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The reason(s) we're rubbish

Forums New posts

So why have we started badly this season? (can vote for more than one)

  • Total voters
    81
3. Tilson's complete refusal to drop either Barrett or Clarke... even for a game in a meaningless cup to see what the result is with Sankofa
 
Over the summer we lost two of the better players to have ever played for Southend in Nicky Bailey and Mark Gower, who both wanted to ply their trade at a level more suitable for their talents.

We've replaced Bailey with a decent enough player in Grant, but there was inevitably going to be a drop-off in quality when you lose someone of Bailey's calibre. Last season he held the defence together and his reading of the game was top-notch which masked the inadequacies of the defence, none of whom were natural defenders capable of reading the game and anticipating. For that reason alone, I expected us to concede more goals, even though we upgraded our keeper.

The more concerning thing is that we haven't adequately replaced Gower. Gower was the fulcrum to our passing game, always available, even when he was having one of his frequent bad games, he could pick a pass, change the direction of an attack, attributes that no-one in this current team have. Losing your attacking thrust has a knock-on effect on your defence - you are less adept at retaining possession, meaning you have to defend more and often have to start defending from more dangerous areas of the pitch. Gower's replacements have also been defensively worse than Gower. Someone like Robson-Kanu clearly isn't use to playing on the left-side when it comes to the defensive side of the game. Betsy should be use to playing wide-right, yet far too many crosses have come in from wide from players who have had time to tee up the cross.

We have been slow starters in recent seasons, so hopefully the team will make the adjustments needed, but to me we look short of a playmaker to get our passing game going and to feed the attacking players. I also think we look lightweight on the wings and I'd welcome a more defensive orientated player on one of the wings, someone in the Mark Bentley or Carl Pettefer mould to give us a bit more solidity.
 
Yorkshire Blue said:
Over the summer we lost two of the better players to have ever played for Southend in Nicky Bailey and Mark Gower, who both wanted to ply their trade at a level more suitable for their talents.

We've replaced Bailey with a decent enough player in Grant, but there was inevitably going to be a drop-off in quality when you lose someone of Bailey's calibre. Last season he held the defence together and his reading of the game was top-notch which masked the inadequacies of the defence, none of whom were natural defenders capable of reading the game and anticipating. For that reason alone, I expected us to concede more goals, even though we upgraded our keeper.

The more concerning thing is that we haven't adequately replaced Gower. Gower was the fulcrum to our passing game, always available, even when he was having one of his frequent bad games, he could pick a pass, change the direction of an attack, attributes that no-one in this current team have. Losing your attacking thrust has a knock-on effect on your defence - you are less adept at retaining possession, meaning you have to defend more and often have to start defending from more dangerous areas of the pitch. Gower's replacements have also been defensively worse than Gower. Someone like Robson-Kanu clearly isn't use to playing on the left-side when it comes to the defensive side of the game. Betsy should be use to playing wide-right, yet far too many crosses have come in from wide from players who have had time to tee up the cross.

We have been slow starters in recent seasons, so hopefully the team will make the adjustments needed, but to me we look short of a playmaker to get our passing game going and to feed the attacking players. I also think we look lightweight on the wings and I'd welcome a more defensive orientated player on one of the wings, someone in the Mark Bentley or Carl Pettefer mould to give us a bit more solidity.
Click to expand...

i was going to type all that but it didn't fit in the box.
 
Yorkshire Blue said:
I expected us to concede more goals, even though we upgraded our keeper.
Click to expand...
we've conceded more goals so far this season than at this time last year with flavs. and the defence is practically the same, ber harding. bottom line is, we've shipped 13 goals in 5 games. 9 goals in 2 games. work that out over the course of the season and it's nearly 100 goals. thats relegation.
 
graysblue said:
we've conceded more goals so far this season than at this time last year with flavs. and the defence is practically the same, ber harding. bottom line is, we've shipped 13 goals in 5 games. 9 goals in 2 games. work that out over the course of the season and it's nearly 100 goals. thats relegation.
Click to expand...

Er, why have you cut out the bit of my quote that talks about how Bailey was our key defensive player last season?

Its no coincidence that in his one appearance this season we kept a clean sheet.

We were better with Bailey, not better with Flahavan. That is also why Bailey is playing Championship football.
 
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