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Credit where it is due. A number of players had their best ever games for us. I agree with the views on Hippolyte. Have been a big critic of him in the past thinking he has been playing at being a league footballer. Today he played football and was actually quite good at it.
The midfield performance was comfortably the best of the season with Hackney having his best game by a mile and Pugh was great. Competitive right across the middle and out worked and outfought Crawley in there for an hour. Lost it a bit after the substitutions but that is more that Beeston and Bunn couldn’t match the excellence of the guys they replaced.
Millen and Thompson both also had their best games for me. Rest of the team played well and even Cox did nothing wrong.
Sspecial mention for Rory. 2 excellent games this week. We have finally got a competent goalkeeper.
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Agree with that Ferrite. I have watched nearly all of Cox’s 60 odd games live or on iFollow and I have never detected a coherent plan on how we are attempting to score goals.
We sometimes start with a defensive plan but it soon degenerates into most of the team retreating to the edge of our box and imitating a row of traffic cones.
We had motivation issues last season but first half of the Horrorgate game apart the team have put the effort in. I even think the team has considerably more ability than we are seeing – the tactics (or lack of them) that we employ must have the players as frustrated as the fans.
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Just a guess but Nigel puts 1200 on the gate – Keith Hill puts on 200.
Nigel is the cheaper option.
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And we have already got a manager with rocks in his head.
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Could he save us? Almost definitely.
Would he / should he come and work under Mr Swann for buttons? Almost definitely not.
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The issue with Cox is not that we “only” got a point at Barrow. In the grand scheme of things points away are great if you win most of your home games (we don’t win very many home games by the way Fansy).
The issue is how and why we only got a point.
We marked their men and put in challenges all over the pitch in the first half. We scored one and should have scored 2. We had a couple of other half decent chances. They were reduced to aimless passes across their back 3 occasionally popping it into midfield and getting it back again. They created hardly any chances and looked a fairly poor League 2 outfit.
For the majority of the second half we surrendered two thirds of the pitch, stood off their players and allowed a poor team to play attack against defence. This was exactly what the 2 iron fans on Humberside at half time predicted. I expect the 86 brave souls that travelled to Barrow and everyone else watching on iFollow predicted as well.
That is the problem. I don’t believe for a minute all 10 outfield players suddenly just decided to do that. Even if they did the coaches should have been screaming at them for 45 minutes to get back to doing what they did in the first half.
This is not a new manager still trying to get his ideas across. This is a man who has been in charge for 60 odd games and still thinks this tactic will get him results.
We got a point because Rory had a great game, Barrow were shite and Cox got lucky.
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I don’t think 20% possession is correct NI. We had a lot less than that.
In the first half it didn’t matter because all of their possession was along the back line, into midfield and back again. We were marking players and challenging for the ball. We created chances and they didn’t.
After 55 minutes we put 9 cones around our penalty area, stopped marking and stopped competing for the ball.
Now possession does matter because it is all around our box by players not being challenged.
I feel for the players who worked their asses off but Cox was very lucky to get a point against a very poor team.
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Get this man gone Peter for goodness sake. He is embarrassing himself and the club.
Deliberately conceding the ball to a very poor team for 30 minutes of a game. What the feck.
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If sitting deep and getting into shape worked at League 2 level surely we would have seen some benefits by now. It just gifts possession to the opposition in danger areas.
Even in the 1 game we have managed to win this season Tranmere had a steady stream of unchallenged crosses in the first half from their right hand side. It was only because they were so shite they didnt make anything of them. You can play for or five centre backs – if you allow streams of unchallenged crosses into the area you are going to concede chances.
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We cannot play 5 at the back because our coaching staff seem unaware of the basics of playing this system.
One of the benefits of playing it properly is that without the ball the full backs/wing backs can engage and mark the opposition wide men and limit/stop crosses coming in.
When we play it our full backs tuck in very narrow and leave the opposition wide men freedom of the park. We compound it by having the midfield drop deep and allow the opposition to ping the balls out wide pretty much unchallenged – see the space Forest Green’s No 6 and No 21 had last Saturday to continually pass the ball out wide unchallenged. Their No 21 just walked into 10 yards of space whenever they had the ball and then played it out wide to a free man about 20 times in the game. I spent the first half looking at our bench expecting them to get a midfield player to close him down but it never happened. Just after half time I was delighted to see Hackney take the ball of him rather easily – I though halleluja someone has said something at half time. That was the only time our midfield challenged him until he was substituted late in the game so the Hackney challenge was just a coincidence.
I don’t believe O’Malley, Thompson, Millen, Rowe and Pugh all make the same decision to stand 20 or 30 yards off the opposition wide players so it must be a team tactic.
The consequence is that when the ball inevitably gets played wide our full backs are busting a gut to then close the gap and more often than not an unchallenged cross comes in. Given crossed balls are the main source of goal chances in League 2 it is no wonder we concede so often.
The insurance policy of 3 centre backs against one or two central strikers should allow the wing backs to get tight and stay tight and force the opposition down the middle. Simple but not the way we play it. Coaching basics chapter 1.
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If we had 11 players that had performed as well as Rory in every game this season we would be in the top half of the table.
For me the only one to match his consistency has been Pugh and he got dropped because “he didn’t train well”
He has been replaced by 2 loanees that have yet to make a tackle between them.
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Only 1 thing gets a manager the sack here.
“I disagree Mr Chairman”
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Not defending the situation for a minute Ferrite or BRI. As Ferrite that part of the clubs problem is no different for most other clubs. We are (nearly) all prisoners to the whims of our clubs owners.
It is a problem for football and its regulators to resolve – don’t hold your breath on that one.
The problem about being 92nd out of 92 and getting worse not better is a problem unique to us.
The ownership seem unconcerned or unprepared to do anything about that problem. In the scheme of things that is what worries me.
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Find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with UTI99.
One of the Swann families companies have owned the ground and the land for 8 years. Moving it from one company to another makes no difference to the club.
If the owners can gain some financial benefit from moving it from one of their companies to another by the way of tax benefits or cheaper finance then they would be mad not to do so. The club have been totally reliant on the integrity of the Swann family since he walked into Glanford Park accompanied by a fanfare of since unfulfilled promises.
Get angry and or disappointed at the broken promises. Protest about the current state and trajectory of the embarrassing football team and the aapparent lack of intent to do anything about it by all means.
But the ground ownership is the least of the clubs problems right now. Most of the 92 top level clubs have ground owned by and subject to the whims of their current ownership be they Arab nation states, Russian oligarchs or local businessmen .
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If we miss the first 15 minutes we will be missing 2 or 3 goals
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To make the news you need to do something drastic! Run on and stop play. Sit in the centre circle and refuse to move. Get the game abandoned.
To be fair the players have made a start with this already.
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Cracking rewrite of history WG.
we had decent team for most of Wharton’s years but sense of community?
Don’t remember that – whatever it actually means. By the time he went he was fairly heavily criticised mainly for selling our best players at the drop of a hat and charging a healthy interest on his club loans.
Most fans were delighted when Swann took over with his family money and extravagant promises of fancy new stadiums and regular Championship football.
If only we had realised we were leaping from a comfortable frying pan into a raging inferno we would have felt differently.
By all means criticise where are today but there is no need to romanticise the past.
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I genuinely feel sorry for Neil Cox.
He was given absolute shambles of a team, a greatly reduced budget and a toxic environment to try and turn around.
His main qualifications for the job were he was a Scunthorpe lad and he promised not to argue with or bad mouth the club ownership.
He has tried manfully and seems to have worked very hard at it. I appreciate both. One day he will realise how lucky he is to be out of it – which surely will happen soon.
There is only one person to blame for this shit show and it is not Neil Cox.
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Serves you feckers right. You didn’t touch your forlocks and bow in adoration.
So he took his ball home and his money (and the clubs assets) and took you out of the league.
That will teach you to be more appreciative of the great and the good!
PS it’s your fault (and Covid)
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That doesn’t answer the question.
Give me a who?No one had heard of Peter Swann or the boxing guy (Hobson?) until Wharton indicated he wanted to sell. Buyers rarely appear for football clubs unless owners express a desire to sell.
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UTI99 – Let’s get real here. Apart from 1 or 2 posters most people on here have supported the owner for about 7 of the last 8 years despite having to endure 2 years of utter crap on the field towards the end of that time.
Now we are well into our fourth season of decline it is hardly surprising that everyone (apart from your good self) is asking questions about the future of the club under it’s current ownership.
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