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Match day thread: Peterborough

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  • @chapmanio I agree, he hasn't yet matched his early season performances and he wouldn't currently be in my starting line-up, but a Bloomfield goal is a rare enough thing, let alone when it brings us back into a game we seemed out of. I'm hoping it's not the last moment of joy in the game... COYB!

  • @MindlessDrugHoover said:
    No, I'm so thick I hadn't realised that. Thank goodness you're here to educate me.

    Pazza the patroniser, rather than educater !!

  • 4-2. PCH on for Alex, please!

  • I've always liked Stewart, and Jombati has been excellent at CB this season... but is that largely down the organisation from El-Abd? We hardly look solid with him, but it's looking awful without!

    I was content with the signing of Allsop in the summer, but I don't think he has been close to good enough this season, and it really has helped appreciate just how important Scott Brown's kicking was to how we played last season.

  • 6 points from the relegation zone, however Rovers have a game in hand. So it could be just 4 points

  • All our remaining away games are against sides far from safe - which does say a lot about how tight the bottom half is, but still - and we've got 3 of the top 6 at home. Accrington at home a week on Tuesday is looking like a big one to potentially relieve some pressure.

  • Good ainsworth persists with the same hoofball formation......

  • Posh have some good players for this level, diving pricks though. We had a good go for a bit which was never going to be enough. Need to start quicker, defend better and take our chances to get anything against the better teams.

  • One positive to come out of the day was that most of the sides just below us lost today. League position unchanged.

  • 6 points from 4th bottom sounds dangerous, but in reality we're 12th so there's 8 teams in between us and the bottom 4.

    11 games to go, and we probably just need 2-3 wins to see it through.

    Can't ask for more of a motivator than Sunderland at home next though. Big crowd, big occasion, and we'll be bang up for it.

  • It's a worry that we've not been able to pick up a win for some time, and the possibility of getting drawn back into the relegation dogfight remains.
    However, for that to happen there are a lot of teams below us who still have to pick up more points than we do between now and the end of the season.
    I think we'll be okay but I'm not betting on it!
    That next win, to turn the tide, can't come soon enough.

  • @bigred87 said:
    Good ainsworth persists with the same hoofball formation......

    Were you there today? Not that much hoofball and GA changed formation after 10 minutes...

  • Some of our best football of the season in an attacking sense but I agree with the poster above about our defence without El-Abd's organisation, some shocking goals conceded today.
    Don't quite understand GA's persistence with Samuel over Tyson or PCH, or the delay in the substitutions.
    Closer to the bottom points-wise but I'm relatively heartened compared to the last few Saturdays.

  • Sido and Stewart were excellent against Gillingham but we failed to take our chances. Hopefully some points from Sunderland and accrington - any points - will steady the ship.!!

  • I suspect pompey may have offered more than us and Fred is on a decent whack at millwall. Cms going was disappointing for me but I doubt had he had a choice Gareth would have let Morris and Fred go.

  • @MindlessDrugHoover said:
    No, I'm so thick I hadn't realised that. Thank goodness you're here to educate me.

    I was trying to be polite. Assuming that you did realise that loan players can be recalled why do you think we were prepared to let them go for financial reasons and in the belief that we were safe?

  • @glasshalffull said:

    @MindlessDrugHoover said:
    No, I'm so thick I hadn't realised that. Thank goodness you're here to educate me.

    I was trying to be polite. Assuming that you did realise that loan players can be recalled why do you think we were prepared to let them go for financial reasons and in the belief that we were safe?

    Isn't it more about not paying loan fees and wage contributions? I'd be surprised if we'd got all of our loanees totally for free. Same with the logic of CMS loan fee and / or wage save.

  • Williams was sold to Exeter, Morris to Pompey. Millwall recalled all their loan players including Onyedinma.
    CMS wasn’t getting much game time so a loan made sense. Wrong of mindlessdrughoover to suggest that anyone at the club thought we were safe, GA has said all along that we need at least 55 points and he’s right.

  • Wrong to suggest we let CMS go because anyone thought we were ‘safe,’ but it’s a fair guess to think that GA was confident Fred was coming back.

  • He would have if Millwall had made the signing they were trying to tie up in the last minutes of deadline day. It was out of our hands.

  • Exactly.

  • That’s the point I’m making. We couldn’t do anything about the players we lost apart from CMS. The departures had nothing to do with any feelings of complacency.

  • My 1st game for sone time , so I'm not as well placed as many of you to give my match view, however i will give it a go .

    The first 15 minutes were quite frightening. If there was a game plan ,it was not carried out . Rabbits in the headlights spring to mind . The players were not a team , there were huge gaps everywhere . A truly abysmal start , highlighted by Gareth's continuously outstretched arms.

    Some good wing play brought about the own goal which gave us hope and we then settled in nicely and this i thought was our best spell of the game , blooms and freeman linked up really nicely and both looked our biggest threat .

    Their 3rd was as a result i seem to remember if one of a few of jj's poor tackles , and a poorly positioned keeper .

    We came back well again , some great work by Freeman on the wing , akinfenwa making himself known in the box and blooms being in the right place at the right time , as he was most of tge game .

    We huffed and puffed in the 2nd half , without any particular purpose . Mccarthy and jj hoofing it into the channels seemed to be the continued gameplan despite it being highly ineffective .

    I think we had 3 goalmouth scrambles , mainly by pumping it into the mixer , but on another day they could all have gone in .

    Their 4th was a bit of a sucker punch , a good finish but really poorly defended by thompson who got skinned so easily .

    Substitutions were quite disappointing, too little too late , blooms coming off was a shame unless he was injured . It was crying out for a double substitution about 10 mins into the 2nd half when it was still 3 2 , and obvious that we were not a goal threat . If we are bringing on subs then the game plan needs to suit the reason why we are bringing that sub on , bringing on a small nippy attacker yet still hoofing it into the channels will not and did not work . However bringing on a fresh akinfenwa with 25 mins to go would frighten the opposition.

    Overall ,
    Bloomfield - excelled , a great engine, a great heart, good footballing brain , i was very impressed .
    Freeman - a great 1st half , neat , tidy , good footwork and a great crosser , ineffective in tge 2nd half .
    Allsop - hmmm , not convinced . Never looked likely to make a save , extremley poor positiong for their 3rd goal and hus distribution wasn't great however i thought his handling was good.
    Akinfenwa - a tricky one . I love him , but i feel he is more suited to being an impact sub , he has a great knack of getting between 2 defenders and winning the 1st ball , but we are carrying him, and i dont think we're a good enough team to carry a player.
    Samuel - a lot of huff and puff but not a great deal more .
    Thompson - i will assume it was an off day for him , i was hugely unimpressed with him , spent far too much time with his hands on his hips and seemed in my view to contribute absolutely nothing .
    Defensively - frightening to watch . Looked like a bag of nerves with no one looking comfortable or confident on the ball .
    Attacking - when playing at ground level we look good, both our goals came from good interchanging on the wings and good crosses . However our insistance of bypassing midfield and hoofing it into the channels for samuel to fight for was ineffective and so predictable . Lots of pressure in the 2nd half but no chances , just scrambles from corners and free kicks . There seemed no pace whatsoever .

    Fingers crossed for next weeks game we can develop a team and a system that doesn't involve thumping it upfield , and we can play to our strengths and get a much needed 3 points and confidence boost.

    As i say , I'm not the best placed to comment on our performances as sadly I'm unable to watch us week in week out, however its always good to get reviews from anyone and everyone .
    COYB

  • I do think both Freeman and McCarthy had good games, on the positive side.

  • What a great post @Frenchfry
    Always enjoy reading a good considered view of the game and the players. The forum has become more about the prediction thread than the analysis and debate of the game.

  • Very interesting post @Frenchfry. Quite disturbing too, particularly in the sense that we have regressed since the departure of the loan players and have reverted to a surfeit of hoofball. Perhaps AFC Wimbledon got it right three years ago in deciding that Bayo was most effective when used as an impact sub.

    I wasn’t there yesterday and switched (clearly for ultimate sins) to the cricket but the comments about Curtis Thompson suggest that this was the inevitable “off” day that has been a very long time coming.
    Finally, good to have vindication for those of us who have championed the claims of Nick Freeman to get more game time.
    Oh, nearly forgot - recognition too of Matt Bloomfield’s efforts.

  • I wasn't at the game yesterday so no comments on that.

    Seems like we have had a tough run of games which will be judged in a few weeks once some more winnable games come around. If we have a difficult March then we will find ourselves nearing the bottom 4 and will feel Feb was the start of the decline. Alternately, if we can get some wins and cement our place in mid table then this spell of games will soon be forgotten. Very hard at the moment to judge whether we really are struggling or if it is just the challenging run of fixtures.

    Good to see Blooms getting some credit. think I'm right in saying he made his 500th career appearance yesterday but that 1 of those was for Ipswich, so Sunderland at home will be 500 games for Wwfc. He must also captain the team without El Abd? All set up for him to smash home a 97th minute winner in front of the terrace.

  • The idea that 'AFC Wimbledon got it right when deciding Bayo was most effective as an impact sub' is ridiculous - we got it right when starting him throughout last season as he was vital in getting us promoted.

    I've no opinion either way in whether we play him, attacking wise he does seem to be our best option though. Kashket drifts too much in games, and Samuel tends to huff and puff with little end product. The issue is if we are to play Bayo, we need midfield runners to pick up the second ball quickly and use the space that he makes.

    As for Allsopp, I've always found him to be a fantastic reactionary keeper, but his command of the box has been woeful, and he seems to be too much of a confidence player. If he makes a mistake, he'll quite often let that overshadow his whole game.

    It's not time to massively overreact just yet, we probably needed 8 more points, and there are plenty of teams below us that are worse than us. Also, we've played well against big teams at home this season, and perhaps a huge crowd against Sunderland is just what we need to get things going again.

    Finally, not got a clue why McCarthy got POTM, as he was tripe against Gillingham.

  • Three points @prufrock_91: I was anticipating the kind of response you have made about Bayo Akinfenwa’s role, past and present. I qualified my comment with “Perhaps” and of course the argument for and against starting versus coming on as a sub depends very much on the availability of other strikers/attacking midfielders. We have fewer at our disposal since January (three key players in fact) and that has increased the pressure for Bayo to start but (and I am open contradiction!) I have a feeling that he has been more effective this season when defences are tiring and he is fresh.

    Jason McCarthy wasn’t at his best against Gillingham (who was!) but I am puzzled as to why that would rule him out as Man of the Match against Peterborough.

    And finally......your description of Ryan Allsop as “reactionary” conjures up a mental image of a “goalie” in a knitted, roll-neck jum

  • jumper.

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