutely don't get the high ratings that Rose gets. He's ponderous on the ball, he doesn't spot players in space, he generally takes an unnecessary extra touch (well it might be necessary if he hasn't got the ball under control with any confidence, I suppose) and he often turns into trouble.
(d) I know I'm going to get flak for this, but THD seemed to me to be a weakness - he had a tendency to over-elaborate at the back (sometimes it worked and looked impressive, but sometimes it gave the ball away in very dangerous situations and that's not a good balance of probabilities); more importantly, he was quite often AWOL or out of position (doesn't seem a well developed sense of covering here from the midfield). They also used size advantage in knocking the ball high towards him, which didn't help.
I have no idea what the solution to this is. There wasn't much to enjoy and, all in all, I'd rather have been out somewhere on my bike.
Oh and did that look and sound like 7,552? Really?
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Myles Francis
- Mid-life Crisis
- Posts: 927
- Joined: Thu May 11, 2006 3:17 pm
Re: Why? Combe
Playing a sensible formation would be a good start. The bizarre 4-2-2-2 we are currently playing is, if anything, even less effective than the 4-2-3-1 we started the season with. Simply moving one of the 3 up front is never going to work.Ancient Colin wrote:I have no idea what the solution to this is.
Also, did anyone else catch Appleton's interview on RadOx after the game? The lack of any sort of real insight was staggering - I've heard better from Selfy's fan muggings outside the ground. I'm becoming more and more convinced that he really doesn't understand what the problem is, let alone what the solution is.
More to the point, did it look and sound anything like 5,862 home fans?!Oh and did that look and sound like 7,552? Really?
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Kernow Yellow
- Grumpy old git
- Posts: 3076
- Joined: Thu May 11, 2006 5:16 pm
Re: Why? Combe
It looked like it to me. The SSL was pretty full from end to end for once (lots of cheap tickets to the relatives of all those kids on the pitch at half-time I think). In fact the family area - usually very sparsely populated due to its poor location - was sold out I believe. But you wouldn't have seen that from the posh seatsAncient Colin wrote: Oh and did that look and sound like 7,552? Really?
And of course there were a lot of away fans there for once.But yes the atmosphere in the home areas was poor. I applaud what the yellow army group are trying to do to get more fans through the turnstiles, but I really don't like the idea that we need a load of plastic flags to wave to get behind the team - it clearly didn't work anyway. Moreover I think it plays into the opposition's hands - Hayes' over-the-top goal celebration can't have been unrelated to the idea of pissing on our big Yellow party.