What exactly is this poacher going to poach ?
We arent creating the chances for a poacher to convert.
Commentary throughout said we played well but there wasnt any quality in the final third, no final ball, no decent cross. I was hoping Payne was going to provide the key but sadly not. With him Hurst and Worrall Id hope for more.
Sounded like we played well over all but just didnt have the ability to unlock the defence when we get there.
See I think you've got this the wrong way around. If there is a poacher on the pitch, then chances will be created for him. You can't expect our creators to create chances for somebody who's not there. And you can't sit there and tell me that we were lacking creatively tonight. We had 2 out-and-out wingers and
proven assisters/creators in Hurst and Worrall, and Jack Payne in the hole. The problem of course is playing one up-top. Especially when that one striker is looking increasingly immobile, slow to react and slow to move.
When crosses go in, you need more than one player in the box to effectively double the chances of someone getting on the end of it, but once again we only had one player in there and he is unable to jump or to move/react quickly enough to lose his marker often. When you have a tricky/quick-footed attacking midfielder riding tackles and running forward towards the edge of the area with the ball at his feet, you need a forward in front of him who is quick enough to run into space, or to break the offside trap, or to play off the shoulder of the last defender and get in behind. Or if you are going to play Corr, play him as part of a 2-man strike force and make sure the second striker can do the above things if not to score, then at least to pull defenders out of the way to leave space for Corr.
Either way, playing with 1 up front is a major problem at the moment. You won't hear me denying that the squad lacks a 20-goal striker, but playing with 1 up top each game is effectively halving our chances of scoring and I just don't understand the logic. If we had a goalscorer who was quick and could get into space, run in behind defences, pull them about etc. then perhaps 1 up front could work but no striker that we possess can play the lone striker role effectively and so it's increasingly becoming a situation where the manager is trying to shoehorn his players into his desired tactics rather than choosing a system which fits his players. That for me was one of the biggest things on display tonight - the players aren't playing with freedom, don't look like they are enjoying their football, and on occasion don't seem to be on the same page. None of them seem to be playing their natural game, apart maybe from the defence, and that I'm afraid is a legacy of what they are being asked to do.
To a large degree I think he is over-complicating things. I couldn't work out tonight what he was trying to achieve or where he wanted his players positioned. Jack Payne seemed to spend 60% of the game in the hole and 40% in CM. Ryan Leonard seemed to divide his time between a defensive midfield position just in front of the back 4 and a CM position and sometimes he even dropped so deep that he was level with his centre backs. Every time Bentley or one of our defenders lumped the ball forward, Corr raced all the way back to the half way line to try and get on a head on it, and Payne, Hurst and Worrall all moved beyond him in anticipation of a flick-on. Invariably Corr failed to get anything on the ball and so the 3 aforementioned players and himself were all out of position. It just seemed like they were being instructed to do some odd and over-complicated things. I can't agree with the whole “4-4-2 is dead” argument. There's no reason why that formation can't work. He is trying to be different for the sake of being different rather than being different because it works – unfortunately that's a theme at the moment, being different for no good reason seems to be in vogue in English football. This is League 2 football and the players are mostly that standard so get back to basics and play it simple, stop over-complicating things.
Thought we played some nice stuff up until the edge of the final third, but with only one striker (who can barely move) in the box to try to get on the end of crosses, and no penetration due to a lack of movement up front when the ball is coming through the middle, we never looked like scoring. I thought having Payne, Hurst and Worrall on the pitch was heading in the right direction and I think that's the way forward but there must be two strikers on the pitch so that these creators have someone to thread a through-ball into or to put a cross into. Coker was excellent and Atkinson not far behind with his industriousness.
Bentley 7 – Little to do but made a good save at the end
White 6 – Solid defensively but the aimless long balls up the line are frustrating
Prosser 7 – seemed comfortable
Bolger 5 – maybe harsh for a member of a defence which kept a clean sheet, but arguably could have given him less. Made 2 glaring errors tonight. Scares the **** out of me. Has little in the way of positional awareness, concentration or decision-making skills – 3 important attributes for any centre back. League 2 centre backs will be lacking in these areas, that's why they're at this level, but he doesn't even seem to be L2 standard in these areas.
Coker 8 MOM – excellent comeback, didn't put a foot wrong all game until he surrendered possession on the left flank in the 80th. Won lots of headers, tackled well and got up and down the line.
Leonard 6 – expected better, passing was poor, played too deep and when he did try to run forward with the ball, he was tackled too easily.
Atkinson 7.5 – covered lots of grass, tackled and passed well. Industrious and effective.
Hurst 6 – seems to be lacking confidence a bit and didn't get over as many crosses as you'd like but worked hard, got forward and helped out defensively.
Worrall 6 – worked hard. Was a nuisance out wide, got some crosses in, tracked back well.
Payne 7 – tried to open them up but had nothing in front of him to lay it on a plate for. Showed some nice passes and spread play well.
Corr 5 – woeful. Won little in the air and for such a big guy, gets tackled and muscled off the ball far too easily. Had 2 chances with headers which luckily he was left unmarked for, because he didn't actually jump for either of them! Just can't do what is expected of him.
Subs:
Weston 5 – not a striker. He can say he prefers playing up there as much as he likes but he doesn't have the brain or positional skills of a striker. His instinct was to keep dropping deep or peeling out wide so for the final 10 minutes of the game it seemed like we had no striker on the pitch. The moment when he received the ball on the edge of the area, wouldn't get a shot away and then just fell over was embarrassing.
As a last note, what is going on with our set pieces? We don't threaten at all from any dead ball situation. I can't work out whether it's because the balls in are poor (shouldn't be with Hurst, Worrall, Timlin and Coker at the club), or because we have nobody who can lose or out-jump his marker and get a good head on the ball (we really miss a 10-goal centre back a la Phillips and Cresswell), or whether it's because they aren't being practised on the training ground and there is no set-piece plan in place. It needs to be worked on though because that should be a source of some goals for us.
Some changes need to be made in the January transfer window but for me, the biggest change still needs to be the management team.
