5 in a row

[Ancient Colin]

It's more than the organisation. I don't have any objection to 4-3-3 if it is played properly. But we don't play it properly. It's not supposed to be rigid, it's all about triangles and support and rotation and it doesn't intrincially leave you exposed if everyone does their job properly whether or not the midfield three is two holding or one holding. But since the players don't do the right thing, then (a) they haven't been told what to do or (b) they have been told what to do, but it's the wrong thing or (c) they have been told what to do, it was the right thing but they can't do it. In all of those cases, it is down to management, isn't it? (a) and (b) relate to what is done in training, (c) relates to squad assembly.

Hog, last Saturday, was arguing that Wilder should be cut some slack because of the injuries. I'm unconvinced* and the reason that I'm unconvinced is because all the serious playing flaws that many of us have identified for a long time never seem to get fixed.

And for Hog, a vignette and tribute to Isaac's rigidity. We are chasing the game. The ball goes out of play on the right and Raynes picks it up. in front of him, in loads of space, an unmarked Batt. He picks the ball up and then waits for Batt to come to take the throw ...


* and, of course, I'm not going to argue with him as he is a foot taller than me.

[A-Ro]

In the last 20 league matches (starting with the Shrews match in March) we have W5 D5 L10 (20pts) F22 A33 (-11GD) which is pretty woeful.

I'm not suggesting that the sentiment of that posting isn't right but I think the figures are wrong.

Firstly, there were 21 League games including the Shrewsbury game and the figures are

Won 6
Drawn 5
Lost 10
For 23
Against 33

If you count the last 20 games i.e. since the Bradford game in March then the figures read

Won 6
Drawn 4
Lost 10
For 21
Against 31

It still points to a very poor performance, just not quite as bad as described.

Double checking the original figures it looks as though the Wimbledon home win was missed out so I double checked through this forum to make sure nothing strange had happened with that game and it was interesting to see how upbeat we were after that game. See here

[SmileyMan]

Yeah, I banged the figures into Excel by hand, so i don't doubt there were a few mistakes.

The upshot is still that out of all the teams who were in L2 last season and should be pushing for promotion this one, only Cheltenham has a comparable record. And we just lost to them.