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Watched it on stream Awaywego and I would say it was different to most of our away performances this season.
That was more down to Blyth than ourselves. They deliberately stood off us and kept a rigid defensive shape. We were allowed to pass at will across the back four and pretty much across the midfield with them thinking we would be ponderous and lack creativity in those areas. They got that right.
We did create and squander a few chances and had a perfectly good goal disallowed and if we had scored earlier we would probably have won comfortably against what was a fairly poor side.
As it was we scored late and then did the Iron speciality of sitting back and “managing” the game. Roughly translated this means surrendering the initiative until we make schoolboy errors to hand them a goal. This time Wilson and Fitzsimons managed to drop a clanger each in the same move.
If we had played with any pace and purpose we would surely have scored 4 or 5. Butterfield doesn’t half look good when he doesn’t play.
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A great many of our problems stem from the fact that the excellent Clunan has not managed to produce that same excellence which we had become accustomed to in the earlier part of the season.
Agree with that Les but I think what I happening with Clunan is part of a wider problem. Before and just after Clunan’s injury he set the tone for the midfield and back four to play crisp 1 and 2 touch football that moved teams around until a midfielder (usually Butterfield) or the wide forwards were in a position to run at the defence in the final third. Numerous times yesterday we ignored the simple switch to a man in space or delayed until the space was closed down and Rushall got back in their defensive shape.
Evans, Scales and Butterfield particularly guilty of needless ball carrying but Clunan, Kouogan, Denton and Ogle all did this at times. This has been happening more and more from the Farsley games onwards.
When we then lose the ball with a poor pass said ball carrier has then left a hole for opposition to exploit. Better teams than Rushall exploit this.
No team in this League can deal with short, accurate and crisp passing and this is what enabled us to blow teams away earlier in the season.
Have we stopped doing it for tactical reasons – if so then its a bad move Jimmy. It could be that the players have lost confidence. Maybe they bought into the HMS Piss the League nonsense.
You win Leagues by having your style and imposing it on most of your opposition game after game. See Man City, Liverpool, Wrexham and possibly Tamworth for recent examples of what I mean.
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Given the game has a 13:00 kick off could the clubs not convince the National League to stream the game?
Might lessen the chances of a West Brom vs Wolves type incident and earn the clubs a share of a good few £9:50’s.
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Jimmy is falling into the Wilcox trap. Don’t lose and you win the league.
Didn’t work then and isn’t working now.
17 games with far and away the best squad of footballers. Go beat all 17 of them.
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Their keeper made 1 excellent save from a deflected cross to save an own goal.
Everything else a decent Sunday league keeper would have dealt with. To be fair Ross didn’t have to do anything special either.
Until the sending off a goalless draw was beckoning with us marginally more likely to snatch a scruffy winner. They looked like a draw would have suited them from the off with their keeper taking best part of a minute for every goal kick.
Of course even a draw would have been a better result for them than us.
With the midfield and forward we have and Jimmy’s single minded formation we are only going to win against the better teams by playing fast passing football.
If we get drawn into a scrap we come out second best.
There was a lot of talk earlier in the season about playing us being a cup final for the opposition.
Well now we have 17 games we need to approach as our cup finals. Fast passing football from the off and don’t stop when we score.
The Tamworth style means they can manage games. We cannot so stop trying Jimmy.
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Great crowd but sadly the Iron followed tradition and failed to turn up when the crowd does.
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The lad has just got himself fit and has been unfortunate to pull a hamstring. Happens to footballers all the time.
He did win us the game yesterday by the way. I’ll be delighted if he’s still here next season.
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Pugh and Sembie-Ferris will be a lot more use to us if and when needed if they come with regular game time in our own league.
Much less use if they haven’t even been in our match day squad for weeks.
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You have summed up in 20 words what I was trying to say in my much longer post on the Brackley thread.
We are ill equipped for plan B but we are very good at plan A.
Roberts and Smith had the Boston full backs on toast and Elliott had too much pace and movement for their centre backs. They had to have a go in the second half so instead of rubbing our hands and going for 2 or 3 more goals we dropped off and left Elliott isolated to fight (and lose) the midfield battle they wanted to have. If it was a one off I could understand it but there is a pattern particularly in away games.
If we do go up we will need a more flexible approach because half the games are ugly battles in the league above.
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I know what you are getting at Rene but I think the rest of the back 4 and Scales certainly should be included in the hard work club.
With Clunan and Butterfield I don’t think it’s a question of work ethic but rather the kind of players that they are. When opposition put 4 in midfield and make it a battle (like Boston did in the second half and in their home game) we stop dominating the ball and rarely win it back in midfield. Jimmy then tends to pull the wide forwards inside to help the midfield. Neither Smith, Roberts, Laws or Wilson are particularly good at suddenly becoming combatative midfielders and we lose our creativity and most of our goal threat. Also Elliott/Whitehall then become the only out ball. The full backs stop bombing on which again reduces our threat and choices of outball.
Have seen this happen in way too many away games as well as the occasional home game.
Easy from the stands of course but if you are trying to hang on to games you need to sacrifice Butterfield and one of the wide forwards and replace with 2 combatative midfielders. Shrimpton is the only one we have at the moment so Pugh would have to come back to be the other.
The other alternative (and the one I would favour) is to stick to plan A. Stick to our shape and style and trust we can score more goals than most NLN opposition. Yes you are going to lose 1 or 2 games with the criticism that comes with that but I think we would win an awful lot more than we would lose. Winning 2 and losing 1 every 3 games gets you very close to winning the league. 3 draws in 3 games drags you into the middle of the play off pack.
The make up of our squad is totally geared for Plan A. Time to be brave Jimmy. What would your hero Jurgen do? His team got battered for 45 minutes yesterday but he kept his front 3 up there and ended up winning because they had better quality up front.
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