Post-Match Thread and Ratings Southend United 0-1 Chesterfield

[Eddy Melito]

youve hit the nail on the head. bolger isnt paul scholes, so why expect him to be? the 'hoofs' as people put them are usually down to being closed down while having no meaningful options to pass to. hes not really a ball playing defender, so why does he end up with the ball so often? answer is a lack of width and options to give simpler passes. sometimes its a combination of both.

 

[danburyshrimper]

Indeed . If you look at all the top teams who play without wingers , they all have full backs that push on to play at times almost as high up the pitch as a winger so that they are available to receive a pass. Without options like this you are relying on so many little intricate passing moves down the middle that very rarely come off , especially at our level. Thats what is frustrating as we can pretty much all see it apart from the Blues management.
Its just basics.
Our off the ball running is sunday morning quality
- Even at a very young age when i played it was installed into us that when a team mate had the ball he must have at least 3 options to pass to , and we all got a damn good rollocking if we werent busting a gut to show for the ball. We were told that the best players made his team mates look good ( ie by giving him an option to pass to ) .... i guess the likes of Brown , Coughlin + Horton have forgotten those basic coaching ideals.

With our squad of players at the club we should be right up there in the top 6

 

[Eddy Melito]

I'm not sure its forgetting ideas so much as still having a problem fitting Payne into the formation he wants to play. Brown has a dislike of a simple 2 man central midfield (in this league I tend to agree that against most teams you lose the midfield in that formation) but that leaves more questions than answers because there aren't many ways of fitting Payne into the team without ramming square pegs into round holes. You can't easily play 3 in midfield while having the fan requirement of 2 up front and still having proper width on both sides.

I know I can't think of a decent way to fit it all in and I think brown has tried virtually all of them at some point.