Similar to Birmingham, the second half was better than the first, which shows Dodds can change things at half time and get the players going, but please try and get it right from kick off.
How Gmac stayed on for the second half I don't know, he was atrocious. Joe Low needed to give Taylor a rocket too as he seemed half asleep for most of the first half.
Reach looks like he will be a quality player for us, promising glimpses from Berry, and with a different referee Kone may have scored another hatrick.
Taylor coming back in on loan was a big signing, but then Bradley was doing well in his place anyway.
Reach has filled in ok, Simons we've had a little taster of, but keeper has been neutral at best, and the rest are all battling to get a few mins off the bench one week, then nowhere near it the next.
They might all show great value next season, but you can't help thinking for the outlays made, we could have properly made significant game changing signings.
Not a great game but could be a vital point. Nice deflection to fall into Kone’s path after poor free kick. Certainly seem to have lost our fizz . Not convinced in Dodds yet but it’s early days. Not quite as optimistic in automatic promotion or going through the playoffs in our current form.
6 games under Dodds and we've yet to concede an OP goal from inside the box. Second half today aside - and the game state meant we were going to allow chances - we've been utterly stingy. If we can regain some consistency (like, now), we'll be right in business.
I'm keen to not judge Dobbs as it was almost an entire calendar year of drudgery under Blooms, and Gaz had a terrible season. However, I've no clue why he left it so long to make changes, and it does feel something is missing. Perhaps it's nostalgia, but in the weeks of Dodds coming in and us making 12 signings, it feels like we're missing some indefinable thing.
Yes I think Lowry, Berry and Back have all shown glimpses of why we signed them. I’m just not convinced we did the right business for improving the team to push for promotion now.
I think it’s time to pick a couple, Berry and Lowry for me and get them involved in the squad week in week out until end of season. Those are the two I think could make a difference off the bench and more time in the first team squad will help that.
As an aside the 3 games after Wrexham are all against teams whose season is largely over so fingers crossed they are “on the beach”
Huge point in the end, but a pretty ropey performance, especially 1st half which was dreadful in all honesty. Improved in the early part of the 2nd half, but seemed to run out of ideas long before the end.
Strange how our home/away form seems to have flipped. We've had a few teams come to AP and grind out draws, but we're mostly looking very strong at home, dominating games and creating plenty of chances. Away we're really struggling and can't seem to find any fluency. Certainly glad we're at home to Wrexham next week.
Some poor performances from some of our better players today. McCleary very off his game, Scowen well below his usual standard. Kone for the most part was poor, yet looking back, he's scored, hit the post, created our best (only) chance in the 1st half and had 3 goals disallowed. Probably a measure of how high his standards are now.
Didn’t see the game but listened to a fair chunk on the radio. Seems like fairly constructive criticism and measured comments on here. Meanwhile on FB it’s total meltdown.
I wasn't expecting us to be second or in the running for the playoffs at the start of the season. When we were up there, I expected us to have a blip and I also expected the run-in to be tough after Christmas even before the event that killed the Gasroom. I know I often see another game to many posters, so I assume I'm the only one still relatively happy?
Historically it's not a bad result, but we have the best away record in the league, and they have the 13th best home record. It's a game a promotion chasing team should win
I'd plotted our "run-in" before the Birmingham game. Had that down as a loss, Bristol Rovers as a win, Burton as a win, and Posh as a draw. At the beginning of the season, a draw at Posh is a good result. My predictions say we go up by a point.
Our "bad" run of form consists of the following....
Last 6 league games:
Wins: 2
Draws: 3
Losses: 1
Goals conceded: just 4.
At Cambridge we had a red card.
At Birmingham we had a red card.
At Crawley we conceded to a fantastic goal.
Today we conceded a penalty and had a legit goal disallowed.
We are doing enough to win games. Teams have figured us out as the season has gone on. We have had key injuries. Teams are fighting for their lives.
Sometimes in football you need a bit of luck. We just aren't getting that at the moment.
We had not lost to ANY team outside of the top 6 (before todays game). That is incredible.
Can the 3000+ fans that are going to Wrexham (that don't normally go) get behind their team for the run in? Your support could force our hand and the bit of luck that we need.
Follow the old adage of draw the away games and win the home games and we’ll be fine.
Am I right in remembering we looked pretty average against posh earlier in the season before Kone came on and turned the game on its head with his 9 minute hat trick?
I can see something clicking going forward and suddenly putting a string of wins together. But then I might be an eternal optimist
is Simon’s back on Saturday or does he have another game off?
Not sure he was outstanding, although he had good moments. I'd say he was below his usual standards especially 1st half where he seemed to either be fouling defenders, or claiming non existent fouls when the ball came to him. No doubting he was a threat though in the 2nd half.
I think many gloss over some of the stats behind our early season form. 8 of those 12 wins were won by the odd goal - last minute winners, heroic goalkeeping and some other riding of our luck contributing greatly. Yes we always looked liked scoring but we also always looked like conceding. That was never sustainable. We are still second it’s still in our hands COYB
I wonder if the refs have been briefed on the way strikers jump in with their arms up. Kone has been penalised a few times now, and Marquis was sent off for similar. It seems harsh.
I think we did enough to score at least one today. By "luck" I mean more in term of decisions going our way. I wouldn't say Udoh missing a one on one is "bad luck" as such. That's deserved because it's poor decision making. Same with our goal, we forced that.
I mean...our disallowed goal, the red cards, the penalties.
Regarding the non signing of Morley. We had him on loan and he was obviously a great asset Trouble is loanees we have had have, in the majority of cases, thrived and returned to their parent clubs better players. Eze being an outstanding example amongst others. I forget the two we got from Man City, those two have not set the football world alight . I have a relative whose partner is a close friend to Morley’s partner. He really wanted to stay with us but Bolton wanted him back so he went. He has featured in Bolton’s games consistently since his return scoring goals and clearly contributing greatly to Bolton’s efforts. Sadly developing players for other sides does not help us in the long run however I am proud how we have assisted fringe players progress on their career path in very positive ways.
You say that developing players for other sides does not help us in the long run. If we had not had Morley for the first half of this season we wouldn't have been where we are now and still in the race for promotion.
Comments
Just a "joke" apparently.
Had to be that or "fishing", which is the usual alibi for a stupid post.
Similar to Birmingham, the second half was better than the first, which shows Dodds can change things at half time and get the players going, but please try and get it right from kick off.
How Gmac stayed on for the second half I don't know, he was atrocious. Joe Low needed to give Taylor a rocket too as he seemed half asleep for most of the first half.
Reach looks like he will be a quality player for us, promising glimpses from Berry, and with a different referee Kone may have scored another hatrick.
Taylor coming back in on loan was a big signing, but then Bradley was doing well in his place anyway.
Reach has filled in ok, Simons we've had a little taster of, but keeper has been neutral at best, and the rest are all battling to get a few mins off the bench one week, then nowhere near it the next.
They might all show great value next season, but you can't help thinking for the outlays made, we could have properly made significant game changing signings.
I’m sure Dan and Eduard know what they’re doing.
Not a great game but could be a vital point. Nice deflection to fall into Kone’s path after poor free kick. Certainly seem to have lost our fizz . Not convinced in Dodds yet but it’s early days. Not quite as optimistic in automatic promotion or going through the playoffs in our current form.
I know its all blame the new guy. But in Bloomfield last 8 games he won 2. Let's not pretend Dodds walked into a team flying and is messing it up.
He was in a funny old position, we were second so needed to play it up, but form was poor and he couldn't really say it.
It's become a real grind, but it was never meant to be easy.
Really don't know what to expect from Reading midweek.
They've still a shot at the playoffs so should be well up for it.
6 games under Dodds and we've yet to concede an OP goal from inside the box. Second half today aside - and the game state meant we were going to allow chances - we've been utterly stingy. If we can regain some consistency (like, now), we'll be right in business.
I'm keen to not judge Dobbs as it was almost an entire calendar year of drudgery under Blooms, and Gaz had a terrible season. However, I've no clue why he left it so long to make changes, and it does feel something is missing. Perhaps it's nostalgia, but in the weeks of Dodds coming in and us making 12 signings, it feels like we're missing some indefinable thing.
Yes I think Lowry, Berry and Back have all shown glimpses of why we signed them. I’m just not convinced we did the right business for improving the team to push for promotion now.
I think it’s time to pick a couple, Berry and Lowry for me and get them involved in the squad week in week out until end of season. Those are the two I think could make a difference off the bench and more time in the first team squad will help that.
As an aside the 3 games after Wrexham are all against teams whose season is largely over so fingers crossed they are “on the beach”
Huge point in the end, but a pretty ropey performance, especially 1st half which was dreadful in all honesty. Improved in the early part of the 2nd half, but seemed to run out of ideas long before the end.
Strange how our home/away form seems to have flipped. We've had a few teams come to AP and grind out draws, but we're mostly looking very strong at home, dominating games and creating plenty of chances. Away we're really struggling and can't seem to find any fluency. Certainly glad we're at home to Wrexham next week.
Some poor performances from some of our better players today. McCleary very off his game, Scowen well below his usual standard. Kone for the most part was poor, yet looking back, he's scored, hit the post, created our best (only) chance in the 1st half and had 3 goals disallowed. Probably a measure of how high his standards are now.
I thought Kone was absolutely outstanding today!
Surprised this got 5 downvotes.
Didn’t see the game but listened to a fair chunk on the radio. Seems like fairly constructive criticism and measured comments on here. Meanwhile on FB it’s total meltdown.
I don’t think he was outstanding by any means, but I also think he was getting terrible service and we weren’t playing to his strengths.
He would still have been my MotM though in a day where few of our lot had a good game.
The Peterborough fans were pretty complimentary about him though, both moaning about and admiring him for being a right nuisance.
https://www.londonroad.net/Forum/showthread.php?tid=23638&page=4
I wasn't expecting us to be second or in the running for the playoffs at the start of the season. When we were up there, I expected us to have a blip and I also expected the run-in to be tough after Christmas even before the event that killed the Gasroom. I know I often see another game to many posters, so I assume I'm the only one still relatively happy?
(We should have bought Morley though...)
I thought Kone was decent today, naturally looked pretty frustrated though.
We weren’t great but a point away at Peterborough isn’t a bad result.
Historically it's not a bad result, but we have the best away record in the league, and they have the 13th best home record. It's a game a promotion chasing team should win
I'd plotted our "run-in" before the Birmingham game. Had that down as a loss, Bristol Rovers as a win, Burton as a win, and Posh as a draw. At the beginning of the season, a draw at Posh is a good result. My predictions say we go up by a point.
Our "bad" run of form consists of the following....
Last 6 league games:
Wins: 2
Draws: 3
Losses: 1
Goals conceded: just 4.
At Cambridge we had a red card.
At Birmingham we had a red card.
At Crawley we conceded to a fantastic goal.
Today we conceded a penalty and had a legit goal disallowed.
We are doing enough to win games. Teams have figured us out as the season has gone on. We have had key injuries. Teams are fighting for their lives.
Sometimes in football you need a bit of luck. We just aren't getting that at the moment.
We had not lost to ANY team outside of the top 6 (before todays game). That is incredible.
Can the 3000+ fans that are going to Wrexham (that don't normally go) get behind their team for the run in? Your support could force our hand and the bit of luck that we need.
Follow the old adage of draw the away games and win the home games and we’ll be fine.
Am I right in remembering we looked pretty average against posh earlier in the season before Kone came on and turned the game on its head with his 9 minute hat trick?
I can see something clicking going forward and suddenly putting a string of wins together. But then I might be an eternal optimist
is Simon’s back on Saturday or does he have another game off?
Agree to an extent but we finally got a bit of luck today when a wayward Leahy effort fell perfectly to Kone.
Our bad run of form is 5 wins in 17 games. ( if I've added up correctly) form like that, I'm unsure why we would expect a win at Peterborough
3 game ban so he’ll miss Wrexham
Not sure he was outstanding, although he had good moments. I'd say he was below his usual standards especially 1st half where he seemed to either be fouling defenders, or claiming non existent fouls when the ball came to him. No doubting he was a threat though in the 2nd half.
I think many gloss over some of the stats behind our early season form. 8 of those 12 wins were won by the odd goal - last minute winners, heroic goalkeeping and some other riding of our luck contributing greatly. Yes we always looked liked scoring but we also always looked like conceding. That was never sustainable. We are still second it’s still in our hands COYB
I wonder if the refs have been briefed on the way strikers jump in with their arms up. Kone has been penalised a few times now, and Marquis was sent off for similar. It seems harsh.
I think we did enough to score at least one today. By "luck" I mean more in term of decisions going our way. I wouldn't say Udoh missing a one on one is "bad luck" as such. That's deserved because it's poor decision making. Same with our goal, we forced that.
I mean...our disallowed goal, the red cards, the penalties.
Regarding the non signing of Morley. We had him on loan and he was obviously a great asset Trouble is loanees we have had have, in the majority of cases, thrived and returned to their parent clubs better players. Eze being an outstanding example amongst others. I forget the two we got from Man City, those two have not set the football world alight . I have a relative whose partner is a close friend to Morley’s partner. He really wanted to stay with us but Bolton wanted him back so he went. He has featured in Bolton’s games consistently since his return scoring goals and clearly contributing greatly to Bolton’s efforts. Sadly developing players for other sides does not help us in the long run however I am proud how we have assisted fringe players progress on their career path in very positive ways.
Here's a still of what I didn't see from where I was sitting.
You say that developing players for other sides does not help us in the long run. If we had not had Morley for the first half of this season we wouldn't have been where we are now and still in the race for promotion.