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Match day thread: Cheltenham

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  • Indeed. I remember that observation being made and agree that it resonates. Had this been five years ago, I'd be ho-humming with the rest of us and moving onto the next one. It's the changed expectations that new ownership (and new messaging, as well as recent success) have engendered that are at least partly responsible for my mindset, I think.

  • Stopped reading the thread at page 3. For all the posters who moan of Vokes, frankly, if we had Shearer, Pele, Puskas, Andy Rammell, Roberto Baggio or even the mighty Trevor Aylott up front we would have done fuck all today because the service was totally non existent.

    Someone did mention that for all the attaching flair we have it’s a shame that we can’t get 4x passes together.

  • Our defenders and goal keeper couldn’t hit a forward with a banjo either

  • It's widely accepted that Dobbo is the tactician and player developer of the management duo. And Ainsworth the motivator. He gets off very lightly regarding the criticism on here, when we witness continual clueless direct football. The fact that we saw their two centre halves swallow up every high ball, but we continued to just repeat the same tactic, hoping for a mistake.

  • Nick Bloody Freeman

  • Performance, or some of the "analysis" on here?

    Accurate either way to be fair

  • What is most disheartening is that all the teams we’ve failed to beat recently, and there have been a few, none of them would have sat in the dressing room and gone ‘wow I’m exhausted, we know we’ve been in a game today’. And that to me is the saddest part. Meekly giving up games is something that is so new to us.

  • The manager has to take the brunt of the criticism. When do you ever hear a football fan say "oh the number 2 got it wrong today".

  • Don Howe used to get plenty of criticism at Arsenal and England for his influence on negative,defensive football.

  • If ever a moment summed up a performance it was Wing's shot which simultaneously almost went out of the stadium and out for a throw-in

    Was it our only shot of the second half?

  • Tempted to opine that everyone in the team deserves to get hit with a banjo.

  • Oh god I had forgotten that effort - thanks for the reminder 😱 😣

  • The most annoying thing is that GA finally made early subs and we still lost.

  • edited November 2022

    It is interesting that our wide defenders seem to think they can hit a fifty yard ball to the head of Vokes but in reality can’t cross for shit. Misplaced arrogance is not something I thought I would see under GA. It was the downfall of previous managers at the club and now this has crept into this squad I wonder if the early signals are there. Coupled with the loss of spirit that used to see us through so many games we have a powerful combination in the squad right now. Remember all those late winners or draws. That wasn’t all ability, that was heart, that was passion, that was team work, that was not accepting defeat. Now one nil down ‘ah fuck it let’s just pump the ball up’.

    So angry with so many of these players I would happily see a clear out of some of the senior pros.

  • I thought the worst period of play, was in the last couple of minutes, when a floated ball actually beat their defence, and McCarthy had the option of heading or volleying across their goal, but instead chose to do neither, but raise his hand in a bizarre claim for a corner.

  • Bringing on McCarthy was an Adams’esque substitution. He has zero crossing ability and replacing Grimmer for him was absolutely pointless. I think we all knew at that point the bench had lost the plot and was just making changes for shits and giggles.

  • I actually think I preferred it when we didn't make subs.


    Still, at least we didn't spunk a promotion budget on this squad and set ourselves up to lose 3m this year. Great decision that.

  • One of Ainsworth's post match comments described our corners as being "over hit". It made me wonder the following....

    • How many of our corners this season have resulted in a goal?
    • How many of our corners this season have resulted in conceding possession?
    • Same two questions as above applied across League 1.

    Made me think, are we better off just recycling play? Just pass it to someone and work a new opening, opposed to "hey defenders, I'm about to kick the ball towards you, I'm going to aim for one of our guys heads' - chances are you will stop them or your keeper will catch it, but here you go"...whack.

    Then again, when was the last time we "worked an opening". Jesus.


    On a seperate note: no creativity coming from midfield. I wonder if Mehmeti could spearhead a midfield 3? I'm sure he has done before and I actually think we'd be better off with him there.

  • edited November 2022

    We've taken 97 corners into the box and failed to find a man with 72 (74% - second-worst in League One behind Peterborough (lol)). Not actually saw how many goals we've scored from corners, but we've only scored four from set-pieces overall (only seven teams have fewer).

  • Goals from corners: Wheeler v FGR is the only one I can think of. And kind of Freeman v MK, but that was second phase.

  • Thanks @ReturnToSenda - that kind of backs up my thoughts. I'm not too sure what the alternative is mind.

    Is it easier to defend a corner than attack it? And if "yes" - I wonder what determines that? Ball trajectory, height, strength, desire, all of the above?

    Free kicks are a little different because angles can be worked - but there must be a better idea at corners than to punt it in the box. I reckon we are more likely to score from a corner if we actually shoot direct a la JJ. Either that or just keep the ball and start again. It has ALWAYS baffled me why fans get so upbeat when the ball goes out for a corner.

  • I didn’t think that was as bad as some recent performances.

    But overall it was a really poor game and once they scored the onus was on us to do something to get back in the game. Sadly, we failed in that endeavour.

    Familiar problems of a lack of pace, dreadful crossing and not enough chances created.

    Hanlan played well from the bench I felt, which was a small positive.

  • There's no obvious reason for our struggles in that sense. We've still got big targets in Taf, Forino, Vokes - lost Stewart but obviously added Mawson. Obviously lost Bayo, but he was hardly on the pitch last season and rarely at the same time as Vokes, so I don't think there'd be that much difference. A strange one. Just a lack of organisation/inventiveness?

  • We’ve had far too many mediocre (very very poor) performances this season to consider ourselves as playoff contenders in my opinion. Let’s see what our squad looks like in February and then reevaluate again in June. Interesting summer ahead ………

  • I gave up and went off to play Goat Simulator 3 with the kids. Life is too short to spend it watching shite.

    I actually thought we allowed Cheltenham to play some decent football. Several times I watched some quick breakaways with clever passing absolutely open our defence up, and every time I was just thinking "why can't we do that? Why do we just keep doing the same thing over and over?"

  • Actually, now that I think about it, are we just completely lacking in clever players? A number of Cheltenham's attacks could be described as clever - really good off the ball runs, especially from May, supported by players smart enough to pay attention to the movement of their teammates and play the right pass. Any time any of our players made a good off the ball run we hoofed it over them.

    @ReturnToSenda It's just as good as all the other Goat Simulator games, though the end of level boss is ridiculously hard to beat. Overall though, several orders of magnitude more entertaining that watching Wycombe do their one attack.

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