Rubbish and Dustbins

[DLT]

Sat at home full of flu. So I enjoyed the Sky coverage. Clive Walker is a good analyser.

We were shocking.Not a performance of any merit to talk about.

So lets run through Walker's comments.

Wingbacks don't offer anything going forward.

No creativity, midfielders unabletoget ball down and play.

Burgess doesn't look interested.

Forwards(Grebis and Duffy) don't get across the back four and pressurise them enough.

Anaclet crossing has been very poor all game.

Rushden well organised and deserved to win the game.

From my perspective. We had nothing of any quality. We are going nowhere.

Oh and in his pre match interview Jim reckoned we could have won 6 of our last 8 games. Which planet is he on?

[SmileyMan]

Yeah, thanks Jim. We could have won all eight of the last eight games, if you hadn't persisted with that ridiculous system that we don't have the players for, and which all the opposition pray that we trot out each week.

Sorry, but it really does have to start: &quotSmith Out&quot

[Ninja]

Ouch! That was shocking!

It got so painful I agreed to channel hop for 10 seconds here and there to follow the second part of &quotWaking the dead&quot. Forgetting the ironic title in itself, on both channels there was a distinct lack of plot, focus and performance.

Trouble at mill sadly, trouble at mill.....

[Matt D]

funnily enough, there were plenty of jokes about 'waking the dead' at the ground too.

i defy anyone to pick out some positives out of that.

okay. anaclet had his best game for a while. gunn made a good home debut. i’m still opting for ‘no-one’ on the man-of-the-match vote though.

we can’t even take a throw-in at the moment.

will we even make the play-offs? i doubt it at the moment.

confidence, confidence, confidence. c’mon jim smith, show me what everyone’s always telling me about you.

[Baboo]

Yeah, thanks Jim. We could have won all eight of the last eight games, if you hadn't persisted with that ridiculous system that we don't have the players for, and which all the opposition pray that we trot out each week.

Sorry, but it really does have to start: &quotSmith Out&quot

Glad you started it and not me. But possibly only cos you got to the keyboard first.
He will never remove his blinkers.
Rufus was as dreadful as Johnson was at Woking. Two ancient left wing backs who can't do the job. A bit of enthusiasm early days from them but that has now disappeared. What a waste of the salary budget.
Eddie - could his crossing have been worse?
Burgess - well I thought he was one of our better players. Better passing than most.
Duffy missed a sitter - but hey, the Diamonds missed at least two chances as good as his.
Some sympathy for having lost all the grown up midfield battlers but overall I can't give more that 2 out of 10 for that embarrassing tripe. I just hope no one watched on Sky. FFS we can't even throw the ball to our own players &amp our free kicks - woeful as ever. I'll start the Awford out (&amp Patterson in) then - he must have a fair bit of responsibility for the sorry state we are currently in.
Oh, I forgot Grebis - will we ever know. Can forwards who never get any decent service be judged?

[Snake]

Yeah, thanks Jim. We could have won all eight of the last eight games, if you hadn't persisted with that ridiculous system that we don't have the players for, and which all the opposition pray that we trot out each week.

Sorry, but it really does have to start: &quotSmith Out&quot

‘Sorry, but it really does have to start: &quotSmith Out&quot’

Sorry, but you’re not allowed to say that until we’re mathematically short of making the play-offs, so you can chant it with impunity at York after the game with the other 2,000 OUFC travelling fans when it’s too late to change things, otherwise you’ll be called disloyal by some folk.

Joking aside, I think Merry &amp Mates need to find a dignified exit route upstairs for one of Oxford United’s greatest legends before he goes the same way as Malcolm Shotton. By means of a suggestion I’m not sure that Andy Awford has done anything wrong, but he’s a convenient scapegoat to save Jim’s reputation and we could always dress it up as an experiment with him taking over the Youth Team and Patto doing his job – for a trial period only of course.

We still have lots of games left to save this season, but doing nothing does not seem to be an option on the basis of tonight’s all too public performance.

Q. Is this a knee-jerk posting? A Kassam-like reaction to a manager who’s team goes a short while without a win? Atkins all over again?

A. Maybe, but that’s my humble opinion.

[GodalmingYellow]

I completely disagree with all the above posts. None of them does justice to how bad we were tonight. That ranks up there with the worst of all time, and lets not forget that's the double done on us by the 4th or 5th worst side in the conference.

We made a very poor side, look half decent.

5-3-2 has to disappear now, along with Johnson and Brevett.

For a man who was playing in the Premiership just a couple of years ago, Brevett's performance was nothing short of a disgrace. No it didn't even get close to disgrace. Disgrace was the line on the horizon that Brevett aspired to achieve.

I'm absolutely stunned that Jim smith is producing a side this bad. And that these supposedly talented players have the nerve to draw a salary.

Disgusting. 2/10 was far too high. They get 1/10 from me, and that's simply for remembering to put their correct shirts on, but they probably all needed help with that too.

I really can't think of a single good thing to come out of that game. Not one.

[A-Ro]

Disgusting. 2/10 was far too high. They get 1/10 from me, and that's simply for remembering to put their correct shirts on

Except Yemi didn't put the correct shirt (vest) on and was asked to remove it by the ref.

[GodalmingYellow]

Disgusting. 2/10 was far too high. They get 1/10 from me, and that's simply for remembering to put their correct shirts on

Except Yemi didn't put the correct shirt (vest) on and was asked to remove it by the ref.

Don't even get me started on the showboating ref. Not that he made any difference to the result.

[Myles Francis]

I'll start with a bit of Devil's advocacy to balance some of the points made so far.

Clive Walker's comments about Duffy and Grebis not pressuring the back four enough seemed a little harsh as they had no real opportunity to do so.

Also, I don't think Duffy &quotmissed a sitter&quot at the end. Like 99.9% of those watching, he was expecting the defender to Row Z it - the ball just happened to rebound off his leg rather than being a true shot. There's an argument that he should have been sliding in with his left foot to try and get it on target though.

And that's it.

On the critical side, some random rumblings:

Burgess showed in the last 10 minutes or so what he can do when he puts his mind to it. Pity there was so little of that in the first 80.

Anaclet's delivery was poor, but he seemed more willing to take his opponents on and try to get past them - in fact, Rushden did seem to double up on him quite a bit to try and stiffle him.

Why is it that 9 times out of 10 Gilchrist's distribution consists of a wild swing of the hoof to punt the ball upfield? Play 5 in midfield and bypass the lot of them. Great stuff.

During his pre-match guff on Sky, Smith said he could make a case for winning 6 of the last 8 games and that we were still making chances but not scoring them. Is that strictly true? There's a fairly strong argument that we haven't even been creating chances for a while.

Overall, truly dreadful and no evidence of a plan B.

[A-Ro]

Anaclet's delivery was poor, but he seemed more willing to take his opponents on and try to get past them - in fact, Rushden did seem to double up on him quite a bit to try and stifle him.

I think Anaclet would have had much more success getting past his opponents if

a) players would pass the ball to him when he was in acres of space waving his arms wildly.

b) players would pass the ball 5 yards in front of him instead of 5, 10 and 20 yards behind him.

I wouldn't mind betting that more balls were passed behind him than in front.

[Kernow Yellow]

I completely disagree with all the above posts. None of them does justice to how bad we were tonight. That ranks up there with the worst of all time, and lets not forget that's the double done on us by the 4th or 5th worst side in the conference.

We made a very poor side, look half decent.

5-3-2 has to disappear now, along with Johnson and Brevett.

Just what I was thinking last night - the worst of all time. Maybe it looks worse on the telly, but I was disgusted by that performance. Maybe the 5-0 at Millwall comes close, but bearing in mind the respective qualities of opposition, I don't think so.

Excepting relegations, that's the lowest I've felt as an Oxford fan.

Smith has got it badly wrong, and it must hurt a manager like him to have it shown up on TV. The trouble is, with the transfer window closing tomorrow, I don't see what he or anyone else can do about it.

It took the Sky commentators about 10 minutes to see that our formation was completely flawed - Jim hasn't got there after 5 months. Unless he changes it immediately, it's time to go.

[Pe├▒a Oxford United]

1. Surely Rushden were the second team to win at Minchery Farm this season?

2. Aren't hamlets &quottiny&quot by definition?



(Well, would you prefer to talk about the football?)

[Myles Francis]

I wouldn't mind betting that more balls were passed behind him than in front.

That is true. The number of passes he had to back track to collect was truly staggering.

[Isaac]

I reckon Gravesend away was a marginally worse performance than that, as I don't remember creating any chances in that game.

It was Ashton who jumped over the ball rather than clearing it for the Duffy chance, it's good to see that he hasn't eradicated the need to present the opposition with at least one scoring chance a game. He was pretty solid generally though.

There's not much to say about that really other than it being truly terrible and hugely depressing. I watched on sky and thought walkers comments regarding the strikers was harsh, the comment was made during the first half and the ball was rarely out of our half for the strikers to pressurise anything unless they wanted to play in front of the back 5.

I thought our lot looked nervous and generally frightened, the midfield in particular was non-existant, it's harsh to criticise the new young blokes but Coombes may as well have not bothered turning up in the first half and Rose looked lost. Strange selection by Smith though, I would have thought Hargreaves might have been the safer bet (maybe he's injured too?).

Gunn did ok (apart from that header on 20 seconds), but my concern would be that he's not quick and was determined to dive in and fall over whenever he made a tackle. The attempted header by Quinn for the goal was particularly weak, for a centre half.

As for Smith Out starting on here, a depressingly familiar reaction from the Oxford fans (I imagine it's been on TIU for a while) - the reign of Kassam has conditioned some! Seeing as one of the reasons (this is not an excuse by the way, I'm not defending some of the performances) for the continued run of form is the disruption caused by injuries, then causing further disruption by messing around with the coaching staff seem a little perverse to me. Admittedly winning the league looks beyond us and even getting into the playoffs is going to be tough, but I don't see any easy answers.

My main reason for keeping Smith is despite this run of form he's still a good, experience manager with a solid record and he's only been in this job for 9 months, I don't think that's long enough to build a new team from scratch. There is a generally accepted doomsday scenario that if we don't go up this season then that's it, but surely with the wage cap in place and our good attendances this year then we should still have a decent, even without the parachute payment, wage budget next season? I think for winning the league this year he'd either have needed every signing to be a success (which rarely happens, especially lower down the leagues) or he'd have needed his first choice side to stay fit pretty much all season (likewise).

I think the key to it is for everyone (manager, board and fans) not to panic, there was enough of that on the pitch last night.