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Match day thread: Huddersfield

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  • Yup you need someone up with bayo so while scotty and fred defending in our half in a 433 is great...it means no outlet when we get the ball back. Thompson, Knight and Stewart all playing well. Hope no-one comes in for them any time soon!

  • Bayo's entire Wycombe career has consisted of proving himself irreplaceable on the pitch while the Gasroom debates how to replace him.

  • 38, 3 games in 8 days, a knee that is clearly still cruck, yet still our best option. None of this is Bayo’s fault. Fact is the alternative squad central strikers are either made of glass or lower league standard.
    We are in danger of breaking Bayo for good, an alternative system must be an imperative.

  • As I mentioned it yesterday, I thought I should point out that Wycombe old boys Gary Smith and Steve Guppy guided Nashville to the MLS play-off semis with a richly deserved win over Toronto last night. They now face Columbus in the semis on Sunday, a big achievement in their first season at this level, although Alan Swann probably thinks they are overrated and don’t deserve it!

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  • @chairboyscentral said:
    Hang on, if Coventry lose by 3+ tomorrow then we're out of the bottom three.

    That’s v @glasshalffull but for balance this is v @glasshalfempty ...... and if Wednesday & County win were are bottom.

  • @perfidious_albion said:
    We are in danger of breaking Bayo for good, an alternative system must be an imperative.

    I think Bayo knows his own body, and is trusted by the coaching staff not to let this happen.

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  • @fame_46 said:
    Amazes me that he has a 'quieter' game and it's the end of the road for one of the chief catalysts of Wycombes rise from the lower reaches of league 2 to the championship.

    This is the point I was trying to make with the comparison to Bloomfield and Charles. Everyone was saying at the start of the season that Mr Wycombe was proving once again you should never write him off,
    had earned his right to lead out the team on merit, while Charles's fairytale last season and natural authority showed he deserved to start as well. Would anyone see either back in the 11 now if they were fit?

    Look, I understand sentimentality and I know this Wycombe side is more than the sum of its parts based on its team spirit and the influence of its generals, but there comes a point where you have to be hard-headed.

    If Bayo should be picked when fit he has to start contributing goals, assists or causing a distraction at set pieces which lead to goals. If the only reason he's being picked now is because we don't have any better options then we need to invest in better options or we're going down.

    I missed the Watford match so didn't see this spectacular performance of Bayo's, but if he's to remain our talisman we need to rely on him to put that sort of performance in on a much more regular basis.

    At the moment I'm seeing him getting bossed by better quality, fit and strong defenders who know how to push him out of position, win the ball in the air, sit off him if there's no one around for Bayo to get the ball to, or buy a foul from him (often unfairly, yes, but there's no room for sentiment in the Championship).

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  • @aloysius Do you think Bayo is losing out on balls he should win? I would say he dominated against Watford mainly because the balls in to him were much better. Last night was an awful advert for precise passing from both sides and Bayo in particular struggled.
    Many see Uche as the next cab in the rank. Let's hope so but for me he falls over too much and isn't anywhere near as strong as Bayo. To be honest who is? Bayo was disruptive last night despite contributing little on the ball. The gaps he created helped Kashket and Fred.

    Your comments on Charles and Bloomfield are a major slam based on a very small base of knowledge. It's a squad game and both can and will play a part. Bloomers has lost little in terms of energy and Charles's positional sense only causes problems if his ongoing injuries cause mobility issues.

  • I look forward to some more knowledgeable analysis from @chairboyscentral, but i wonder if Bayo's problems, and our problems, last night were caused by reverting to 4-3-3 more than anything else. As others have alluded to, Scott was never close enough to Bayo to benefit from his flick-ons, and Bayo never seemed to know where his team mates were.

    I was also surprised at how much time at how much time we gave their GK and CBs on the ball at least in the first half. I'd have thought Kashet would have been hunting the ball down like a blood hound, looking to force a mistake. But again, because we were playing 4-3-3 he had to hang back and protect our shape.

    The best use of Bayo so far this season has been inside the box, getting on the end of crosses, last night's system didn't provide for much of that at all. As an aside, have we scored from further out than 10 yards this season?

    Gareth is rightly beyond criticism at this point, but i wonder if he'll wake up this morning wishing we'd played with two wide men and two forwards, being more aggressive from the off. I'd expect us to play 4-4-2 this weekend, with Horgan and Fred wide, and Bayo and Scott in the middle.

  • To pick up on the point Shev makes on the previous page and the wider point about managing Bayo’s workload maybe there is some mileage in using Darius Charles as an emergency centre forward while Uche is injured.

    Not to start games, but to give Bayo a break at about 75-80 mins. We could simply give him the same job of winning a few headers and holding the ball up for his team mates given that the last 10 min of games will see all manner of long balls, free kicks and throws being hurled into the box. He’ll also be useful defending any late set pieces.

    He’s played sizeable chunks of his career as a centre forward particularly during his time at Stevenage - including a play-off final. I think he also scored against Wycombe as a forward at some point but I’ll defer to others with better memories.

    Given he’s now a bit down the pecking order as a defender and given we can name 9 subs maybe it might be worth having him as a bit of wildcard option that can save us having to run Bayo into the ground given we have an eye-watering 9 matches between now and the end of December.

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    @floyd I'm not doing much at the moment while I work things out, but the average position maps from the last few games are quite interesting. I'll post them on here later, but the problem was we seemed to want Kashket to perform his normal role (playing off Bayo) while lined up as a winger. Fred was also too deep for the most part - usually Bayo has Kashket right off him and then at least one other (usually Horgan) in the vicinity, but he had neither of those last night, which probably explains why his headers were a bit directionless.

    But Huddersfield did a good job on him - 7/19 aerials won is easily his lowest % of the season, probably his lowest in a long time. He won 12/20 v Brentford, 22/38 v Birmingham (which is absolutely astonishing, more than in any game last season) and 13/19 v Sheffield Wednesday - so he's absolutely still got it. As others have mentioned, Watford was perhaps his best ever game for us. Writing him off is nonsense.

  • @TheatreOfChairs its a nice idea, but as someone else mentioned, the nature of Darius’s injury probably means he can’t sit in the cold for 70 minutes, have a light warm up and then play.

  • And in terms of scoring/creativity, he's wasted a few decent chances and we're probably about to move past the point where we can blame the fact he's only just come back - but the goal is coming, even if that's easier said than done. He is getting the chances - that's the key thing - and his presence helped make chances for others against Watford, Wednesday and Birmingham - and he might have set up Kashket against Brentford had Allsop's kicks gone towards him to flick on rather than straight to Kashket. Last night was just a bad game for him for a combination of reasons: tactics, Huddersfield's defending, and from the looks of it fatigue.

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  • Unfortunately despite trying a number of combinations up front, it is obvious that Bayo is our best option. However the man is 38, carrying an injury and playing too many consecutive games. Somehow we need to come up with an alternative ( perhaps Uche when he's fit). A scoring rate of 6 goals in 13 games is not going to keep us in this division. We have a number of exciting wingers but it is the focal point of our attack that is the issue at the moment. In an ideal world you we need to use Bayo far more sparing than we are at the moment.

  • We are a work in progress and that is now just one defeat in six with three successive clean sheets at home. We have improved defensively, possibly at the expense of our attacking play, but a solid foundation is vital in this division. We have never been prolific scorers and it’s even harder to get goals at this level. I believe that Bayo is still vital to our system, but he is 38 and has been out with a long term injury, he will get sharper.
    I think the most important thing is that we are now a team that is difficult to beat.

  • I'm surprised people are mooting Darius as an option and ignoring that we have a basically unused striker who's looked good in the few cameos he's had in Josh Parker. Not sure of his height, but I don't think he's much under 6ft, so an aerial presence, good on the deck, can pick a pass and, something that Bayo has failed to do, has the mobility and skill to keep the ball when it's at his feet.

    On a side note, McCleary should start on Saturday. Our most intelligent, composed creative player, based on his minutes so far.

  • @JohnBoy said:

    On a side note, McCleary should start on Saturday. Our most intelligent, composed creative player, based on his minutes so far.

    And also, if we can focus on important things for a moment, the best hair.

  • @floyd said:

    @JohnBoy said:

    On a side note, McCleary should start on Saturday. Our most intelligent, composed creative player, based on his minutes so far.

    And also, if we can focus on important things for a moment, the best hair.

    Has anyone else in the squad got even remotely interesting hair? We're a bit conservative in that respect.

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    Didn't Ian Stonebridge have a song about his sensible hair?

    Also, Darius's is also remotely interesting.

  • Can't remember what Darius' looks like

  • @chairboyscentral said:

    @floyd said:

    @JohnBoy said:

    On a side note, McCleary should start on Saturday. Our most intelligent, composed creative player, based on his minutes so far.

    And also, if we can focus on important things for a moment, the best hair.

    Has anyone else in the squad got even remotely interesting hair? We're a bit conservative in that respect.

    I feel like Dom Gape is trying.

  • Is McCleary the closest to having a wig in the club shop since Sergio Torres?

  • We do seem to be a bit Brian Clough's Forest side in terms of haircuts with is odd given Ainsworth's lead with hos much discussed hair.

  • I think it's a credit to us, and an indication of our general turnaround, that their manager said that they didn't force many chances because they were focusing on our game. He was effectively saying that they "came for the point".

  • I think there's a greater respect among managers at this level for elements of the game like disrupting opponents and stopping them doing what they do. Doesn't seem to be as many chips on shoulders like in the lower leagues.

  • @floyd said:

    @perfidious_albion said:
    We are in danger of breaking Bayo for good, an alternative system must be an imperative.

    I think Bayo knows his own body, and is trusted by the coaching staff not to let this happen.

    Things you won’t here at the training ground part1:
    “sorry Gaffer not really up for it today”
    “ok Bayo no problem we’ve got plenty of alternatives up top knocking on the door”

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