There's a guy who sits directly in front of my seat in the FA stand, who shouts at the top of his voice at regular intervals ''Come on ref, you're bloody useless!''.
Today, he was probably right. But sadly, the ref wasn't the reason we failed to take the 3 points.
I'd say 2019/20 was arguably weaker, but this squad is less balanced? Maybe mid-table is a harsh assessment, but we're on the verge of a relegation scrap and we absolutely shouldn't be anywhere near one of those.
This is the most frustrating thing for me! We should easily be challenging for the playoffs with this squad.
Bringing in Leahy, Potts, and Sadlier whilst retaining Stryjek, Taff, Scowen, Vokes, McCleary, etc, means that I genuinely think this is our best squad since going up to League One in 2018. All of the retained players had been playing consistently well under Gareth for years. And we've only really lost Mehmeti and Wing from Gareth's squad. The former was irreplaceable, but Leahy and Potts are more than adequate to replace the latter.
They're clearly being mismanaged, and I don't think we'll have a squad this good again for a long time
I place MB in the Gareth Southgate camp. Negative, risk averse, tactically inept. What on earth did he say at half time, when we were completely in control against a completely unambitious and limited Lincoln side? "OK, chaps (ok, maybe not 'chaps') we are one-nil up, but they can't be as bad again, so in the 2nd half, stop playing football, hold onto the lead, boot the ball aimlessly, don't support Vokes, stop passing to McLeary and Sadlier, go slowly backwards to your own penalty area and then, when they have a disallowed goal, retreat to the six yard box and I will make some substitutions and baffle them by putting on a right side midfielder as an extra left back and put on an unnecessary seventh defender and let an inexperienced midfielder run around like a headless chicken as a lone attacker. Oh yes, Saddler, word of warning, don't you dare put in the best cross of the game, otherwise I will substitute you within sixty seconds. And Mr Kone, I respect the difficulties you have had in your short life, so my instructions to you are to roll around for two minutes as though you have been shot by a sniper, which will add two extra minutes to injury time to give the opposition a fair crack at an equaliser.
Apart from that I thought today went quite well. Port Vale 2.0
We have improved massively since Derby away and I am now entertained watching the games.
However we are still worse than the sum of our parts, even with a practically full squad.
Since Derby we have played nobody in the Top 10 yet we sit with only seven points from those six games.
Yesterday we reverted to a back 5 to win the game, a formation that he has dropped because it was not working.
The substitutions and change in formation lost us the win. It is clear that we are better with four at the back and should be using old heads to see out games.
We can all see the improvement in the play with a back four but we are fast approaching February where if our form continues against Top 10 teams (Since MB took over we have not won a single game against a Top 10 team) and Cheltenham do well against us we could be looking at no wins in those six League games.
I have said it before Christmas and I will say it again. He needs to go and now.
Blooms is a top man but not a good manager , we are going backwards under arguably our best squad in 10.yeara or so ... his in game management is poor, his subs are usually negative, any other manager would have lost their job....Rob is stubborn and won't sack him to prove a point...this is also on him.
I'm not completely convinced by Bloomfield yet either, but there's no doubting that performances have improved significantly over the past few weeks following the return of key players. We're not winning as many as we should be down to our inability to score the goals we should be scoring from the chances we're creating and our frailty in the closing minutes.
Perhaps Bloomfield should be doing better, but I want to see the players shoulder more responsibility. We seem to lack leadership and calmness when seeing out games and this has to come on the pitch. Maybe the subs didn't help yesterday, but the collective panic had already set in. We could all see that goal coming. Incidentally, the Taylor/Forino sub looked to be one forced by injury, as Taylor had been hacked down moments earlier. Perhaps we could have bought on the kid from West Ham as a more direct replacement, but not sure it would've been the ideal situation to give a kid his debut.
Bloomfield saying that we need to see why this keeps happening. Is he serious? Draw a timeline between substitutions and when we concede. It’s really as simple as that. Yesterday the back 4 were fine. Then inexplicably we take off Saddlier and put Taylor out wide. The attacks start focussing on Taylor’s inability to defend. To counter that we put a wide right sided midfielder on as left back. Then we just go comical with Phillips up front meaning there is not a hope in hell of the ball being held up. Quite the contrary as his MO is fouling people it gives the opportunity for the opposition to set up long balls into the box. But we have 3 big guys in there that’s all good. Watch their goal none of em know where they should be and contrive to twice give the ball back.
It’s not game management. It’s tactical incompetence. It’s not lack of bravery it’s lack of sense. None of the subs made any sense to anyone. There were subs to be made. GMac was spent. If we had bought Kone on to play with Vokes they would not have committed players so freely forward. As it was they could play 10 men ahead of the ball once they had knocked the ball past the blonde cocker spaniel we decided should be a striker.
and and and
oh let’s face it, it was a shit show and only one guy is responsible
Would agree the Sadlier for Phillips sub with Taylor moving wide didn't work. The other subs seemed forced though. McCleary and Vokes both looked knackered and bringing on fresh legs seemed sensible.
Anyway, this hanging on in games we've been comfortable in has been a pattern of the whole season. It can't all be down to bad substitutions. On the pitch we're seeing players making poor decisions. It's an easy get out to pin everything on the manager. Collectively we need to be better.
On the plus side, at least we're now just moaning about the last few minutes of games. It was the full 90mins that were rubbish a few weeks back!
The only blessing yesterday was that the first goal they scored was ruled out as they’d most certainly have gone on to win it.
I think it’s a combination of problems which is preventing us from seeing games out. The first is absolutely not killing off teams and taking our chances, this also happened on Tuesday against West Ham where we should have been well out of sight before that particular panic.
Secondly, there still needs to be some structure about our attacking play and not just loading up the defence. We need an adequate replacement for Vokes in situations like yesterday, it was too much to expect Kone to be similarly effective.
As for putting Taylor wide left that was absolutely baffling, like playing with ten men.
Bloomfield is a young coach but it’s incredibly frustrating that he doesn’t seem to get it sometimes and keeps repeating mistakes.
Just look at their goal. Three blue shirts go for the first ball. From then on no one is picking up anyone. By introducing the 3rd centre back no one knew their roles. The players are poorly drilled, they are badly organised and to me we simply had 11 guys on the field for the last 10 minutes, not a coherent team, just 11 guys running around. Tony Adams 2.0. This is exactly what he uses to do. And then speak some nonsense in post match, which I’m sure would be about XG if that was a thing back then.
Spot on. Another thing I notice from the main stand is that prior to every substitution or tactical change we seem to have a committee decision from the bench with Bloomfield, Thomas, the goal keeper coach and yesterday, even JJ was offering up advice.
Matt seems very nervous and this results in destabilisation of the team as the players are feeling the nervousness.
I agree but the funny thing is and I suspect many of us feel the same, that we could at any time go out and give anyone in this league a beating. It is very weird considering the stats but I do feel we have a good team.
I concur with @Blue_since_1990 what yesterday’s implosion demonstrates is the fragility of our confidence - coaches and players. Once ‘the knitting is unpicked it unravels pretty quickly’ to stretch a metaphor. And that was something you could never accuse of an Ainsworth performance - with his supreme confidence and the players he charged to impart that belief on the pitch (could you imagine that Bayo off the bench yesterday would have permitted that capitulation!).
You can have all the stats and analysis you like but without heart, fight and belief it’s just a bloke with gelled hair standing wide eyed with a clip board and players don’t ’die on their sword’ for that.
I’ve seen quite a few posts highlighting the 8 goals conceded In injury time stat, but anyone like to tot up the “goals conceded after 80 mins” and/or in the last 5 mins of the first half?
Just had a brief look through our results on the bbc website and it seems a high percentage, but I might be wrong.
Comments
There's a guy who sits directly in front of my seat in the FA stand, who shouts at the top of his voice at regular intervals ''Come on ref, you're bloody useless!''.
Today, he was probably right. But sadly, the ref wasn't the reason we failed to take the 3 points.
I'd say 2019/20 was arguably weaker, but this squad is less balanced? Maybe mid-table is a harsh assessment, but we're on the verge of a relegation scrap and we absolutely shouldn't be anywhere near one of those.
1 win in 15 league games
But don't worry, things are improving!
This is the most frustrating thing for me! We should easily be challenging for the playoffs with this squad.
Bringing in Leahy, Potts, and Sadlier whilst retaining Stryjek, Taff, Scowen, Vokes, McCleary, etc, means that I genuinely think this is our best squad since going up to League One in 2018. All of the retained players had been playing consistently well under Gareth for years. And we've only really lost Mehmeti and Wing from Gareth's squad. The former was irreplaceable, but Leahy and Potts are more than adequate to replace the latter.
They're clearly being mismanaged, and I don't think we'll have a squad this good again for a long time
And a year isn't long enough apparently
Ridiculous isn't it. He's not a good manager - he might be an ok manager one day, but that's no use to Wycombe right now.
46 points from 41 games translates to roughly 51 over a full season, ie just about enough to stay up.
We averaged 1.06ppg over his first 15 games and we've averaged 1.15ppg over 26 games this season. A negligible improvement.
Not being funny, I cannot see where people's optimism is coming from - short of very rare cohesive performances, which have been utter anomalies.
I place MB in the Gareth Southgate camp. Negative, risk averse, tactically inept. What on earth did he say at half time, when we were completely in control against a completely unambitious and limited Lincoln side? "OK, chaps (ok, maybe not 'chaps') we are one-nil up, but they can't be as bad again, so in the 2nd half, stop playing football, hold onto the lead, boot the ball aimlessly, don't support Vokes, stop passing to McLeary and Sadlier, go slowly backwards to your own penalty area and then, when they have a disallowed goal, retreat to the six yard box and I will make some substitutions and baffle them by putting on a right side midfielder as an extra left back and put on an unnecessary seventh defender and let an inexperienced midfielder run around like a headless chicken as a lone attacker. Oh yes, Saddler, word of warning, don't you dare put in the best cross of the game, otherwise I will substitute you within sixty seconds. And Mr Kone, I respect the difficulties you have had in your short life, so my instructions to you are to roll around for two minutes as though you have been shot by a sniper, which will add two extra minutes to injury time to give the opposition a fair crack at an equaliser.
Apart from that I thought today went quite well. Port Vale 2.0
We have improved massively since Derby away and I am now entertained watching the games.
However we are still worse than the sum of our parts, even with a practically full squad.
Since Derby we have played nobody in the Top 10 yet we sit with only seven points from those six games.
Yesterday we reverted to a back 5 to win the game, a formation that he has dropped because it was not working.
The substitutions and change in formation lost us the win. It is clear that we are better with four at the back and should be using old heads to see out games.
We can all see the improvement in the play with a back four but we are fast approaching February where if our form continues against Top 10 teams (Since MB took over we have not won a single game against a Top 10 team) and Cheltenham do well against us we could be looking at no wins in those six League games.
I have said it before Christmas and I will say it again. He needs to go and now.
Blooms is a top man but not a good manager , we are going backwards under arguably our best squad in 10.yeara or so ... his in game management is poor, his subs are usually negative, any other manager would have lost their job....Rob is stubborn and won't sack him to prove a point...this is also on him.
I wonder how many managers had game management nailed barely a year into their career?
I blame the risk averse approach and tactics but I wonder whether we are physically fit enough to run for more than hour.
I'm not completely convinced by Bloomfield yet either, but there's no doubting that performances have improved significantly over the past few weeks following the return of key players. We're not winning as many as we should be down to our inability to score the goals we should be scoring from the chances we're creating and our frailty in the closing minutes.
Perhaps Bloomfield should be doing better, but I want to see the players shoulder more responsibility. We seem to lack leadership and calmness when seeing out games and this has to come on the pitch. Maybe the subs didn't help yesterday, but the collective panic had already set in. We could all see that goal coming. Incidentally, the Taylor/Forino sub looked to be one forced by injury, as Taylor had been hacked down moments earlier. Perhaps we could have bought on the kid from West Ham as a more direct replacement, but not sure it would've been the ideal situation to give a kid his debut.
Bloomfield saying that we need to see why this keeps happening. Is he serious? Draw a timeline between substitutions and when we concede. It’s really as simple as that. Yesterday the back 4 were fine. Then inexplicably we take off Saddlier and put Taylor out wide. The attacks start focussing on Taylor’s inability to defend. To counter that we put a wide right sided midfielder on as left back. Then we just go comical with Phillips up front meaning there is not a hope in hell of the ball being held up. Quite the contrary as his MO is fouling people it gives the opportunity for the opposition to set up long balls into the box. But we have 3 big guys in there that’s all good. Watch their goal none of em know where they should be and contrive to twice give the ball back.
It’s not game management. It’s tactical incompetence. It’s not lack of bravery it’s lack of sense. None of the subs made any sense to anyone. There were subs to be made. GMac was spent. If we had bought Kone on to play with Vokes they would not have committed players so freely forward. As it was they could play 10 men ahead of the ball once they had knocked the ball past the blonde cocker spaniel we decided should be a striker.
and and and
oh let’s face it, it was a shit show and only one guy is responsible
totally agree ...under a more competent manager we would be in the play offs....its on Rob also aa.he is to stubborn to admit when he is wrong
Would agree the Sadlier for Phillips sub with Taylor moving wide didn't work. The other subs seemed forced though. McCleary and Vokes both looked knackered and bringing on fresh legs seemed sensible.
Anyway, this hanging on in games we've been comfortable in has been a pattern of the whole season. It can't all be down to bad substitutions. On the pitch we're seeing players making poor decisions. It's an easy get out to pin everything on the manager. Collectively we need to be better.
On the plus side, at least we're now just moaning about the last few minutes of games. It was the full 90mins that were rubbish a few weeks back!
On the plus side, at least we're now just moaning about the last few minutes of games. It was the full 90mins that were rubbish a few weeks back!
Well that's another statistic Matt can use in his summing up I suppose.
The only blessing yesterday was that the first goal they scored was ruled out as they’d most certainly have gone on to win it.
I think it’s a combination of problems which is preventing us from seeing games out. The first is absolutely not killing off teams and taking our chances, this also happened on Tuesday against West Ham where we should have been well out of sight before that particular panic.
Secondly, there still needs to be some structure about our attacking play and not just loading up the defence. We need an adequate replacement for Vokes in situations like yesterday, it was too much to expect Kone to be similarly effective.
As for putting Taylor wide left that was absolutely baffling, like playing with ten men.
Bloomfield is a young coach but it’s incredibly frustrating that he doesn’t seem to get it sometimes and keeps repeating mistakes.
Just look at their goal. Three blue shirts go for the first ball. From then on no one is picking up anyone. By introducing the 3rd centre back no one knew their roles. The players are poorly drilled, they are badly organised and to me we simply had 11 guys on the field for the last 10 minutes, not a coherent team, just 11 guys running around. Tony Adams 2.0. This is exactly what he uses to do. And then speak some nonsense in post match, which I’m sure would be about XG if that was a thing back then.
Spot on
Spot on. Another thing I notice from the main stand is that prior to every substitution or tactical change we seem to have a committee decision from the bench with Bloomfield, Thomas, the goal keeper coach and yesterday, even JJ was offering up advice.
Matt seems very nervous and this results in destabilisation of the team as the players are feeling the nervousness.
Our next 4 league games are huge.
Port Vale, Wigan, Fleetwood and Cheltenham.
Port Vale and Fleetwood teetering on must win game territory, with Cheltenham being a side on good form.
Following that in February we have a run of Peterborough, Bolton, Oxford, Stevenage, Cheltenham, Barnsley, which then takes us up to 9th March.
Fail to pick up a couple of wins in our next 4, and I can see us getting sucked right back into the relegation battle.
I agree but the funny thing is and I suspect many of us feel the same, that we could at any time go out and give anyone in this league a beating. It is very weird considering the stats but I do feel we have a good team.
Anything less than a minimum of three points from the Fleetwood game and I will be very cross.
I appreciate that "feeling" but we currently have 1 win in 15, so the feeling doesn't count for much...
I concur with @Blue_since_1990 what yesterday’s implosion demonstrates is the fragility of our confidence - coaches and players. Once ‘the knitting is unpicked it unravels pretty quickly’ to stretch a metaphor. And that was something you could never accuse of an Ainsworth performance - with his supreme confidence and the players he charged to impart that belief on the pitch (could you imagine that Bayo off the bench yesterday would have permitted that capitulation!).
You can have all the stats and analysis you like but without heart, fight and belief it’s just a bloke with gelled hair standing wide eyed with a clip board and players don’t ’die on their sword’ for that.
We'd be 9th if games finished at 75 mins, but haven't won a single "game" between the 75th and 90th minutes.
https://twitter.com/GasmanCOTN/status/1746470424148357305?t=X10jhHkDNolZ1Nn7BBDRhw&s=19
I’ve seen quite a few posts highlighting the 8 goals conceded In injury time stat, but anyone like to tot up the “goals conceded after 80 mins” and/or in the last 5 mins of the first half?
Just had a brief look through our results on the bbc website and it seems a high percentage, but I might be wrong.
The first half performance was a delight. Wouldn’t want to lose that.