Rotten

[recordmeister]

Right- someone has to start this discussion... what a great first half and what an utterly rotten second half. Who is to blame? What does the club do to change this utter lack of of ability to finish teams off and to regularly shoot ourselves in the foot with basic errors.

[Dr Bob]

Substitutes can only change the game for the better if they are better than the players they replace, or if they enable a different shape to be taken, or some such. I have not seen anything from either Shodipo or Agyei in previous matches (including Wigan and Pompey) to suggest that they can deliver on the first of these - ever. They offer more pace going forward, but given the state of play of the match at that point, their lack of quality prevented them from achieving anything positive. Sykes did look good coming on in recent games. He was rubbish all round yesterday and his failure to track the run of the Town player who set up their first goal was criminal. Even I, who struggle to see these things, saw clearly that run from the moment he left Sykes standing there.

Key players were tiring and so had to be substituted. During the first half, one of the RadOx commentators spoke of how our pressing game might tire out the Town players, failing to reflect on the impact it could have on our players.

Why, though, was Robbie Hall not brought on? In recent weeks his form has picked up to the point where I see him being the choice to make ahead of both Shodipo and Agyei.

Given all of that, and the shifting dynamics of the game, why did KR not bring on Mous and/or Forde? Putting pace without quality up front was doubly bad - it left tiring midfielders on the pitch, and exposed them to ever more attacks because our new front players were doing nothing to protect them.

Eastwood. Discuss.

For me, it is simple - at that stage of the game, you come for the ball, you attack the ball, and you take out anybody and everybody who gets between you and the ball.

Does anybody know the details of our player-recruitment structure? Who is on this committee that KR referred to? What is its relationship with KR?

Some of our players are not good enough - and this was only the most recent confirmation of this. Yesterday KRs substitution choices were poor. KRs post-match comments suggest there are issues with recruitment that he is not responsible for. Is this blame-shifting or legitimate concern?

So who is to blame? I would say the players, KR and the recruitment team. And with the latter, this also reflects badly on the owner and directors who have put this structure in place but arguably not ensured its efficient working with the manager/first team coach/whatever the hell you call them nowadays.

How to score more goals? One step would be to create more clear-cut chances. Once Shodipo and Agyei came on, I do not think Taylor got a single further chance created for him. But that miss from Long's cross in the first half was inexplicable. No idea how you deal with misses like that.

How to shore up the defence? Put on players up front who can hold the ball up, who can help out the midfield. If necessary, bring on more defensive-minded players to close the game down as the end nears.

KRs comments reflected a barely-concealed anger, but what he said suggested deeper divisions are emerging throughout the club. We wondered towards the end of last season, from some of KRs comments, whether he might leave given possible rifts with the ownership. Were yesterday's comments from him a hint of what is actually happening there?

[Kernow Yellow]

I’ve seen Us lose to them often enough. I’ve seen Us capitulate and lose badly to them. I’ve seen Us throw away leads against them. The anger of seeing Us do so again will subside. However, I have never seen Us lose to a worse Sw*nd*n team. In fact I’ve never seen Us play a worse Sw*nd*n team. I was openly laughing at their complete ineptitude for much of the first half. They were at least as bad as Wigan had been the previous week. We nearly contrived not to beat Wigan, and yesterday showed what can happen when you aren’t ruthless. We completely fell apart, lost our shape, lost our heads. Rotten is the word. Let’s look at some of the players:

Eastwood - costing us too many goals. Not good enough this season.

Atkinson - looks great going forwards, but he’s a central defender. Hasn’t shown he can do his main job yet, and put us in dangerous situations losing the ball up the field a couple of times yesterday and was at fault for Pompey’s goal on Tuesday. Jury’s out.

Moore - has generally done well this season, but was as culpable as Eastwood for their second goal. Just stood and watched his man jump to win the header which ultimately went into the net. Utterly shocking defending. Unforgivable.

Gorrin - some people seem to think he’s the Messiah, but he has not been good enough for much of this season. The reason he goes into so many 50/50 challenges is that his control isn’t great and the ball gets away from him, or he gets caught out of position. So he gives away too many free kicks and bookings. He too often looks backwards when on the ball, and loses us momentum. Don’t get me wrong, he was superb on Tuesday and not too bad yesterday. But he has not been great this year. Needs a quality midfielder like CamBran alongside him to keep things tidy.

Henry - I don’t know what the RadOx commentators were watching yesterday. Henry was very poor, as he has been for much of the season. Twice he slipped his marker, and was still second to the ball In a foot race. If he’s injured, don’t play him. His passing was also wayward. Subbing him was the right decision, although...

Sykes - what the hell was that? Awful passing, no defensive concentration. Largely responsible for throwing the game away. He can be great at times, but nowhere near consistent enough. I hope he doesn’t believe his own hype - using us as a stepping stone to better things apparently. Not bloody likely.

Taylor - controversial opinion coming up. He’s not been good enough this season. He is a quality striker, and will get goals - none of our other players would have scored that beauty at Wigan. But he is missing too many good chances for a player of his quality, and his all round play is heading alarmingly towards Mackie-esque shithousery. Could have put Sw*nd*n to bed yesterday.

Kelly - looks great when given freedom to spray balls around, but not solid enough to be a midfield enforcer. Faded badly yesterday, along with the rest of them.

Apart from that, we have a couple of honest fullbacks who you can’t fault for effort. In fact I’d go further and say that Sam Long is improving, but Ruffs has plateaued a bit. And a host of flaky attacking players. Not forgetting the crocked Mousinho and Hanson taking up places in our squad. And Forde, who’s done pretty well this season, but wasn’t given a look-in for some reason.

Basically, we are not good enough. And worse, a lot of the problems seem to be mental. Players are capable of passing the ball properly, but go to shit when the pressure hits. I was really hoping that Tuesday had seen us turn a corner. But it is now looking like an aberration in an otherwise depressing sea of mediocrity. Yesterday’s performance reminded me of teams that get relegated. And I’ve seen a few of them too.

I didn’t listen to Robinson, but he needs to sort it out. Find a formation, put players in their correct positions, and give them the confidence to go out and pass the ball crisply and quickly while keeping a defensive shape. These players ought to be capable of that at least, but something is going badly wrong.

[Isaac]

I know it was Slumdon and therefore it's more important but there's some over-reaction here. I thought the team choked in a relatively unusual situation. There's actually a fair bit of pressure on the players when you're looking at growing a 7 game winning run against your teams biggest rivals. And not many of those players had actually played in those 7 games, so it's not even as if they had the confidence of a 7 game winning run. It looked to me that for the last 20 minutes, they struggled to cope with the pressure and too many of the team choked, or ran out of puff. For the majority of the game we were fine, more or less in keeping with the last few games. Obviously nowhere near the heights of pre-pandemic performance, but then for most of last season we weren't at that level either.

The subs made sense to me at the time, some pace out wide to counter-attack and some fresh legs in midfield, unfortunately the basics were completely lacking (not just from the substitutes) - which is why I think it was more a choke than anything else. They were so bad, it's not a tactical error, it's a psychological collapse. More experience would have been preferable, but that is with the benefit of hindsight and as we saw from Eastwood's brainfart, it doesn't make you immune. I didn't agree with Robinson hanging some players out to dry at the end, I don't think that ever helps and perhaps he'll regret it. The danger is that we end up completely losing confidence, which would mean we are at risk of relegation. I generally think if we can be more or less average for the season we'd stay up quite comfortably.

[Kairdiff Exile]

I had a premonition of what was going to happen, so I took advantage of Welsh lockdown being over and took myself off up a mountain with no mobile reception so I didn't succumb to temptation to follow the game. Still seething at the result and what I've read about the match.

My main thought - similar to KY's and Isaac's - is that the problem we have is primarily a mental one. Apart from losing Dickie, we really don't have a much weaker squad than last season. But the heads of many key players (notably Eastwood) have gone, and it's for the manager to be a calming and reassuring influence in that scenario and to put them right. Not sure that plays to KR's strengths, and his post-match interview on Saturday sounded dreadful.

I'm confident enough that we won't go down, so let's just do what we need to do in order to get sufficient points on the board - even if that means playing a less attractive brand of football - and focus on 2021/22 when we'll have crowds back in and we can get back to normal. I'd start by following KY's advice, dropping the players who clearly aren't performing and putting square pegs in square holes.

[recordmeister]

I completely disagree with Issac on is one. The 'collapse' was unforgivable, and one that came through an inept level of skill. Skyes - one of my fav players in the current squad as he seems to always put in a shift - was woeful. Utterly woeful. And Eastwood... wtaf. It was like Wembley all over again. I said to my dad before the game that I was quite glad it was an empty stadium, as what was far more important than it being a local derby, was continued momentum and three points against opposition in the same relegation vortex as Us. I really don't think, save maybe for the local lads, that any of them really understood the importance of the game as a local derby, (FYI I think this is one of KR's weakness: trying to 'normalise' situations and I think Wembley was a case in point. Too polite, too much 'this is just another game' and not enough fire and brimstone. You need a Churchillian leader in those moments and KR just wants to be everyones mate. The last politican to do that was 'Dave', I'm just a nice guy, Cameron and look where that got us). But was EVEN MORE IMPORTANT than that was not just that it was a local derby, but that it was potentially 3 points for us, and 3 points taken away from, a fellow relegation-zone team. And no one seemed to have got that message across.

I think we got away with a lot last season, in terms of the atmosphere of settling in and playing relaxing football. It won us a lot of fans, and a lot of praise, but ultimately won us nothing for the trophy cabinet. And that needs to change. We need KR to grow some balls and find a balance of being a 'mate' to the players, while also having some authority with them too.

[Kernow Yellow]

I know it was Slumdon and therefore it's more important but there's some over-reaction here. I thought the team choked in a relatively unusual situation.

I'm not sure it's an overreaction to point out that the core of our team have not been performing at an acceptable level for most of the season. We have choked almost non-stop since football started up again (except when playing Portsmouth - maybe we should play them every week?). The situation (playing a poor team in front of no fans) was not particularly unusual. There was no baying crowd to add pressure. Our confidence is completely shot already. This is the big worry for me, not the fact that we lost at home to Them. In fact, given that we were bound to lose the run some time, it pleases me a little that this is when we chose to do it, when none of their fans were there to gloat about it, and their players only had the shadow of our empty stands to celebrate in.

But taking the season as a whole, even when we play quite well we generally find a way not to win. And the wins that have come have rarely been as comfortable as they should have been - Accrington aside. If the sign of a good team is winning when playing badly, then I suspect it is also true that a bad team loses even when playing well. I really fear for Us. Look at our match-day squad, take out the players that are either crocked or are regularly underperforming, and have you got a decent, solid XI left? Nowhere near. I do not share others' confidence that we should stay up relatively comfortably. Have you been watching the games? Of course we have the potential to pull out of it (as does almost every other club), and I sure as hell hope we do. Getting through this strange season without going bust or getting relegated will do me just fine at the moment.

[Isaac]

Our last 5 games we've got 7 points, even if it did involve the worst and most worrying performance against Crewe, which isn't actually that bad.

I wasn't really discussing whether the performance on saturday was forgivable or not, as what's that got to do with it? I was attempting to understand why it happened. And I don't think it was the players not understanding the importance of the game to the fans, I think it was the opposite actually (and I don't think Robinson helped either, his schtick is always to play up to the fan view of football). They'd had 2 build ups to the game with messages from fans along the lines of "we've beaten this lot 7 times in a row, don't mess it up". It's an unusual sort of pressure.

It was quite strange to see a team collapse like that - not just individually but collectively (Eastwood's mistake was very bad, but some of the basics like simple passing went missing too). Mainly because Slumdon were inept, they probably couldn't believe their luck. It felt different to Wycombe, because Wycombe was one incident - albeit with 3 mistakes, but it was 5 seconds from beginning to end - they were instintive mistakes. Against Slumdon they basically forgot how to play professional football for 15 minutes, they rushed everything, panicked and that is generally the sign of a choke in progress. What this tells us about the future I don't know, but it does show there's a confidence problem that needs resolving, which is Robinson's challenge from here on.

[Dr Bob]

I think it was said earlier in the year that we were the only football league club with a psychotherapist. Boy does he need to get cracking on this lot...

[Isaac]

Signs of a recovery - the 2nd half against Northampton was the closest we've come to the peak of last season - a bit of energy, a bit less fear and confidence grew. Credit where it's due to the management and players as the wheels could have come off entirely after the Slumdon game, but they ground out a few tedious draws and that seems to have helped.

[recordmeister]

Yeah agreed although that Noton team was utterly awful- one of the worst teams I’ve seen in a while. But let that not take the varnish off a very good second half performace.

[Dr Bob]

It is such a cliché, but as poor as they were, we still had to beat them. Taylor did what he does best. Agyei showed glimpses of just how good he can be (his cross for Taylor's second was exquisite and his goal was sublime). But all round, that second half performance was excellent. And it came on the back of a few draws against high flying teams. Not getting excited yet, but feeling a bit more positive.

[Kernow Yellow]

Yep, a very encouraging result and second half performance. We were awful for the first 45 minutes, mind, but at least we've stopped giving away stupid goals, and were never really troubled at all. Nice to see our subs making a difference again. Shocking display from the Cobblers though, even taking their injuries into account.