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Match Day Thread: Stockport

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  • All that last night and Jack Grimmer and McCleary weren't even in the squad!

  • Morley and Taylor still haven’t lost a game in a Wycombe shirt. They have been outstanding additions. I’m obsessed with Morley

  • how long was the contract blooms got from couhig, if this carries on much longer we might need to tie our asset down. What a performance that was, if we get through nov/dec in contention i will start to believe

  • Probably need to look at Kone ‘s and Low’s as well. Need to tie them down as long as possible and not allowed them to walk away like Forino without a sizeable transfer fee. Wonder if he’s regretting his decision?

  • absolutely forgot about that, low coming up to 6 months left right?

  • He's a long term injury at Bolton.

    At this stage of the season he's probably happy he's left us as he would struggle to get in our starting 11, more of a chance of playing at Bolton as it stands.

  • What did the kids think, @ryan_w_kirkby2? What a game to be taken to as a youngster.

  • Neither has Humphreys, who was absolutely superb last night. What a team!

  • He was in the team who lost to Villa. Morley and Taylor were not in that team.

  • Somewhat harsh to include Villa, but point taken!

  • No longer should we be described as ‘little Wycombe’. We are a small club with a big heart.

  • For me the most captivating and surprisingly joyful game ever - beating the 0 - 4 away to Enfield I was lucky enough to see in my childhood. (I missed the Filbert St game.) Lovely.

  • Two things. 1. Wow. 2. In amongst the stellar performances last night (Humphreys, , I was really struck by how good Kone was the ball with his back to goal, fending off big defenders, showing Betsy-like touch, and playing others in. He's 21 years old, and as @bluntphil observed on the commentary, was playing for Athletic Newham a year ago.


    "Dum dum dum doody doo wah ..."

  • I felt his game elevated to a new level last night. As you say, his touch and strength holding off defenders with his back to goal was outstanding, and his weight of pass to play others in is almost always perfect.

    The really exciting thing is that there's more to come from him. He's still leaving goals out there on the pitch.

  • edited November 6

    I think our biggest strength this year is our flexibility in attack, which means that defences simply have no idea what to do against us.

    Many opposition defences start off with a high line, but we easily have the pace and movement to continually threaten with balls over the top and in-behind.

    To counter this, defences will often drop a bit deeper after 15 minutes or so. But then Udoh and Kone are both outstanding at holding the ball up too. So we simply play it into their feet or chest, and they now have the time and space to feed in the likes of Fred, Lubala, Humphreys, Scowen, Sadlier, McCleary, Morley, etc, who then have the skill to make the most of these attacking platforms.

    To counter this, the opposition will start playing a higher line again, and we go back to exploiting them with pace in-behind.

    This pattern repeated itself multiple times last night. We would go through spells of playing it into feet, followed by spells of playing it over the top, and kept constantly changing the approach. The Stockport defence couldn't handle the versatility and flexibility

  • Pretty much perfectly sums us up. Completely agree. The variety of potency is wild.

  • edited November 6

    Exactly. And it's the exact opposite of Bloomfield's first few months in charge where we were a mix of a long ball team and a passing team, but didn't have the personnel to do either well.

    We'd have Vokes (who I love btw) up front offering no pace, and we'd have Taff, Forino, and Keogh aimlessly trying to pass the ball around the back like Man City, but with no options in midfield because very few of our midfielders were ball-players (especially when Potts was injured for long spells). Obviously, tika taka wasn't playing to the strengths or skill-sets of any of those CBs, so they'd hurriedly clear the ball as soon as an opposition striker or midfielder pressed. And this rushed hoof would invariably go nowhere near Vokes, who would basically be a spectator for most of the game. Essentially, we had no-one to run in-behind, and no-one to accurately play the balls that would make the most of Vokes' advantage at holding up the ball.

    It was the same when Hanlan was alone up front. Even though he's a lot faster than Vokes, he isn't as good as holding up the ball. He's moderately good at both, but not outstanding at either. So we never managed to get a foothold in the game or sufficiently trouble an opposition defence.

    Udoh and Kone are brilliant at both, and are complemented ably by Fred who also offers pace in-behind and decent ball retention. Likewise, getting in Morley and Humphreys means that we have some brilliant ball-players to make those passes - either long or short.

    Consequently, there is also now far less pressure on our CBs to start the attacks themselves from the back, which wouldn't really be playing to their strengths either (although Low and Taylor are both probably a bit better at playing the ball around than Taff, Forino, and Keogh)

  • Btw, it's easy to write down how it all works in a forum, but I just want to acknowledge that it really is outstanding coaching from Blooms:

    (1) creating this system

    (2) signing the correct players for the system

    (3) making sure we continuously switch up the approach throughout the game

    With regards to the latter, I think it would be easy for a manager to adjust game-by-game i.e. focus on getting in-behind vs one opponent, then focus on holding it up against another. I think that's what GA tended to do with his tactics. He'd set up to play a specific way for the opponent (and he had lots of different ways of playing), but it wouldn't tend to change much within a game. In contrast, under Blooms at the moment we are changing the focus of our attacks every few minutes depending on what the opposition defence is doing at that very moment in time

  • Shout out to Fred. I wasn't convinced when the clamour to re-sign him grew. He is a totally different player to the one we sold. I loved him in his previous time with us but he was quite one-dimensional in attack. He's now an intelligent player all across the front line. His defending was always good and his application grew as he got more mature but this is a different player all together. He will surely be on team's radar too. And he is only just fit again.

  • Well done to the owners in staying with Blooms, smart move.

    And well done on relaxing the "no coming back" rules as we've seen the results with fabulous Fred.

    The way we played last night was chilling.

    Welcome to Bloomball and well done on everyone who went last night.

  • When have we ever had a "No coming back" rule? We've had a player return seemingly every year for about a decade.

  • I thought we had a 'definitely coming back' rule...Fred's been here four times!

    I thought there was a 'no opening the checkbook for The Player' rule though.

  • Maybe it’s in reference to people perceiving that Fred left on bad terms last time, based on the press release announcing his departure.

  • If I was a County fan, I would be fuming at this.

    He seems a bit too happy after a heavy defeat!

  • Not sure glowering with angry resentment next to the sponsor would go down well with the commercial department.

  • British Gaslighting?

  • Some fans have now got round to mentioning our owner...a Wrexham fan on the BBC said we had more money than the Deadpool consortium. I have to say, he's not gone out and bought players from higher leagues and paid them the Earth the way they did, MB has assembled a good side of competitive EFL players without going down the Marquee route.

    Which is nice.

  • I’d be surprised if our budget outweighed theirs. I also don’t think they’ll even be in the top six come May. They’re shouting at thin air.

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