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Match day thread: Rochdale

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  • @our_frank said:
    there's a surprising amount of nonsense on here about Rochdale's style and their proclivity for playing it out of the back. "Is it really effective at this level?" In the past few weeks we have been well beaten by Coventry and should have been more roundly thrashed by Oxford, who we couldn't get the ball off even with 11 men. They both play in this way.

    The Oxford experience was interesting, as I recall a few years ago when Appleton started there, he was manifestly trying to play this way with players who weren't up to it or up for it and they were appalling. Wind the clock forward a few years and a good few quid later and he had them playing both attractively and successfully in that style.

    With Rochdale, surely part of the plan is to get players used to playing well in a way that will make them attractive to teams at higher levels. Matheson's maturity, comfort on the ball and all round good play (until those final seconds) suggests that they will reap the benefit of that sometime soon.

    I have no spurious moral objection, or indeed commitment, to the way we play. But I still commend Rochdale for choosing to do it theirs.

    Fair enough. It would drive me potty though if we constant put ourselves under pressure by losing possession on the edge of our area trying to pass it out.

    It's a lovely way to play, but the players have to be good enough to do it

  • It did leave us looking a bit silly at times yesterday though - their ability to pass fairly crisply.

    I know we don't play a possession-game, but when we did try and thread a few together, at times we looked like trying to chaotically handle a mine.

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  • Yeah we played some really good stuff yesterday. Ok the finish itself may have had an element of luck, but the quick passing and movement in the build up for McCarthy's goal was a joy to see after our 1 dimensional play of the last few weeks.

  • On a slightly unrelated note, is there any particular published reason I may have missed as to why our pitch appears to be in such awful condition? Considering how fantastic it was last year, I was particularly surprised by how cut-up and uneven it seemed yesterday, looking even worse on the highlights.

    Any particular reasons behind this?

  • Was given yesterday by a club official as the constant rain?

  • @Brownie said:
    On a slightly unrelated note, is there any particular published reason I may have missed as to why our pitch appears to be in such awful condition? Considering how fantastic it was last year, I was particularly surprised by how cut-up and uneven it seemed yesterday, looking even worse on the highlights.

    Any particular reasons behind this?

    I think last srason was the exception rather than the rule on the pitch. As soon as the undersoil heating used for more than a day or two the very top layer starts to expand, lift and then crumble. I am sure the wet weather has made the pitch more stodgy and contributed to Gape and Thompson being substituted but the heating is making the putch cut up

  • @fame_46 said:
    @prufrock_91 - disagree with that. We can play football, the spell after their goal, up until half time was lovely passages down our right involving McCarthy, Freeman, Gape and Wheeler.

    It was intricate, concise and clinical. They were struggling to contain us. Thing is if played like that week after week, with no game plan we’d e exactly where Rochdale are - in the bottom half in a relegation battle.

    I have no issue with our game not being possession based, when you have combative midfielders, and Akinfenwa up front, it makes sense to play the way we do. I don't think you can argue we're clinical with passing, when the final ball was so often poor yesterday (even the equaliser was a wayward cross)

    At times we did put some stylish moves together, but there were long bits when we really did struggle to find a man in a controlled way. Looking back at the highlights, the Allsop error comes from two poor passes. We've got the ball safely in midfield, until Thompson plays a wild ball to McCarthy who miscontrols it, and puts a bad one back to the keeper.

  • I recall that we were due a significant and expensive pitch rework at the end of last season but the budget (following the previous bid collapse) didn't allow for it and we had to accept just a basic reseeding and hope for a good winter.

  • I have heard a story that the undersoil heating is out of action. On the flip side, I can't think of an occasion this winter that we have needed it?

  • @Malone Yes, to the extent that Rochdale were playing a possession-based, very mobile game, from the back, trying to wear us down, move us around the pitch and then thread the right pass to their attackers at the right moment, I thought they were playing a style like Oxford's or Coventry's.

    As others have pointed out, they just weren't as good at it as either of those teams, partly because their players aren't as good. But they also, in my view, showed a lack of patience in playing that way yesterday, looking for a long pass too early (and when they rarely had the quality of passing to deliver) and so letting us off the hook. On the other hand, we didn't make it easy for them and generally pressured them effectively when they had the ball.

  • On odd occasions this “winter”, as we saw last night and Friday night, the air temperature has dropped a couple of degrees below freezing. In still, clear conditions the ground temperature will be a degree or two lower than the air temperature. There has been a lot of white (hoar) frost on grass, cars and some roofs but that is an indicator of the amount of moisture in the atmosphere rather than the severity of the frost. Hence, when we experience winds originating in Siberia, the temperature will drop to very low levels and the top inch or two of soil becomes like concrete.

    The degree of frost locally over the past couple of nights would not normally harden the surface of the pitch sufficiently to justify turning on the undersoil heating but it is a difficult judgement. (I’d not heard that it was out of order.)

    The culprit for the soggy, churned up state of the pitch is almost certainly the unusually frequent (and often heavy) rainfall over the past couple of months
    Also, wasn’t there a weekend recently when our Saturday match was followed on the following day with another game?

  • I meant to add at the end of the first paragraph that in those conditions people often don’t realise just how cold it is because there is often no visible (hoar) frost on the grass etc.

  • 43% must be one of the highest possession stats for Wycombe this season?

  • It's about average for us. We've had as much or more in ten other games. Having said that, only time we've out-possessed the opposition was against Southend (57% - 43%).

  • Thats interesting cheers

  • To be fair, I don't think there's any correlation between our possession and the result - Rochdale away being the prime example. All about how you use it at the end of the day.

  • The interesting correlation might be conceding a lot of possession to, say, top 8 teams, and results, but yeah agree with what you say.

  • @Brownie said:
    On a slightly unrelated note, is there any particular published reason I may have missed as to why our pitch appears to be in such awful condition? Considering how fantastic it was last year, I was particularly surprised by how cut-up and uneven it seemed yesterday, looking even worse on the highlights.

    Any particular reasons behind this?

    I thought that over the summer, with no available funds pre Couhig the club could not afford the usual scrape of top soil and resurface / reseed? We’re note quite back to the Wasps era pitch ( remember how a bouncing ball on a concrete like playground surface used to loop over Beano’s head!) but work will be needed in the closed season.

  • @Shev said:
    Loved Grimmer's co-commentary, especially his support of Macca, even though his position is under threat. Hearing the likes of Darius, Smyth and Grimmer in the booth this season has been a joy!

    I had similar thoughts. It really says a lot about the quality of the characters in the team that we have transitioned from threadbare squad to genuine competition for places in six months or so without any hiccups. Or at least not anything visibly disruptive. They did briefly cover the subject in a previous commentary and I think Grimmer said they're explicitly told by the coaching staff that respecting your team mates comes first, and trying to outperform them comes second. @bluntphil may recall the discussion better than me.

    On that note, Parker deserves a lot of credit for his performance yesterday. He has been forced to remain very patient sat on the bench, which I imagine could be difficult for a senior player. And those forwards ahead of him are far from prolific, which could easily exacerbate the frustration. I am happy to admit that I thought he was totally useless and had more or less written him off based on the fleeting glimpses we had seen to date. But I thought he had a very good game, linking up play well and closing down their defence where needed.

  • @Glenactico said:

    @Shev said:
    Loved Grimmer's co-commentary, especially his support of Macca, even though his position is under threat. Hearing the likes of Darius, Smyth and Grimmer in the booth this season has been a joy!

    I had similar thoughts. It really says a lot about the quality of the characters in the team that we have transitioned from threadbare squad to genuine competition for places in six months or so without any hiccups. Or at least not anything visibly disruptive. They did briefly cover the subject in a previous commentary and I think Grimmer said they're explicitly told by the coaching staff that respecting your team mates comes first, and trying to outperform them comes second. @bluntphil may recall the discussion better than me.

    On that note, Parker deserves a lot of credit for his performance yesterday. He has been forced to remain very patient sat on the bench, which I imagine could be difficult for a senior player. And those forwards ahead of him are far from prolific, which could easily exacerbate the frustration. I am happy to admit that I thought he was totally useless and had more or less written him off based on the fleeting glimpses we had seen to date. But I thought he had a very good game, linking up play well and closing down their defence where needed.

    In fairness, Parker couldn't really complain much when we were comfortably top of the league! But once the bad run kicked in, to not get a chance (also with Aarons going to reduce the numbers of competition), would really be writing on the wall stuff.

    We'll see if it's a one off for a while, but it was good he had a solid display.

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