Best Of

Morley used to sit back and allow Josh to go forward, and after doing that for a few weeks he was really effective, hopefully he can have the trust in Xavi to start doing that more.

The bed wetting stuff is a bit of a cheap dig but gets the point across, its not a majority but we've seen so many comments this season that have turned out to be pish days or minutes later, some folk would have booted out all of the new signings and the manager at half time in the first game of the season, if not the first game of last season.

I like that air of confusion, was out on a jog before and I was thinking about Wycombe, Birmingham away on Saturday and so on.

If you'd of said to anyone on here we'd be 2nd behind Birmingham after 32 games with 64 points, 3 ahead of the team in 3rd and 7 points ahead of 4th with a game in hand we'd all be over the moon.

Yet somehow it doesn't feel like that, for me anyway, I still haven't ordered tickets for Saturday yet and it was one of the first games I looked for when the fixtures come out. I've got to make a decision later in the week, go the match or take my girls team.

I couldn't get the game Saturday but watched it and It wasn't great. Reading the match day thread was even more depressing.

Exactly this. Except he’s made a point of it. Admittedly he was answering a question, but still.

I’m probably reading too much into it. It does make you wonder how long he’ll be around though.

that pitch was the worst at a pro ground I have ever seen live lol

I think a lot of fans don't have what it takes for the run-in

It's not going to get any easier. Plenty of games on a knife-edge going into the last 15 minutes, do we push for a winner or try and hang onto the point? What are the other teams around us doing? etc etc

You can't be having a meltdown every time we don't win

We build out as a 4-2 now like you say with Xavier and Scowen deeper. It’s way more defensively solid - we’ve only let a total of 0.74 XG against us in the last three league games. I know it was against sides that are fairly ineffective up front, but that’s still an outstanding defensive display. Trouble is that we aren’t hitting the net at the other end. Xavier’s set pieces look promising though. That should offset some of our poor open-play chance creation. I know it’s cliched, but we really need to turn these draws into wins.

It was really noticeable on Saturday that both Scowen and Simons were predominantly sitting deep - just in front of the back four. This approach is consistent with the stronger defensive and less effective attacking performances you describe.

I can’t stand the ‘bed wetting’ comment. It’s not big, not clever and certainly no better than the drivel from the Facebook site which so many on here are quick to poke fun at.

In our last four games we’ve played over 400 minutes of football, 300 of which against bottom eight L1 sides and only scored three goals. We’re not even averaging one goal per 90 minutes as a team against poor opposition, even if we strip out the Preston game from the sample.

The trouble is that I don’t think we can return to the October/November goalscoring era. Morley allowed us to build out in a 4-1 shape by acting as the single pivot (the ‘1’). I don’t think any of our midfielders - perhaps any midfielders in the entire league - can reproduce what Morley was doing for us. This is why I have constantly called him our most important player - he allowed us to overload in forward areas of the pitch because he could play deep as a single pivot and we could push Scowen into a higher press and let our forwards do a load of damage.

We’ve been forced to rebrand. I think our defensive record will be the best in the league from here on in (except maybe Birmingham City). This may hinder us from winning lots of games, but we certainly won’t lose many (or any at all). I think having Kone back might be what we have missed to get us scoring just enough to turn these wasted opportunity draws into wins.

Agreed. I'm sure it's an effective way of getting results but I can't get away from the feeling that style of football is really quite tedious to watch unless it is executed well and at speed.

Some of our games this season and last remind me of watching England under Southgate. For large parts of the match I'm barely watching because nothing of interest happens until the first pass into midfield. That can take a while to happen and even then the ball is often returned straight back.

At times it leaves me wondering whether there is merit in another rule change, similar to the Introduction of the back pass rule, to stop teams passing to the keeper. Clearly that would need to be tested in some way to see what kind of impact it has on the game.

It isn't a black and white matter of course. We have played brilliantly incisive football when we've been on it this season. And I'm prepared to accept that controlling possession is an effective strategy for increasing our chances of winning, which is what I want above all else.

The use of the "bed wetting" phrase is a bit silly.

There was a whole gamut of reactions from admittedly silly arguments, various degrees of concern to a few "cool" takes.

But while there's no need to panic just yet, recent form certainly hasn't been good against some fairly moderate teams. With bigger and tougher games to come we need to improve.