Reply To: Yeovil Town

[PhilAnders]

Watched the game yesterday, and rewatched it this morning. Have read the critical posts.
We set up 433 they 451
Given that we were always going to have difficulty playing through them and so we resorted to knocking the ball around at the back waiting for a runner. That wasn’t Whitehall, and Dec and Pat Jones had obviously been told to get as much Whitewash on their boots as possible. The result was long balls from the back out wide of from the fullbacks into Whitehalls feet, which he then proceeded to shithouse away. Pat jones was able to bring the ball under control a few times and then run his man. With no runners into the box he had little options other than to delay the cross, giving someone from the midfield 5 time to double up. Yeovil’s main attacking ploy was to releases midfield runner to chase a ball beyond our Centre back. But for the linesman’s flag that vey nearly worked ( including one where their player was clearly onside and another saved by a Tyler Denton last ditched Tackle. Rather strangely our main midfield runner (Beestin) seemed to be holding back so not to stray to far from Westbrooke! This meant that in the final third we were poor, last year, Cal Roberts would have come inside looking for the ball and on occasions that worked. This year, neither Howe nor Jones looked to do that. Their goal was well worked but organisationally we were poor. No right back or right winger covering the back stick and looking for the runner from deep. People are blaming Whitehall as the last man in our defensive line, but he was rightly watching Gubbins. No, organisational mistake that needs the management team to rectify.
After the goal, we made changes, Butterfield and Gale and the introduction of Brennan suddenly gave our CB’s a third option, to pass their way through the Yeovil press and Butterfield receiving the ball beyond their press started to make things happen, especially with Gale looking to make runs in the final third and Brennan and jones looking for a ground ball beyond’s the inside shoulder of the full backs. For the first time in the game , Yeovil panicked and their manager dropped a man from midfield into the defence to make a back five. This just created more room for Butterfield to spray it around, and with Hurst on for the Riring Pat Jones , continued to turn the screw. It as just desserts when Brennan equalised. A little too late in the day for us to manufacture a second. On balance, a draw a fair result.
From a Scunthorpe perspective that was not a home promotion performance. Tactically, the players we looked to play 433 from the start were not able to play at the tempo and precision required. Once we had two experienced wide players on with a midfielder looking to make runs onto and beyond their back five and a centre midfielder prepared to collect the ball from tour defenders and pass forwards we looked much more of a goal threat. Having your initial three play defensively while hoping that your CBs can play a killer ball to a wide player or a static Danny Whitehall will not get the goals required to get us out of this league. This is a management tactical issue. Had AB made the 60 min changes at half time we may not have conceded, and scored a couple.
The formation Yeovil played we will see a lot of teams deploy at the Attis this season. They were well organised and everyone did their job without being spectacular. Deploying that formation, they too may have difficulty scoring the goals to be in the play offs.
Positives, we didn’t lose, after the subs we looked to create plenty against a side that nullified us up to that point. We definitely have a stronger squad ( every sub made a positive impact) but we must learn fast not to play goofball static, defensive 433. I’m afraid one of Rowley or Richards and Dec Howe will need to be sacrificed for us to do this!