Not on a windup. Just a general reminder at least one poster on here thinks we’re not allowed to critique football and decisions made anymore unless you have a certain standing in the game.
To be fair to @mandown, he did put his foot in that bear trap earlier than I had hoped but still managed to beautifully highlight there is alot of football experience within a fan base one way or the other and are perfectly within their right to express their thoughts and opinions.
Get your facts right, I did not say people weren’t allowed opinions, I said those opinions were not as valid as those of the manager who has had a lifetime in the game and brought our club unprecedented success. The manager who signed and coached the players who have achieved that success and who sees them every day in training. We all have opinions, but ultimately it’s only GA’s opinion that counts and he knows that when he consistently gets it wrong he will lose his job.
Oops, clearly touched a nerve. Good of you to remind us that it’s only the manager’s opinion that counts because the posters on here didn’t know that !!!
So where did I say that people aren’t allowed opinions? We are all entitled to them and that’s the joy of being a football fan, but I respect the manager’s opinion more than any others because he has consistently brought success to our club.
Perhaps, if all the posters on here criticising the manager were given the opportunity to take charge (committee fashion) for a particular game which was seen by the club as being of lesser importance - next Saturday springs to mind for some reason - they would no doubt spend most of the game disagreeing vehemently with each other but they could at least make better use of the one tactic on which there seems to be a virtual consensus - earlier introduction of fresh legs.
The stats quoted earlier in this thread suggesting that our starting elevens tend to suffer from tiredness, frustration and an inability to change their approach during the second half of games seems to me to underline the need to introduce fresh legs much earlier.
If Brandon Hanlan had been brought on 10-15 minutes earlier, for example, we just might have seen a different outcome. But these are fine margins and it has to be said that Morecambe weren’t so preoccupied with keeping Hanlan in check that they couldn’t mount that messy, soul-destroying final attack.
The one thing we can say about Port Vale is that they are one of the (slightly) bigger clubs and may therefore be less inclined to play six at the back.
You have ignored my question. The opening words of the article were: ‘Football is a game of opinions’. I don’t mind you disagreeing with me but please don’t confuse interpretation for fact.
And your opinion is that those that were criticising GA should have kept their mouth shut because they don’t have the experience of 600 games and 10 years in management, despite, as a poster already mention, they may have a wealth of there own experience elsewhere in the game. Got it.
In my laymen opinion what appears to go consistently wrong is the interaction between our most creative players and our wing backs. The wing backs run to the edge of the box and effectively end up on the toes of Anis and GMac. Net result that the move is slowed as they fiddle around, Vokes is the only option in the middle, cross rarely comes, possession lost, MASSIVE hole in the midfield, opposition break. Again and again. Vokes is great but he can’t win the ball when he is so out numbered. 5 doesn’t work with Anis and GMac either side of Vokes when the opposition close us down effectively which they consistently do. Yes the loss of a DM is big but we are our own downfall most the time. Change personnel or change formation
I assume the article you mention was the one in the Bucks Free Press a couple of weeks ago but how do emails get involved?
And isn’t @glasshalffull merely saying that he considers that Gareth Ainsworth’s opinions and decisions are likely to be more valid (based on his outstanding record to date) than those of fans. I certainly don’t feel that I’m being told to ‘shush’.
What I would say (and the reasons should be pretty obvious without me spelling them out) is that, in @glasshalffull’s position in the football club, discretion has to be the better part of valour.
If I can interrupt the usuals having a pop at eachother the first half Vs second half stat is the big one. The game is faster and more physical than ever, it's still roasting warm in November, we have some older players and some covering positions, and the opposition can have the luxury of swapping half the team as they see fit under the new rules. We bossed the first half again so maybe the players aren't all rubbish but we need to get away from this hangover from times when we only had 12 players and use the subs earlier.
If it's going well we won't make changes until it's out of sight or oops we haven't got what we deserved. Let's not pretend KaiKai, Horgan or some of the others have set the world alight but they must have 15/20/45 mins in them or they are waisting limited resources. KaiKai must look into the pitch and wonder why he isn't at the cinema or B and Q.
Wheels would probably have done a better job at rwb than JMac who looks weirdly lost too often, at least towards the end if we were chasing a goal, Brandon looks electric, well worth a few more minutes if not a start.
I can kind of see why we aren't holding the ball more while clearly missing Scowen and co but maybe we need to try a defender in there and let Nick play further forward. He is playing well as is Wing but they aren't strong there.
We aren't millions of miles away from being decent and that's more annoying than if we were poor. It's also almost certainly got sod all to do with fireworks (which the noisy kids seemed to like as part of an impressive crowd for a game against that lot) or the Couhigs.
Gareth is a great manager and absolute legend of the club and I want him to stay as a manager for many, many years to come. He does a thousand times better job than I could ever do, or even contemplate doing, and he would do a better job than any one individual or combination of individuals on here.
But that doesn’t mean he is perfect and does everything perfectly. I feel like we keep moving back to a back 3 out of habit when we’re struggling as we think back to that great run in the Championship playing that formation. But we had an on fire McCarthy and Fred as wing backs then, a much stronger back 3 (Knight, Stewart, Tafazolli), a far, FAR superior midfield 2 of Thompson and Adeniran and actually played two genuine strikers much of the time (Uche and Muskwe). Now the main reason we seem to play this formation is to shoehorn JJ into the side for his set pieces and because we don’t have enough cover for CB’s and bad luck with injuries. Let’s just stick with a 4, please!!!!
Whatever we think of everything else we also now have a lot of very good players for this level. When you look at the technical ability of the players of the side from 2 years ago it’s an absolute miracle we got promoted - we were such a fantastic team though, so much more than the sum of the parts. We had to fight and scrap and use gamesmanship and defend for our lives and be compact. If we tried to play too positively or attacking we’d have been nowhere. But it’s different now, we must evolve the attitude, we are one of the better squads in the league and, injury notwithstanding, I want to see us take on that mantle and play more positively. It’s an evolution of attitude but I’d like to see it start happening.
Comments
Thanks. I hate imposing but I sort of assume you quite like poking around in statistics
Most of the posters on here would consider ourselves football people, I’m sure. In my case 25 years of playing local Saturday league football.
Therefore it’s probably fair to say there’s a lot of football experience amongst us. Many differing opinions, of course, but we can’t all be wrong
They're on a wind-up
That's the sort of thing you'd think our "analysis" team would be right on, and would leap out like mad.
It's just the disappointment that we had 3 good wins, then saw 2 absolute bankers against terrible teams at home that proved to be anything but.
But that's football and we should all know that by now.
Not on a windup. Just a general reminder at least one poster on here thinks we’re not allowed to critique football and decisions made anymore unless you have a certain standing in the game.
Lol, I twigged it
To be fair to @mandown, he did put his foot in that bear trap earlier than I had hoped but still managed to beautifully highlight there is alot of football experience within a fan base one way or the other and are perfectly within their right to express their thoughts and opinions.
Get your facts right, I did not say people weren’t allowed opinions, I said those opinions were not as valid as those of the manager who has had a lifetime in the game and brought our club unprecedented success. The manager who signed and coached the players who have achieved that success and who sees them every day in training. We all have opinions, but ultimately it’s only GA’s opinion that counts and he knows that when he consistently gets it wrong he will lose his job.
Ha, I do! But yeah, I have a cheat for this one.
Oops, clearly touched a nerve. Good of you to remind us that it’s only the manager’s opinion that counts because the posters on here didn’t know that !!!
That post was 80 or 90% direct quoted from your article Alan.
my post were your “facts”
So where did I say that people aren’t allowed opinions? We are all entitled to them and that’s the joy of being a football fan, but I respect the manager’s opinion more than any others because he has consistently brought success to our club.
Perhaps, if all the posters on here criticising the manager were given the opportunity to take charge (committee fashion) for a particular game which was seen by the club as being of lesser importance - next Saturday springs to mind for some reason - they would no doubt spend most of the game disagreeing vehemently with each other but they could at least make better use of the one tactic on which there seems to be a virtual consensus - earlier introduction of fresh legs.
The stats quoted earlier in this thread suggesting that our starting elevens tend to suffer from tiredness, frustration and an inability to change their approach during the second half of games seems to me to underline the need to introduce fresh legs much earlier.
If Brandon Hanlan had been brought on 10-15 minutes earlier, for example, we just might have seen a different outcome. But these are fine margins and it has to be said that Morecambe weren’t so preoccupied with keeping Hanlan in check that they couldn’t mount that messy, soul-destroying final attack.
The one thing we can say about Port Vale is that they are one of the (slightly) bigger clubs and may therefore be less inclined to play six at the back.
When you sat down, reread the article you wrote and clicked “send” on the email.
that was you sending a message to anyone to say: shush keyboard warriors. The only opinion worth anything is GA.
You have ignored my question. The opening words of the article were: ‘Football is a game of opinions’. I don’t mind you disagreeing with me but please don’t confuse interpretation for fact.
And your opinion is that those that were criticising GA should have kept their mouth shut because they don’t have the experience of 600 games and 10 years in management, despite, as a poster already mention, they may have a wealth of there own experience elsewhere in the game. Got it.
With Scowen: 1.8 PPG, 1.5 GFPG, 1 GAPG
Without Scowen: 1.4 PPG, 1.6 GFPG, 1.5 GAPG
Oops jumped in a bit quick there🎣😂
In my laymen opinion what appears to go consistently wrong is the interaction between our most creative players and our wing backs. The wing backs run to the edge of the box and effectively end up on the toes of Anis and GMac. Net result that the move is slowed as they fiddle around, Vokes is the only option in the middle, cross rarely comes, possession lost, MASSIVE hole in the midfield, opposition break. Again and again. Vokes is great but he can’t win the ball when he is so out numbered. 5 doesn’t work with Anis and GMac either side of Vokes when the opposition close us down effectively which they consistently do. Yes the loss of a DM is big but we are our own downfall most the time. Change personnel or change formation
We go again.
I find that post slightly puzzling @TheDancingYak.
I assume the article you mention was the one in the Bucks Free Press a couple of weeks ago but how do emails get involved?
And isn’t @glasshalffull merely saying that he considers that Gareth Ainsworth’s opinions and decisions are likely to be more valid (based on his outstanding record to date) than those of fans. I certainly don’t feel that I’m being told to ‘shush’.
What I would say (and the reasons should be pretty obvious without me spelling them out) is that, in @glasshalffull’s position in the football club, discretion has to be the better part of valour.
We were excellent in the second half against Peterborough.
Can't remember when it was now though, must be years ago I guess
If I can interrupt the usuals having a pop at eachother the first half Vs second half stat is the big one. The game is faster and more physical than ever, it's still roasting warm in November, we have some older players and some covering positions, and the opposition can have the luxury of swapping half the team as they see fit under the new rules. We bossed the first half again so maybe the players aren't all rubbish but we need to get away from this hangover from times when we only had 12 players and use the subs earlier.
If it's going well we won't make changes until it's out of sight or oops we haven't got what we deserved. Let's not pretend KaiKai, Horgan or some of the others have set the world alight but they must have 15/20/45 mins in them or they are waisting limited resources. KaiKai must look into the pitch and wonder why he isn't at the cinema or B and Q.
Wheels would probably have done a better job at rwb than JMac who looks weirdly lost too often, at least towards the end if we were chasing a goal, Brandon looks electric, well worth a few more minutes if not a start.
I can kind of see why we aren't holding the ball more while clearly missing Scowen and co but maybe we need to try a defender in there and let Nick play further forward. He is playing well as is Wing but they aren't strong there.
We aren't millions of miles away from being decent and that's more annoying than if we were poor. It's also almost certainly got sod all to do with fireworks (which the noisy kids seemed to like as part of an impressive crowd for a game against that lot) or the Couhigs.
Gareth is a great manager and absolute legend of the club and I want him to stay as a manager for many, many years to come. He does a thousand times better job than I could ever do, or even contemplate doing, and he would do a better job than any one individual or combination of individuals on here.
But that doesn’t mean he is perfect and does everything perfectly. I feel like we keep moving back to a back 3 out of habit when we’re struggling as we think back to that great run in the Championship playing that formation. But we had an on fire McCarthy and Fred as wing backs then, a much stronger back 3 (Knight, Stewart, Tafazolli), a far, FAR superior midfield 2 of Thompson and Adeniran and actually played two genuine strikers much of the time (Uche and Muskwe). Now the main reason we seem to play this formation is to shoehorn JJ into the side for his set pieces and because we don’t have enough cover for CB’s and bad luck with injuries. Let’s just stick with a 4, please!!!!
Whatever we think of everything else we also now have a lot of very good players for this level. When you look at the technical ability of the players of the side from 2 years ago it’s an absolute miracle we got promoted - we were such a fantastic team though, so much more than the sum of the parts. We had to fight and scrap and use gamesmanship and defend for our lives and be compact. If we tried to play too positively or attacking we’d have been nowhere. But it’s different now, we must evolve the attitude, we are one of the better squads in the league and, injury notwithstanding, I want to see us take on that mantle and play more positively. It’s an evolution of attitude but I’d like to see it start happening.
You can hardly call 17 degrees roasting hot and, on a picky point, it’s not November!!
But I agree with most of your points.
Nick Freeman is excellent at right wingback. David Wheeler - mmmm ?
You've told me a million times not to exaggerate.
Returntosenda likes poking around the good ladies of HW
Have I ?! I need chapter and verse !
On my picky point, I was slightly off-piste. It was 19 degrees. Perhaps I should have piste off !
"If you asked me my biggest strength, I would love to say I see the game better than anyone, I’m more tactically astute, but I’d be lying."
Gareth Ainsworth, in his own words.
Having Scowen, Gape and Thompson all out for a prolonged period is killing us.
Nick Freeman is toiling away admirably in there but he should be challenging Mehmeti and McCleary for one of those spots.
If we're still in touch with the top six when everyone is available again we've still got a great chance of doing something this season.