Well I wasn’t there today, Jerome (as I wouldn’t ever watch a game against football’s Pariah Club - see threads passim for further details), but in the interests of getting some discussions going here were the views of my elderly mum who did go!
“It was a truly dismal performance. I think that Robinson's days might be numbered. Brannigan hardly seemed to be trying. Some of the young ones looked about 12. And MK Don's weren't up to much either.”
Agree? Disagree? I thought KR’s post-match comments weren’t great - stopped just short of hanging his players out to dry but the implication was pretty clear.
Falling foul of Franchise
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Kairdiff Exile
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Re: Falling foul of Franchise
My last post suggested that we've been on a gentle downward trajectory since the capitulation against Wycombe at Wembley three seasons ago. This has now become a plummet. There's none of the entertaining, if a little naive football we've enjoyed in the last few seasons. Instead we have dull, unproductive, negative football from a group of players that are either unable, or unwilling to take a risk. Virtually all the sides we've played this season are towards the bottom of the table so to have gained so few points from our first nine games is worrying indeed. The side is devoid of pace and ideas.
You can blame injuries, but when you sign players with histories of injury then you can't claim it's bad luck when they get injured. It's entirely predictable.
I think, regrettably, I'm done with Robinson. In all fairness, we've played some glorious football in the last few seasons, but not regularly enough, and not when it really mattered. I'm also grateful for the way he has conducted himself and the club through the passing of a number of the club's legends - and Covid. However ultimately he's the manager of the first team. Results rule over sentiment. It now seems clear that: he never learns from his mistakes; his squads have been horribly unbalanced, despite having had nine opportunities to create a squad with competition for places all over the park - and this summers' recruitment has been particularly catastrophic; I don't think he's ever settled on his first eleven; and he has too much faith in playing players out of position (when Jim Smith played Andy Burgess at left back, I knew the game was up for him; James Henry as right wing back is in that category of madness).
I'm also tired of his dreadful post match interviews in which he seems unable to string two coherent sentences together.
This has the feeling of being one season too many (quite a few around me today said it feels like The Last Days of Wilder).
Time for new ideas.
You can blame injuries, but when you sign players with histories of injury then you can't claim it's bad luck when they get injured. It's entirely predictable.
I think, regrettably, I'm done with Robinson. In all fairness, we've played some glorious football in the last few seasons, but not regularly enough, and not when it really mattered. I'm also grateful for the way he has conducted himself and the club through the passing of a number of the club's legends - and Covid. However ultimately he's the manager of the first team. Results rule over sentiment. It now seems clear that: he never learns from his mistakes; his squads have been horribly unbalanced, despite having had nine opportunities to create a squad with competition for places all over the park - and this summers' recruitment has been particularly catastrophic; I don't think he's ever settled on his first eleven; and he has too much faith in playing players out of position (when Jim Smith played Andy Burgess at left back, I knew the game was up for him; James Henry as right wing back is in that category of madness).
I'm also tired of his dreadful post match interviews in which he seems unable to string two coherent sentences together.
This has the feeling of being one season too many (quite a few around me today said it feels like The Last Days of Wilder).
Time for new ideas.
Re: Falling foul of Franchise
Where to start. Yesterday we played a team whose league position was even more precarious than ours. But time and again in the first half they created better, more clear-cut, chances than we did (the fact they did not score until near the end of the half, and then by OG, merely indicates how poor they were in that department). It was also scary to me how easily, with crisp one-touch passing and moving, they were able to negotiate tight spaces and carve through our players so as to get moving forwards and into those positions. I shall trust the view of the RadOx caller who said that the ball came to Joseph at pace and he had no chance to control it, but at the very least Browne's shot against the post should have hit the gaping hole between keeper and post. The Mous OG was one of those that are common on blooper reels, which suggests to me as not-a-defender that sometimes they happen (body-position, balance, and all that).
In the second half, once Eastwood chased a ball heading away from goal (who cares if he just touched the ball before making contact with Grigg, when all he does is leave the ref having to make a split-second decision) - what was he doing diving in like that, then it was clearly all over (as the immediate mass exodus showed) as it was not clear where any goal for us would or could come from. Great cross for Mous's goal, but nothing threatening from open play. Over in The Other Place most PotM comments were for Mous. When an ageing central defender, in a losing team, who has scored an OG, is seen by many as PotM, well, no further comment needed.
I am the opposite of a master tactician, so I shall leave comments on the current fit players and 352 to others. But looking at the starting 11 I would expect most of those players (maybe except Mous, ironically, and probably Bodin on current form) to at least be in the matchday squad, even after most of the injured players return. But of course this brings us to the quite dreadful summer transfer window we have witnessed. We shall never know who we were after, let alone why they did not come, but this also means we shall never know just how many of the positions pretty much everybody can see needed filling, have not been. Bottom line, as has already been said, we now have an unbalanced squad with significant positional gaps. And if those players come back and do make a huge difference, it just means that those not in the first-choice starting 11 are distinctly inferior players.
Oh, the post-match interview. As soon as he first spoke about protecting his players it struck me that all he is saying is that some, at least, are not good enough, and that collectively that was an unacceptable performance. Repeating this merely hammered that message home even more strongly. This, as others have pointed out, then means that they are not as good as those waiting to come back to fitness. Great motivation. Not as direct as some of his past comments about Sykes (no wonder he wanted away), but no less damning for that. But one other thing he said made me think he really is losing the plot. It came when he said how much "running around" the players did - like that was a good thing. Is that his tactic now? Get them to run around? You could pick 11 people from the stands (maybe with an upper age limit!) to run around. But that does not a football team make.
Shoobedoo identifies the Wembley defeat to WW as the start of the decline. I would add two points. First, each year since, more bigger clubs have found themselves in the third division, making the competition harder. Second, I would say the decline became a plummet about 10 games before the end of last season. Looking at that period, from when we dropped out of the play-off places to now, we have been truly awful. Why this period I am not sure, but putting our faith in player like Baldock, who looked really good playing with MT up front, before he got injured, natch, did not help. And the point I am making about increasing competition is not to excuse our decline, but to suggest that maybe KR is not able to keep up when the going gets tough.
On RadOx, they made the point that at this point in each of the last few seasons, we have mostly had about the same or fewer points. But without going back and checking, how many of those seasons started with a run of fixtures against so many bottom-of-the-table teams. Remember how, just a few weeks ago, the Oxford Mail wondered if we could get to the end of October undefeated?!
I do not expect KR to get the sack just yet. One thing we have seen with Tiger is that he is not a trigger-happy owner. For the most part, that has been the right call. And, as we know, we have several players who will be first choicers to come back from injury. But that then means it will be a couple more months before a clearer judgement of KR can be made. Even if things start to turn around, would the owners (whoever they are) want to provide yet more funds in January? If KR is gone then, how much could a new manager do? Frankly, unless the players coming back from injury are incredible, and then go uninjured for the rest of the season (insert your own joke here), then this is shaping up to be a long hard season.
In the second half, once Eastwood chased a ball heading away from goal (who cares if he just touched the ball before making contact with Grigg, when all he does is leave the ref having to make a split-second decision) - what was he doing diving in like that, then it was clearly all over (as the immediate mass exodus showed) as it was not clear where any goal for us would or could come from. Great cross for Mous's goal, but nothing threatening from open play. Over in The Other Place most PotM comments were for Mous. When an ageing central defender, in a losing team, who has scored an OG, is seen by many as PotM, well, no further comment needed.
I am the opposite of a master tactician, so I shall leave comments on the current fit players and 352 to others. But looking at the starting 11 I would expect most of those players (maybe except Mous, ironically, and probably Bodin on current form) to at least be in the matchday squad, even after most of the injured players return. But of course this brings us to the quite dreadful summer transfer window we have witnessed. We shall never know who we were after, let alone why they did not come, but this also means we shall never know just how many of the positions pretty much everybody can see needed filling, have not been. Bottom line, as has already been said, we now have an unbalanced squad with significant positional gaps. And if those players come back and do make a huge difference, it just means that those not in the first-choice starting 11 are distinctly inferior players.
Oh, the post-match interview. As soon as he first spoke about protecting his players it struck me that all he is saying is that some, at least, are not good enough, and that collectively that was an unacceptable performance. Repeating this merely hammered that message home even more strongly. This, as others have pointed out, then means that they are not as good as those waiting to come back to fitness. Great motivation. Not as direct as some of his past comments about Sykes (no wonder he wanted away), but no less damning for that. But one other thing he said made me think he really is losing the plot. It came when he said how much "running around" the players did - like that was a good thing. Is that his tactic now? Get them to run around? You could pick 11 people from the stands (maybe with an upper age limit!) to run around. But that does not a football team make.
Shoobedoo identifies the Wembley defeat to WW as the start of the decline. I would add two points. First, each year since, more bigger clubs have found themselves in the third division, making the competition harder. Second, I would say the decline became a plummet about 10 games before the end of last season. Looking at that period, from when we dropped out of the play-off places to now, we have been truly awful. Why this period I am not sure, but putting our faith in player like Baldock, who looked really good playing with MT up front, before he got injured, natch, did not help. And the point I am making about increasing competition is not to excuse our decline, but to suggest that maybe KR is not able to keep up when the going gets tough.
On RadOx, they made the point that at this point in each of the last few seasons, we have mostly had about the same or fewer points. But without going back and checking, how many of those seasons started with a run of fixtures against so many bottom-of-the-table teams. Remember how, just a few weeks ago, the Oxford Mail wondered if we could get to the end of October undefeated?!
I do not expect KR to get the sack just yet. One thing we have seen with Tiger is that he is not a trigger-happy owner. For the most part, that has been the right call. And, as we know, we have several players who will be first choicers to come back from injury. But that then means it will be a couple more months before a clearer judgement of KR can be made. Even if things start to turn around, would the owners (whoever they are) want to provide yet more funds in January? If KR is gone then, how much could a new manager do? Frankly, unless the players coming back from injury are incredible, and then go uninjured for the rest of the season (insert your own joke here), then this is shaping up to be a long hard season.
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Kairdiff Exile
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Re: Falling foul of Franchise
Yes, that thought was in my mind on Saturday night too. Just like with Wilder, KR is clearly a good manager and a decent human being, and I've no doubt he'll succeed in the future. But also like Wilder, there's a feeling that maybe we need some fresh thinking and ideas, and things have gone just a bit stale. That's no judgement on the manager, it happens in all walks of life - sometimes an amicable separation is in both partners' interest.
I said to a friend a few weeks ago that I thought KR would go this season, likely when another club made him a good offer. That may well still happen, but it may be that the Board need to take matters into their own hands. If only we knew who was pulling the strings, eh?
Re: Falling foul of Franchise
There's definitely the growing sense that Robinson's time is up, I'm not so sure. We've been through runs of form like this before, there's no reason we can't come out of it again. However a lot of the criticism is fair, what frustrates me is the bad starts to every season, whatever they do in pre-season isn't working. The lack of defensive cover is baffling, Robinson says we have to play 3-5-2 with the players available, but only 1 defender is injured. The issue for him is the cover for the right sided centre back is the right back, there is no right back cover (at least until Anderson is fit/able). Presumably Mousinho is too slow to be the right sided centre half in a back 4. Selling Forde without a backup was stupid. Then we end up with our most creative midfielder Henry at right wing back and a centre half, Brown at left wing back.
Joseph is a decent forward, but he's not a goalscorer. Bate looks too weak, although I thought the same of Brannagan initially (who showed plenty of effort, imo). The young players (Goodrham, O'Donkor) all look promising, but that is about as much as you can expect. As for the game, contrary to the other comments here I thought we were the better team who created the better chances - backed up by the old expected goals, which had us as 1.9-1.1 "winners". It's all relative though, both teams were very average.
We'll never know exactly what happened during the transfer window, but I suspect that in an attempt to get us to the next level (i.e. play-offs, top 2) we changed our approach somewhat and went for more expensive, Championship level players but obviously, Championship level players are only likely to drop to league 1 if for some reason, no-one in the Championship wants them. And those reasons might include being a bit injured. So it was a gamble that so far hasn't paid off. In previous years we've gone more for the young loan players and lower league development strategy which has worked to a point and I assume the lower league development part continues.
If Robinson's time is up it's not obvious to me who would actually sack him - is it Tiger, or the "new" owners - the lack of transparency on who is actually running the club is more of a concern than the actual results.
Joseph is a decent forward, but he's not a goalscorer. Bate looks too weak, although I thought the same of Brannagan initially (who showed plenty of effort, imo). The young players (Goodrham, O'Donkor) all look promising, but that is about as much as you can expect. As for the game, contrary to the other comments here I thought we were the better team who created the better chances - backed up by the old expected goals, which had us as 1.9-1.1 "winners". It's all relative though, both teams were very average.
We'll never know exactly what happened during the transfer window, but I suspect that in an attempt to get us to the next level (i.e. play-offs, top 2) we changed our approach somewhat and went for more expensive, Championship level players but obviously, Championship level players are only likely to drop to league 1 if for some reason, no-one in the Championship wants them. And those reasons might include being a bit injured. So it was a gamble that so far hasn't paid off. In previous years we've gone more for the young loan players and lower league development strategy which has worked to a point and I assume the lower league development part continues.
If Robinson's time is up it's not obvious to me who would actually sack him - is it Tiger, or the "new" owners - the lack of transparency on who is actually running the club is more of a concern than the actual results.
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Kernow Yellow
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Re: Falling foul of Franchise
I didn't see Saturday's game but I did go to Plymouth last week and what I saw was very depressing. I guess positives could be taken from the fact that we are not conceding many when under the cosh (it was quite an achievement to get to half-time at Home Park goalless), and we had a glorious chance to equalise shortly after they scored the only goal. But you would have to be a particularly blinkered fan not to notice that Argyle's play was several levels above ours.
I don't know whether we are setting out to play negative football to grind out results, or whether our players are just too scared at the moment, but I would sum up the difference between the teams as follows: We pressed Argyle in their half, they passed it around us crisply, working space from back to front and creating chances. Very easy on the eye it was. Argyle pressed us, we hoofed it upfield at the first opportunity. Even when Eastwood played sweeper-keeper midway in our half he still just kicked it long. This is not his fault - we clearly are not planning to take risks at the back. I reckon we played about 30 seconds of incisive football in the whole match.
Much has been made of our recruitment, but I think we underestimate what we lost. Our best football last season came playing 3-5-2 with Sykes and Williams (or similar players) as wing backs. They have both gone, along with Forde, and despite signing Jobi Jones (who I imagine to be a similar player) and a specialist wing-back from Lazio(!), we are playing Henry and Seddon in those positions. Neither of whom are up to the task.
I can't comment too much on the rest of the season - the only other game I have seen was at Derby back in July, and they and Plymouth are two decent teams. However, it has been enjoyable watching Us for most of the last 3 or 4 years, and that wasn't really the case in either of those games. And clearly results against other clubs speak for themselves. Getting too excited by Goodrham's wonder-goal winner (with a LOT of luck in the build up) or CamBran's red-card-and-penalty-inspired comeback at Cheltenham would be clutching at straws, I sense.
It seems too early in the season to be calling for change, and I'm not enjoying the rather personal pile-on in the Other Place. However, this international break means there will be some bad feeling about recent results and performances festering for a while before we get a chance to put it right. And that needs to happen sharpish.
I don't know whether we are setting out to play negative football to grind out results, or whether our players are just too scared at the moment, but I would sum up the difference between the teams as follows: We pressed Argyle in their half, they passed it around us crisply, working space from back to front and creating chances. Very easy on the eye it was. Argyle pressed us, we hoofed it upfield at the first opportunity. Even when Eastwood played sweeper-keeper midway in our half he still just kicked it long. This is not his fault - we clearly are not planning to take risks at the back. I reckon we played about 30 seconds of incisive football in the whole match.
Much has been made of our recruitment, but I think we underestimate what we lost. Our best football last season came playing 3-5-2 with Sykes and Williams (or similar players) as wing backs. They have both gone, along with Forde, and despite signing Jobi Jones (who I imagine to be a similar player) and a specialist wing-back from Lazio(!), we are playing Henry and Seddon in those positions. Neither of whom are up to the task.
I can't comment too much on the rest of the season - the only other game I have seen was at Derby back in July, and they and Plymouth are two decent teams. However, it has been enjoyable watching Us for most of the last 3 or 4 years, and that wasn't really the case in either of those games. And clearly results against other clubs speak for themselves. Getting too excited by Goodrham's wonder-goal winner (with a LOT of luck in the build up) or CamBran's red-card-and-penalty-inspired comeback at Cheltenham would be clutching at straws, I sense.
It seems too early in the season to be calling for change, and I'm not enjoying the rather personal pile-on in the Other Place. However, this international break means there will be some bad feeling about recent results and performances festering for a while before we get a chance to put it right. And that needs to happen sharpish.