Yes I think I agree with this and it’s why I’m still not quite ready to call for Matt to be sacked.
Today was awful and all of it is on Matt Bloomfield and his coaching team. The team selection was abysmal. The formation unforgivable and the tactics were just schooolboy.
However, putting today aside, we’ve made some genuine progress in the last couple of games and looked better in the changed formation - despite the lack of a centre forward that can offer any real threat in the lone role.
So today was a massive step backwards. However, there are mitigating circumstances, in particular that we are in a run of 4 games in 10 days which entails strategies being put in place to cope with the workload. For example, Garath McCleary is 36, so he’s just not going to start all 4 matches.
Unfortunately the strategies Matt put in place didn’t work from a football point of view or, frankly, a PR point of view - Matt, you need to learn to read the room as going back to 3 at the back was just asking for trouble if it went wrong.
However, I do think if we play well against Leyton Orient and Bristol Rovers building on what we saw in the Derby and PV matches, then it’s still possible that most people would put today’s match to one side and move onwards with Matt at the helm.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I can’t recall a tantrum from any player under Ainsworth once the bad apples had gone. Another thing to add to the list of problems.
What are people seeing in Blooms that make them think he can turn this around? He's got 39 points from 37 games (equating to less than 50 points over the course of a season i.e. relegation). He took over a team a couple of points outside the playoffs that had won 5 in a row and was playing brilliantly - the best performances I saw under GA in all of his 11 years. Those games v Oxford, Port Vale, Derby, Accrington, and Bolton feel a long time ago now.
In truth, we've seen absolutely rubbish for 10 months. Last season ended appallingly from that first loss at Shrewsbury. Remember that we were humiliated by Lincoln and Cheltenham at home to end the season. We lost pitifully to a relegated Morecambe and a poor Burton. We could have conceded about 10 at Ipswich if they were more clinical that day. We couldn't even beat soon-to-be-relegated MK. And all 4 of his actual wins that season (against Fleetwood, Forest Green, Bristol Rovers, and Cambridge) came from performances that could at best be described as "uninspiring", and all came against very poor opposition.
This season started with those horrendous 3-0 losses to Exeter and Lincoln. The latter game in particular was one of the worst I've ever seen us play. Aimless, hopeless, clueless. No discernable plan. Essentially, I think he's trying to play a more tippy-tappy on-the-floor style of football than Gareth did, which goes completely against the strengths of our players (other than Potts). The passing nearly always goes nowhere, and we finally inevitably end up hoofing it long to Vokes or Hanlan when under moderate pressure from the opposition. However, unlike under GA, the team isn't set up to play that way any more. Vokes/Hanlan are rarely in the right place, the long ball is typically rushed and imprecise, and even if the strikers do (very occasionally) win it in the air, no-one else is in position to win any 50-50s, knock-downs, or second balls. We never seem to win any of them any more. We create pitifully few chances. There's no intensity. And to cap it all off, the defence has never really looked solid at all under Blooms with his insistence on 5 at the back, either from set pieces or open play. We aren't conceding massive amounts, but we never look particularly confident and we are always prone to a mistake (as Stryjek has exemplified this season despite being near flawless under Gaz).
Even before this 11-match winless run we weren't playing well. We had two good wins against Blackpool and Fleetwood (the latter admittedly an outstanding performance). But the wins against Northampton and Bristol Rovers in particular were extremely lucky, as were the wins v Orient and Carlisle to a lesser extent (both had 10 men for most of the game but still regularly threatened us). And if you wanted some respite from our League form in the Cups, we've managed to lose at home to League Two strugglers Sutton and Morecambe in similarly depressing circumstances.
To summarise, he's had 40 matches, and we've probably deserved to win about 5 at best (Charlton away is perhaps the only loss I've thought we were unlucky in). In more than ten months, we've beaten only Fleetwood, Bristol Rovers, FGR, Cambridge, Orient, Northampton, Carlisle, and Blackpool. Apart from the latter, all are bottom-half/relegation battling teams. Which means it's one win against a top half team in almost a year. It's a million miles from good enough and - other than that one performance against an abject Fleetwood - I've seen absolutely nothing to think he can turn it around. Plus, the football is about as dull and uninspiring as can possibly be imagined. We rarely have more than 3 or 4 shots on target. At least GA teams always had intensity, total commitment, and an attacking edge.
All of this takes nothing away from the fact that Blooms is clearly an amazing human being who has given 20 years of his life to the club we all love. He will always be a Wycombe icon and legend and I have nothing but respect and admiration for the man as a person and a player. He shouldn't receive any abuse and he will always be applauded/cheered for by me in the stands. But he simply isn't a good enough manager at this point, and he has to go
I said this last season: Max really benefits from a strong defence in front of him that prevents everything but shots from distance, which he's very good at saving in often eye-catching ways. At that point he was only really being let down by his distribution, which is extremely poor for any club wanting to play long ball.
This year his deficiencies have become more obvious. He's not very good at saving shots from inside the box, particularly from side on, and his decision making under pressure isn't strong - hence why a lot of goals are coming from him palming out a shot into the path of an opposition player. We also lose a lot of momentum from mitigating against his distribution - necessitating short balls to the defence which suck the life out of forward play.
I think Matt recognises all this and brought in Ravizzoli to provide another option. Whether that's a good enough option to keep us up remains to be seen. I wouldn't be surprised if we release Breckin in Jan and try to replace him with a young Premier League keeper to add another option. Wonder what Manchester United's Chamberlain is up to...
I'll bite. If we sign a world class keeper we'll still go down playing as we generally have for the last couple of months. Either Bloomfield is backed to bring in players of the calibre needed to play his preferred, technically-demanding style, or he adapts the tactics to what the available players can execute, or he goes.
Stryjek has noticeable flaws like any 3rd tier keeper, they aren't the reason we are where we are.
The trouble is if they sack Bloomfield, who in the boardroom has any football knowledge ( not sure the Couhigs have) to make the right decision on a new manager. Let’s be honest, it was an easy move to replace Ainsworth with Bloomfield. Probably Ainsworth’s recommendation. Is Howard still involved?
Great post, well reasoned and including some respect for Matt Bloomfield, which two or three posters on their relentless crusade to be appalled and outraged at his every doing seem to have forgotten.
It's a very sad situation. I agree that it's very hard to see how he's going to turn this around, but little point in taking action until the new year.
I think Andrew Howard knows a lot about football and a certain Martin O'Neil could also advise the Couhigs on the quality of managers. The big question is are the Couhigs up to admitting they have made a mistake. I am very close to handing in my match pass at the moment and picking and choosing which Saturday afternoons I get bored for 90 minutes.
The Couhigs will once again go for the easy option, they will just be straight on the phone to Gareth and say its his if he wants it. Which I personally think is wrong, they should ask for applications, there are a lot of people who would be interested, we are a league one team, of course there would be a lot of interest. Trouble is they wouldn't know what to ask other people they don't know, so will go straight to Gaz
Let me have a crack at answering the main question you pose, which is what do people on here (who presumably aren’t calling for his head) see in Matt Bloomfield’s managerial abilities.
The answer, to be honest, is not much for the reasons you detail. The stats aren’t good at all and are getting worse.
However, he is the incumbent. As such he’s someone we as a club have invested in heavily in terms of his extended contract, the appointment of a coaching team that he recruited and a squad of players that he clearly asked for.
He’s also a club legend but that is increasingly less relevant as the decision to be made is more important than that.
For me, we have to be absolutely sure that this really isn’t going to work out before pulling the plug, as the financial cost of making the change will I’m sure be significant and leave a legacy that may affect our ability to compete in subsequent seasons. It’s not entirely clear we can even afford it given the external funding on which the club is now reliant in order to keep trading.
As others have said the cost of getting relegated is significant too, so it is a difficult conundrum for the Couhigs.
Therefore, given we have two more matches before the week is out, I think we have to press on and look for any green shoots such as those we saw in the Derby and Port Vale games rather than act now off the back of yesterday’s shitshow.
On more than one occasion in Gareth Ainsworth’s first season we reached this point with the club lodged in the League Two relegation zone. The club didn’t sack him simply because we couldn’t afford to. Thank God we didn’t.
But in the season we almost went out of the league, we and the management knew that a lot of the players were not signed by Gareth and a fes were bad apples. Matt has got the players that he wanted unlike Gareth in the great escape season.
Bloomfield proudly said he was his own man with his own ideas and recruited accordingly. So his squad are his players. Ainsworth coming in would want to be contrary to this. He would want tempo players, high on desire, high on passion and used to a particular style. We don’t have time (or money) to rebuild the squad AGAIN. We need a manager who can look at this imbalanced squad and make something out of it with minimal changes. Personally think there’s a good team in there somewhere. Ditch a couple of players, add intensity, organisation, strategy and 5 or 6/10 performances become 7 or 8 and that’s good enough.
And the fact that Blooms is a club legend should never have been relevant to any decision - from appointment to sacking. You can handle things respectfully, but he shouldn't be treated differently to any other manager.
Tend to agree with @Theatre_of_Chairs post above. I have begun to lose faith that Blooms can turn this around, but that said with 2 games coming up in the next few days there seems little to be gained from sacking him now. I'll be willing him to prove me and everyone else wrong against Orient and Rovers and we can see where we are after that. 2 more poor performances and results and I have a bad feeling Monday could be his final game.
We do need to seriously consider the repercussions of sacking him and his team though. Bloomfield has openly spoken about a couple of exciting additions in January. Fair to say these won't happen if we're needing to pay him off and any new manager will at best be needing to get the most out of the players we have. This might well be a risk worth taking, as my feeling is the team has enough talent to pull clear of danger with an injection of confidence and direction. Is that such an easy decision though if say we have a proven striker lined up, but sacking Bloomfield would mean pulling the plug on the deal? Suddenly the decision isn't so straightforward.
So you don't want to sack him because HE thinks we have some exciting players coming ? I'm sure he was probably saying the same thing about the players we have now coming in at the start of the season. Any new manager will also possibly bring in some new players. No manager is going to stand there and say "well I've got someone lined up, he ain't the best but he'll do" is he.
It is all very depressing at the moment. On the one hand we all have the utmost respect for Mat as a human being, what he has given to the club and have little doubt as to his integrity, hard & diligent work ethic. As someone posted earlier, it is like, when to make that last trip to the vet with the family pet. How much longer can we hang on balancing the suffering balanced with the emotional ties?
I have posted before my thoughts after the Bradford away game in the FA Cup. We were cruising up to half time, 2-0 up & not a care in the world. Second half, Freddie Potts went off and it was akin to Rourke's Drift until the end. I said then that we appeared to be relying too much on Potts, a loan player that will be returning to his parent club and the results since that day seem to bear those fears. Like many, I can't wait until Potts is deemed selectable, whilst harbouring the fears that too much will be expected of him like a returning Messiah. Let's be honest, he appears to be the only one who can see that "killer" pass in the box.
Maybe, (though I don't know any more than the next man), Matt is too close to the players and gives the impression that he is their mate rather than their boss? It could be that like GA did, he needs to put an emotional barrier between them and become more ruthless.
It has been so clear & obvious to many on here that the 3 centre back option has not worked and the reversion to 4 has seen a marked improvement in the performances if not necessarily the results, I thought that the results would soon come. The decision to go back to 3/5 at the back was baffling to say the least. Why on earth KVY was selected to play on the left side, (with Boyes put on the subs bench), when he clearly favoured the right foot amazed me. I understand the need to rotate the squad a bit given the amount of games over the festive period, but it looked to me that team was a selection from an OAP home with the directive of put the shirt on and do what you like. We only improved and looked any kind of threat when we went back to the tactic that had seen us do reasonably well over the previous two games.
If Mat wants to play the same way then I am afraid to say that his time is drawing to a very sad close with us which will sully most of the good memories that many of us hold of him. 🤷♂️
For all the tactical and selection mysteries that we roll out game after game how on earth do we inject intensity into the lacklustre team? That surely comes from the manager’s personality in and around the dressing room. Every game is played like a pre-season friendly. Even in the 89th minute when losing. Max pondering at the back, Keogh still demanding a 6 yard pass so he can show he’s a thinking player, etc etc. I just don’t get it.
You know things are bad @glasshalffull doesn’t post to defend the indefensible. We are sinking fast people.
The post match interview is now up on Wanderers tv.
Matt talks about marginal differences but it is a lot more fundamental than that for the myriad of reasons listed above. He looks like he’s aged a decade or so over the last couple of months.
Even if we somehow steer the ship towards mid table I can’t see this brand of football bringing in the crowds. My daughter’s gone from ardent fan to not really wanting to go in the last 3 months. It’s not just the results, it’s just not fun to watch compared to what we’ve had for the past four or five years. I must say I’m thinking very hard about continuing our season ticket subscriptions. I have a season tv pass so could still watch from home.
I certainly haven’t been popular for putting the last two games on for tv entertainment over Christmas!
Comments
Yes I think I agree with this and it’s why I’m still not quite ready to call for Matt to be sacked.
Today was awful and all of it is on Matt Bloomfield and his coaching team. The team selection was abysmal. The formation unforgivable and the tactics were just schooolboy.
However, putting today aside, we’ve made some genuine progress in the last couple of games and looked better in the changed formation - despite the lack of a centre forward that can offer any real threat in the lone role.
So today was a massive step backwards. However, there are mitigating circumstances, in particular that we are in a run of 4 games in 10 days which entails strategies being put in place to cope with the workload. For example, Garath McCleary is 36, so he’s just not going to start all 4 matches.
Unfortunately the strategies Matt put in place didn’t work from a football point of view or, frankly, a PR point of view - Matt, you need to learn to read the room as going back to 3 at the back was just asking for trouble if it went wrong.
However, I do think if we play well against Leyton Orient and Bristol Rovers building on what we saw in the Derby and PV matches, then it’s still possible that most people would put today’s match to one side and move onwards with Matt at the helm.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I can’t recall a tantrum from any player under Ainsworth once the bad apples had gone. Another thing to add to the list of problems.
It's a poor run in L1 we're not in danger of dropping out of professional football just yet.
There were hundreds. AAH 1.0 for a start.
Absolutely not Nathan Jones, has to be rock bottom of anyone's list of possibles. A loathsome individual.
What are people seeing in Blooms that make them think he can turn this around? He's got 39 points from 37 games (equating to less than 50 points over the course of a season i.e. relegation). He took over a team a couple of points outside the playoffs that had won 5 in a row and was playing brilliantly - the best performances I saw under GA in all of his 11 years. Those games v Oxford, Port Vale, Derby, Accrington, and Bolton feel a long time ago now.
In truth, we've seen absolutely rubbish for 10 months. Last season ended appallingly from that first loss at Shrewsbury. Remember that we were humiliated by Lincoln and Cheltenham at home to end the season. We lost pitifully to a relegated Morecambe and a poor Burton. We could have conceded about 10 at Ipswich if they were more clinical that day. We couldn't even beat soon-to-be-relegated MK. And all 4 of his actual wins that season (against Fleetwood, Forest Green, Bristol Rovers, and Cambridge) came from performances that could at best be described as "uninspiring", and all came against very poor opposition.
This season started with those horrendous 3-0 losses to Exeter and Lincoln. The latter game in particular was one of the worst I've ever seen us play. Aimless, hopeless, clueless. No discernable plan. Essentially, I think he's trying to play a more tippy-tappy on-the-floor style of football than Gareth did, which goes completely against the strengths of our players (other than Potts). The passing nearly always goes nowhere, and we finally inevitably end up hoofing it long to Vokes or Hanlan when under moderate pressure from the opposition. However, unlike under GA, the team isn't set up to play that way any more. Vokes/Hanlan are rarely in the right place, the long ball is typically rushed and imprecise, and even if the strikers do (very occasionally) win it in the air, no-one else is in position to win any 50-50s, knock-downs, or second balls. We never seem to win any of them any more. We create pitifully few chances. There's no intensity. And to cap it all off, the defence has never really looked solid at all under Blooms with his insistence on 5 at the back, either from set pieces or open play. We aren't conceding massive amounts, but we never look particularly confident and we are always prone to a mistake (as Stryjek has exemplified this season despite being near flawless under Gaz).
Even before this 11-match winless run we weren't playing well. We had two good wins against Blackpool and Fleetwood (the latter admittedly an outstanding performance). But the wins against Northampton and Bristol Rovers in particular were extremely lucky, as were the wins v Orient and Carlisle to a lesser extent (both had 10 men for most of the game but still regularly threatened us). And if you wanted some respite from our League form in the Cups, we've managed to lose at home to League Two strugglers Sutton and Morecambe in similarly depressing circumstances.
To summarise, he's had 40 matches, and we've probably deserved to win about 5 at best (Charlton away is perhaps the only loss I've thought we were unlucky in). In more than ten months, we've beaten only Fleetwood, Bristol Rovers, FGR, Cambridge, Orient, Northampton, Carlisle, and Blackpool. Apart from the latter, all are bottom-half/relegation battling teams. Which means it's one win against a top half team in almost a year. It's a million miles from good enough and - other than that one performance against an abject Fleetwood - I've seen absolutely nothing to think he can turn it around. Plus, the football is about as dull and uninspiring as can possibly be imagined. We rarely have more than 3 or 4 shots on target. At least GA teams always had intensity, total commitment, and an attacking edge.
All of this takes nothing away from the fact that Blooms is clearly an amazing human being who has given 20 years of his life to the club we all love. He will always be a Wycombe icon and legend and I have nothing but respect and admiration for the man as a person and a player. He shouldn't receive any abuse and he will always be applauded/cheered for by me in the stands. But he simply isn't a good enough manager at this point, and he has to go
Fantastic post and completely agree. Thank you for your contribution you made my night slightly better
I think Max was the Canary for the confidence the rest of the team has in Bloomfield tactically .
He went from being arguably one of the best keepers I’ve seen in a Wycombe shirt to one that is hesitant and error prone.
I said this last season: Max really benefits from a strong defence in front of him that prevents everything but shots from distance, which he's very good at saving in often eye-catching ways. At that point he was only really being let down by his distribution, which is extremely poor for any club wanting to play long ball.
This year his deficiencies have become more obvious. He's not very good at saving shots from inside the box, particularly from side on, and his decision making under pressure isn't strong - hence why a lot of goals are coming from him palming out a shot into the path of an opposition player. We also lose a lot of momentum from mitigating against his distribution - necessitating short balls to the defence which suck the life out of forward play.
I think Matt recognises all this and brought in Ravizzoli to provide another option. Whether that's a good enough option to keep us up remains to be seen. I wouldn't be surprised if we release Breckin in Jan and try to replace him with a young Premier League keeper to add another option. Wonder what Manchester United's Chamberlain is up to...
I'll bite. If we sign a world class keeper we'll still go down playing as we generally have for the last couple of months. Either Bloomfield is backed to bring in players of the calibre needed to play his preferred, technically-demanding style, or he adapts the tactics to what the available players can execute, or he goes.
Stryjek has noticeable flaws like any 3rd tier keeper, they aren't the reason we are where we are.
How I long for the days of worrying whether or not Horgan should be in the team...
The trouble is if they sack Bloomfield, who in the boardroom has any football knowledge ( not sure the Couhigs have) to make the right decision on a new manager. Let’s be honest, it was an easy move to replace Ainsworth with Bloomfield. Probably Ainsworth’s recommendation. Is Howard still involved?
Can someone confirm that Bloomfield didn’t go over to thank the fans yesterday? I’m shocked if that is the case.
Great post, well reasoned and including some respect for Matt Bloomfield, which two or three posters on their relentless crusade to be appalled and outraged at his every doing seem to have forgotten.
It's a very sad situation. I agree that it's very hard to see how he's going to turn this around, but little point in taking action until the new year.
Little point?
Lets just waste another couple of games and make the situation even more dire then.
I think Andrew Howard knows a lot about football and a certain Martin O'Neil could also advise the Couhigs on the quality of managers. The big question is are the Couhigs up to admitting they have made a mistake. I am very close to handing in my match pass at the moment and picking and choosing which Saturday afternoons I get bored for 90 minutes.
The Couhigs will once again go for the easy option, they will just be straight on the phone to Gareth and say its his if he wants it. Which I personally think is wrong, they should ask for applications, there are a lot of people who would be interested, we are a league one team, of course there would be a lot of interest. Trouble is they wouldn't know what to ask other people they don't know, so will go straight to Gaz
Let me have a crack at answering the main question you pose, which is what do people on here (who presumably aren’t calling for his head) see in Matt Bloomfield’s managerial abilities.
The answer, to be honest, is not much for the reasons you detail. The stats aren’t good at all and are getting worse.
However, he is the incumbent. As such he’s someone we as a club have invested in heavily in terms of his extended contract, the appointment of a coaching team that he recruited and a squad of players that he clearly asked for.
He’s also a club legend but that is increasingly less relevant as the decision to be made is more important than that.
For me, we have to be absolutely sure that this really isn’t going to work out before pulling the plug, as the financial cost of making the change will I’m sure be significant and leave a legacy that may affect our ability to compete in subsequent seasons. It’s not entirely clear we can even afford it given the external funding on which the club is now reliant in order to keep trading.
As others have said the cost of getting relegated is significant too, so it is a difficult conundrum for the Couhigs.
Therefore, given we have two more matches before the week is out, I think we have to press on and look for any green shoots such as those we saw in the Derby and Port Vale games rather than act now off the back of yesterday’s shitshow.
On more than one occasion in Gareth Ainsworth’s first season we reached this point with the club lodged in the League Two relegation zone. The club didn’t sack him simply because we couldn’t afford to. Thank God we didn’t.
But in the season we almost went out of the league, we and the management knew that a lot of the players were not signed by Gareth and a fes were bad apples. Matt has got the players that he wanted unlike Gareth in the great escape season.
Normally I'd agree, but Gaz is such a special case that I can't imagine anyone would not want him back?
Bloomfield proudly said he was his own man with his own ideas and recruited accordingly. So his squad are his players. Ainsworth coming in would want to be contrary to this. He would want tempo players, high on desire, high on passion and used to a particular style. We don’t have time (or money) to rebuild the squad AGAIN. We need a manager who can look at this imbalanced squad and make something out of it with minimal changes. Personally think there’s a good team in there somewhere. Ditch a couple of players, add intensity, organisation, strategy and 5 or 6/10 performances become 7 or 8 and that’s good enough.
And the fact that Blooms is a club legend should never have been relevant to any decision - from appointment to sacking. You can handle things respectfully, but he shouldn't be treated differently to any other manager.
Tend to agree with @Theatre_of_Chairs post above. I have begun to lose faith that Blooms can turn this around, but that said with 2 games coming up in the next few days there seems little to be gained from sacking him now. I'll be willing him to prove me and everyone else wrong against Orient and Rovers and we can see where we are after that. 2 more poor performances and results and I have a bad feeling Monday could be his final game.
We do need to seriously consider the repercussions of sacking him and his team though. Bloomfield has openly spoken about a couple of exciting additions in January. Fair to say these won't happen if we're needing to pay him off and any new manager will at best be needing to get the most out of the players we have. This might well be a risk worth taking, as my feeling is the team has enough talent to pull clear of danger with an injection of confidence and direction. Is that such an easy decision though if say we have a proven striker lined up, but sacking Bloomfield would mean pulling the plug on the deal? Suddenly the decision isn't so straightforward.
How long would you give Bloomfields replacement?
So you don't want to sack him because HE thinks we have some exciting players coming ? I'm sure he was probably saying the same thing about the players we have now coming in at the start of the season. Any new manager will also possibly bring in some new players. No manager is going to stand there and say "well I've got someone lined up, he ain't the best but he'll do" is he.
I wonder if Martin O’Neill fancies making a return. He did mention on Sky Sports he wanted to get back into management approximately a year ago.
It is all very depressing at the moment. On the one hand we all have the utmost respect for Mat as a human being, what he has given to the club and have little doubt as to his integrity, hard & diligent work ethic. As someone posted earlier, it is like, when to make that last trip to the vet with the family pet. How much longer can we hang on balancing the suffering balanced with the emotional ties?
I have posted before my thoughts after the Bradford away game in the FA Cup. We were cruising up to half time, 2-0 up & not a care in the world. Second half, Freddie Potts went off and it was akin to Rourke's Drift until the end. I said then that we appeared to be relying too much on Potts, a loan player that will be returning to his parent club and the results since that day seem to bear those fears. Like many, I can't wait until Potts is deemed selectable, whilst harbouring the fears that too much will be expected of him like a returning Messiah. Let's be honest, he appears to be the only one who can see that "killer" pass in the box.
Maybe, (though I don't know any more than the next man), Matt is too close to the players and gives the impression that he is their mate rather than their boss? It could be that like GA did, he needs to put an emotional barrier between them and become more ruthless.
It has been so clear & obvious to many on here that the 3 centre back option has not worked and the reversion to 4 has seen a marked improvement in the performances if not necessarily the results, I thought that the results would soon come. The decision to go back to 3/5 at the back was baffling to say the least. Why on earth KVY was selected to play on the left side, (with Boyes put on the subs bench), when he clearly favoured the right foot amazed me. I understand the need to rotate the squad a bit given the amount of games over the festive period, but it looked to me that team was a selection from an OAP home with the directive of put the shirt on and do what you like. We only improved and looked any kind of threat when we went back to the tactic that had seen us do reasonably well over the previous two games.
If Mat wants to play the same way then I am afraid to say that his time is drawing to a very sad close with us which will sully most of the good memories that many of us hold of him. 🤷♂️
As long as it takes to see if it's working
For all the tactical and selection mysteries that we roll out game after game how on earth do we inject intensity into the lacklustre team? That surely comes from the manager’s personality in and around the dressing room. Every game is played like a pre-season friendly. Even in the 89th minute when losing. Max pondering at the back, Keogh still demanding a 6 yard pass so he can show he’s a thinking player, etc etc. I just don’t get it.
You know things are bad @glasshalffull doesn’t post to defend the indefensible. We are sinking fast people.
The post match interview is now up on Wanderers tv.
Matt talks about marginal differences but it is a lot more fundamental than that for the myriad of reasons listed above. He looks like he’s aged a decade or so over the last couple of months.
Even if we somehow steer the ship towards mid table I can’t see this brand of football bringing in the crowds. My daughter’s gone from ardent fan to not really wanting to go in the last 3 months. It’s not just the results, it’s just not fun to watch compared to what we’ve had for the past four or five years. I must say I’m thinking very hard about continuing our season ticket subscriptions. I have a season tv pass so could still watch from home.
I certainly haven’t been popular for putting the last two games on for tv entertainment over Christmas!