Completely bazooka'd
Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2023 11:47 am
A deserved defeat. The first 15 minutes were reminiscent of the Stevenage game where we were getting battered and struggled. The difference was against Stevenage we had Long, Moore and Brown as our centre halves and eventually they got to grips with it, whereas here we had Negru and Thorniley and they didn't cope as well. The loss of Leigh is important as it limits being able to pick 3 centrebacks. Murphy did well when he came on but you wouldn't want him as a left wing back against Bolton. I agreed with Buckingham in as much as we conceded while we had just started to get on top, but really we were lucky not to be a couple of goals down by then. Largely the difference compared to some other games this season is we missed our good chances (Rodriguez twice, Bodin once and Brown with a header or 2), I guess this was going to happen eventually - we seemed to convert more than our fair share of chances up until now. It's a common theme over the last few seasons, but in some games Brannagan and McGuane are not physical enough to cope - both excellent technical players but they struggle when the opposition just want to get the ball in the box and then battle.
Listened to a bit of the post-match on Radio Oxford and Rodriguez was largely getting the blame for his "poor" performance (not to mention sending off and missed chances) but I felt he was our best player by a distance up until the red card (a big caveat, admittedly). He'll be a big miss against Bolton.
Listened to a bit of the post-match on Radio Oxford and Rodriguez was largely getting the blame for his "poor" performance (not to mention sending off and missed chances) but I felt he was our best player by a distance up until the red card (a big caveat, admittedly). He'll be a big miss against Bolton.