Here here! There were actually people on here who for years castigated that one note, boring, tactically naive Ainsworth for the rubbish football on display...even offering to drive him anywhere...but we all know often it's points that count rather than style.
I'm really pleased we won, not that bothered what Doddsy says afterwards to be fair, but can't help thinking we could have won more comfortably with more attacking intent against quite a poor side. But 8 more 1-0s will do...especially against the Rev and Charlton.
Yes, quite right Brian, comment was tounge in cheek, I agree he's been lucky on a few occasions this season and while that has probably gone in our favour today he will need to get a grip on that side of the game if he's to avoid reds, get on with playing and progress as we all hope he can.
If this was our first run at the Championship I'd guess we'd all be a bit more excited but we've done it before and it was really thrilling seat of the pants stuff, not just grinding out results.
We have Ainsworth to blame for not enjoying it a second time around.
Absolute wet weekend of a comment. The Gasroom should remove your membership if you cannot cope with another fan’s generic opinion of a football interview
Just watched Dodds’ post match interview, at no point did he make fun of the fans. I found his comments about changing the mindset from having something big to lose to having everything to gain , and wanting the players to release the handbrake a little and enjoy the next 8 games, it felt extremely positive to me.
Doesn't it strike you as weird that he tells the players to take the handbrake off, but sends them out there in a 9-0-1 formation against a middling Lincoln side with nothing to play for? That hardly says "Lads, I have every confidence in your ability to go out there, score goals and get us promoted." - more "Lads, I have zero confidence in any of you, so I'm going to just try to make sure we don't let any goals in."
Taking the handbrake off does nothing if you're parked in a ditch and you don't have an engine.
Pretty short sighted but hey that's my opinion. If we set up like that, play like that etc then we won't win many more games. I think the worry is absolutely valid. Really hope I'm wrong..
I’ve just watched the head coach’s post match interview and it was excellent. He made exactly the same points that the critics of our first half performance made in this thread and to suggest that he was insulting the fans is just plain ridiculous. Can I remind people that his record is now W4 D3 L2 with the only defeats coming against the two teams above us in the table, both by the narrowest of margins.
By this logic we should have been attracting significantly higher crowds when we were winning almost every week and scoring goals galore under Matt Bloomfield. We didn’t.
I remain unconvinced by the formation - and while a 1-0 victory is always welcome I do think it papers over cracks we can all see.
I like playing with a back three. But I think we need to ensure when we do the rest of the side are attack minded and that really stems from the wing backs. Playing with Grimmer and Leahy is the surest sign that we're setting out to grind a narrow victory - overly cautious, defensive-minded long ball. I just think we're better than that, especially against Lincoln. If we continue to play with Kone isolated he'll continue to overstretch and foul when balls come his way. Reach is classy but we don't need him roaming in the middle - we need a second striker to play alongside Kone. I know Udoh and Lubala are unavailable but why not try Vokes alongside him, especially if we're persisting in the ridiculously uncultured long ball play from Norris?
I thought the most interesting comment on this feed came from @StrongestTeam when he wondered if we'd ever started a second half strongly under Dodds. That was exactly what I was thinking at the time, also remembering the disastrous restart post Wrexham timeout. Does he have any presence in the dressing room? Any insight? Any motivational nous? I'm not confident he does.
But 15 points from 9 games is not automatic promotion form. Extrapolating those results (if that’s the correct term) over 45 games gives us 75, 76 or 78 total points, depending on the outcome of the tenth game - a maximum of four more points than we currently have and by no means guaranteeing a playoff place.
That’s the way I look at it, rightly or wrongly, So, to stand any chance of regaining and retaining second place, we need to continue winning more games than we lose, throw in a couple of draws and hope that Wrexham and Charlton have one or two unexpected setbacks.
I dread the playoffs. But, above all, I would love to see Wycombe playing in front of big crowds in the Championship for at least part of next season. It’s one of the things I’m hanging in for !
It takes a long time to attract regular fans to change their weekend routine enough to decide to revolve every other Saturday afternoon around a trip to Sands and beyond.
It takes 90 mins of expensive, dull football to reaffirm to the casual local football fan that other things on a Saturday afternoon can offer better value in life.
We got promoted under Peter Taylor and it always felt we lost regular fans because his football was so shit. Give me Gorman’s non promoted team over Taylor’s any day if the week, for example.
Today in the terrace you could hear a fair amount of groaning and disgruntlement at times from the FA stand, which considering how empty it was speaks volumes my opinion.
The problem with five at the back under Bloomfield was it was like playing with seven defensive players, the complete wrong balance. Same again under Dodds. If Dodds decides to continue with five at the back it is surely necessary to play more attacking full backs or more attacking midfielders.
This stage of the season my view is the performance is largely irrelevant, it’s about ticking off the games and getting the 3 points. If we go up 2nd playing every remaining game like yesterday, I have no issue.
There are so many other factors impacting attendance, including now the new owners as people on this forum have said they have stopped going since January. Then you have all the other factors that have been discussed for years. As I and others have said attendances were no different when we were playing the best football I’ve probably ever seen at AP under Blooms during that great run.
However, I do agree that as we start next season whatever league that is in the performances will need to improve. Basically I think it’s fine to play like this now for a promotion push but if this is our new “style” then I agree that will be an issue (I reserve the right to change my mind if this new style gets us to the top of the Championship…)
Wrexham are grinding results out every week, yes they are getting lucky but regardless we need to do the same to get promotion . We all love the free flowing football but just maybe dodds is doing this to get us over the line making sure we don’t concede firstly and get the required goal. If it doesn’t come or we concede then as per Rotherham we switch to the team earlier in the season. Let’s just hope that maybe on Tuesday we get that goal a little earlier and push on to get a big win.
I'm very much in the camp of 'not especially pretty, but job done' from yesterday. It feels (both on here and in parts of the stadium) that some of our more usually optimistic and generally positive characters are a bit down in the dumps and inclined to see the more negative aspects of our play in a sharper focus. I'm not judging anyone for that, it's been a very wierd season emotionally, and we haven't won at home on a Saturday for ages which doesn't help. But I thought largely we were in complete control of that game, took our chance, and I never really felt we were going to be in any trouble once we took the lead.
I would have liked us to move the ball with a bit more urgency in the first half, especially from the goalkeeper and centre backs (though side note - I thought Norris' kicking was much improved yesterday), and I thought we looked more dangerous when Simons, Scowen, or Humphreys found some space to dribble through the middle of the pitch. Ideally with that formation, you'd probably move Reach to the left and bring in Udoh - but with the players available we've taken six points from the last 2. 20 mins of Fred and Gmac off the bench has also been more effective than either of them starting for about the last month.
Just a word on Lincoln though, as few others have mentioned them. I thought they were really poor, and O'Connor's behaviour in the first half especially (swearing repeatedly at the assistant referee, trying to get Kone sent off) was disgraceful. I've not been so pleased by a red card in quite some time. Kone also did exceptionally well to keep his cool in the end; I think teams are targetting him and whatever was said at half time helped him to calm down and refocus on us. I thought they were allowed to get away with far too much niggly fouling and general disruption. We might not be the same side that won 3-2 at their place, but they were a shadow of the team we played that day.
Dodds does talk an incredibly good game. His post-matches are always so precise and it's almost like he reads the Gasroom to answer each point in turn.
I go from irritated by a drab showing, to being convinced it's all part of the plan. He's some magician, there.
No one On here will complain if we do play badly and win every game 1-0 between now and the end of the season.
But the likelihood of us winning games playing badly as opposed to us winning games playing well seem a lot less likely.
There just doesn’t seem to be any margin of error and that for me is the concern.
With Bloomfield we had ‘the finishers’ off the bench who came on to run at a tiring defence. Now we have attacking players coming on against defenders who have hardly had to break a sweat all afternoon.
Mike Dodds spoke really well after the game I thought.
I'm genuinely sad for people that they can't enjoy a result like yesterday. We won a tense encounter right at the business end of the season to leave us in charge of our own destiny with regards to automatic promotion
Blows my mind that some Wycombe fans seem genuinely annoyed about it
Thankfully the mood in the ground at the end was one of jubilation and celebration with people looking forward to Tuesday. Adams Park is a far better place to be on matchday than the Gasroom, that's for sure
Possibly arguing semantics slightly, but the problem with playing 3 centre backs is people always automatically feel like you’re playing 5 at the back.
And woe betide you doing that at home, because everyone jumps up and down that you’re being ultra defensive.
The bigger problem is 3 CB formation can easily become 5 at the back because the opposition targets the wing backs to push them into a 5 at the back formation.
The huge problem with 3 CB’s is that, by having a 3rd CB you a removing a player that can get forward in the middle and support the midfield (or attack).
You either need to have ultra attacking wingbacks (that can do a job tracking back) and a DMC not protecting the back line but ready to fill the gaps the WB leave to stop a counter. Or one of your CB ready and able to carry the ball forward into midfield allowing your DM to push forward.
If either of those aren’t happening you can’t push your opponent back towards their goal.
We have the players to do it (Not Leahy ans Grimmer at WB) and I think Dodds is trying the later (Taylor made forward ball carrying runs at time earlier in the season but I don’t think it comes completely naturally and can have horrific results in a high block situation)
Fred needs to be playing in one of the wing back positions for me. He was really good when he came on yesterday and he nailed that position towards the end of our championship season.
I agree wholeheartedly. You don’t get teams who are pushing for promotion playing like 1970s Brazil at this stage of the season when there’s so much at stake. The pressure to win or more importantly not to lose, is suffocating. Wrexham aren’t playing particularly well and they have had ten 1-0 wins this season but their fans are thrilled. We win 1-0 and some fans are complaining. We are top scorers in the division averaging just under 2 points per game and only the runaway leaders Birmingham have a better GD.
Comments
Here here! There were actually people on here who for years castigated that one note, boring, tactically naive Ainsworth for the rubbish football on display...even offering to drive him anywhere...but we all know often it's points that count rather than style.
I'm really pleased we won, not that bothered what Doddsy says afterwards to be fair, but can't help thinking we could have won more comfortably with more attacking intent against quite a poor side. But 8 more 1-0s will do...especially against the Rev and Charlton.
Yes, quite right Brian, comment was tounge in cheek, I agree he's been lucky on a few occasions this season and while that has probably gone in our favour today he will need to get a grip on that side of the game if he's to avoid reds, get on with playing and progress as we all hope he can.
If this was our first run at the Championship I'd guess we'd all be a bit more excited but we've done it before and it was really thrilling seat of the pants stuff, not just grinding out results.
We have Ainsworth to blame for not enjoying it a second time around.
absolute wet weekend of a comment. The EFL should deduct us points if fans cannot cope with generic post match interviews.
Surely trev's clang of doom on match day is a given and therefore not worth counting. I thought it was a gang frothing at the mouth demanding a loss.
Absolute wet weekend of a comment. The Gasroom should remove your membership if you cannot cope with another fan’s generic opinion of a football interview
ah yes, the 1-0 home defeat to Fleetwood shortly before a global pandemic shut down football. An incredibly exciting period of sport
drivel
Just watched Dodds’ post match interview, at no point did he make fun of the fans. I found his comments about changing the mindset from having something big to lose to having everything to gain , and wanting the players to release the handbrake a little and enjoy the next 8 games, it felt extremely positive to me.
Doesn't it strike you as weird that he tells the players to take the handbrake off, but sends them out there in a 9-0-1 formation against a middling Lincoln side with nothing to play for? That hardly says "Lads, I have every confidence in your ability to go out there, score goals and get us promoted." - more "Lads, I have zero confidence in any of you, so I'm going to just try to make sure we don't let any goals in."
Taking the handbrake off does nothing if you're parked in a ditch and you don't have an engine.
Taking the handbrake off does nothing if you're parked in a ditch and you don't have an engine.
Or a handbrake
At last someone who gets it.
Pretty short sighted but hey that's my opinion. If we set up like that, play like that etc then we won't win many more games. I think the worry is absolutely valid. Really hope I'm wrong..
I’ve just watched the head coach’s post match interview and it was excellent. He made exactly the same points that the critics of our first half performance made in this thread and to suggest that he was insulting the fans is just plain ridiculous. Can I remind people that his record is now W4 D3 L2 with the only defeats coming against the two teams above us in the table, both by the narrowest of margins.
If the only thing that matters is the result and not the performance (or entertainment) perhaps that's why our attendance remains so poor.
By this logic we should have been attracting significantly higher crowds when we were winning almost every week and scoring goals galore under Matt Bloomfield. We didn’t.
I remain unconvinced by the formation - and while a 1-0 victory is always welcome I do think it papers over cracks we can all see.
I like playing with a back three. But I think we need to ensure when we do the rest of the side are attack minded and that really stems from the wing backs. Playing with Grimmer and Leahy is the surest sign that we're setting out to grind a narrow victory - overly cautious, defensive-minded long ball. I just think we're better than that, especially against Lincoln. If we continue to play with Kone isolated he'll continue to overstretch and foul when balls come his way. Reach is classy but we don't need him roaming in the middle - we need a second striker to play alongside Kone. I know Udoh and Lubala are unavailable but why not try Vokes alongside him, especially if we're persisting in the ridiculously uncultured long ball play from Norris?
I thought the most interesting comment on this feed came from @StrongestTeam when he wondered if we'd ever started a second half strongly under Dodds. That was exactly what I was thinking at the time, also remembering the disastrous restart post Wrexham timeout. Does he have any presence in the dressing room? Any insight? Any motivational nous? I'm not confident he does.
But 15 points from 9 games is not automatic promotion form. Extrapolating those results (if that’s the correct term) over 45 games gives us 75, 76 or 78 total points, depending on the outcome of the tenth game - a maximum of four more points than we currently have and by no means guaranteeing a playoff place.
That’s the way I look at it, rightly or wrongly, So, to stand any chance of regaining and retaining second place, we need to continue winning more games than we lose, throw in a couple of draws and hope that Wrexham and Charlton have one or two unexpected setbacks.
I dread the playoffs. But, above all, I would love to see Wycombe playing in front of big crowds in the Championship for at least part of next season. It’s one of the things I’m hanging in for !
No, that’s not correct.
It takes a long time to attract regular fans to change their weekend routine enough to decide to revolve every other Saturday afternoon around a trip to Sands and beyond.
It takes 90 mins of expensive, dull football to reaffirm to the casual local football fan that other things on a Saturday afternoon can offer better value in life.
We got promoted under Peter Taylor and it always felt we lost regular fans because his football was so shit. Give me Gorman’s non promoted team over Taylor’s any day if the week, for example.
Today in the terrace you could hear a fair amount of groaning and disgruntlement at times from the FA stand, which considering how empty it was speaks volumes my opinion.
Trevor is back
The problem with five at the back under Bloomfield was it was like playing with seven defensive players, the complete wrong balance. Same again under Dodds. If Dodds decides to continue with five at the back it is surely necessary to play more attacking full backs or more attacking midfielders.
This stage of the season my view is the performance is largely irrelevant, it’s about ticking off the games and getting the 3 points. If we go up 2nd playing every remaining game like yesterday, I have no issue.
There are so many other factors impacting attendance, including now the new owners as people on this forum have said they have stopped going since January. Then you have all the other factors that have been discussed for years. As I and others have said attendances were no different when we were playing the best football I’ve probably ever seen at AP under Blooms during that great run.
However, I do agree that as we start next season whatever league that is in the performances will need to improve. Basically I think it’s fine to play like this now for a promotion push but if this is our new “style” then I agree that will be an issue (I reserve the right to change my mind if this new style gets us to the top of the Championship…)
Wrexham are grinding results out every week, yes they are getting lucky but regardless we need to do the same to get promotion . We all love the free flowing football but just maybe dodds is doing this to get us over the line making sure we don’t concede firstly and get the required goal. If it doesn’t come or we concede then as per Rotherham we switch to the team earlier in the season. Let’s just hope that maybe on Tuesday we get that goal a little earlier and push on to get a big win.
I'm very much in the camp of 'not especially pretty, but job done' from yesterday. It feels (both on here and in parts of the stadium) that some of our more usually optimistic and generally positive characters are a bit down in the dumps and inclined to see the more negative aspects of our play in a sharper focus. I'm not judging anyone for that, it's been a very wierd season emotionally, and we haven't won at home on a Saturday for ages which doesn't help. But I thought largely we were in complete control of that game, took our chance, and I never really felt we were going to be in any trouble once we took the lead.
I would have liked us to move the ball with a bit more urgency in the first half, especially from the goalkeeper and centre backs (though side note - I thought Norris' kicking was much improved yesterday), and I thought we looked more dangerous when Simons, Scowen, or Humphreys found some space to dribble through the middle of the pitch. Ideally with that formation, you'd probably move Reach to the left and bring in Udoh - but with the players available we've taken six points from the last 2. 20 mins of Fred and Gmac off the bench has also been more effective than either of them starting for about the last month.
Just a word on Lincoln though, as few others have mentioned them. I thought they were really poor, and O'Connor's behaviour in the first half especially (swearing repeatedly at the assistant referee, trying to get Kone sent off) was disgraceful. I've not been so pleased by a red card in quite some time. Kone also did exceptionally well to keep his cool in the end; I think teams are targetting him and whatever was said at half time helped him to calm down and refocus on us. I thought they were allowed to get away with far too much niggly fouling and general disruption. We might not be the same side that won 3-2 at their place, but they were a shadow of the team we played that day.
Dodds does talk an incredibly good game. His post-matches are always so precise and it's almost like he reads the Gasroom to answer each point in turn.
I go from irritated by a drab showing, to being convinced it's all part of the plan. He's some magician, there.
No one On here will complain if we do play badly and win every game 1-0 between now and the end of the season.
But the likelihood of us winning games playing badly as opposed to us winning games playing well seem a lot less likely.
There just doesn’t seem to be any margin of error and that for me is the concern.
With Bloomfield we had ‘the finishers’ off the bench who came on to run at a tiring defence. Now we have attacking players coming on against defenders who have hardly had to break a sweat all afternoon.
Mike Dodds spoke really well after the game I thought.
I'm genuinely sad for people that they can't enjoy a result like yesterday. We won a tense encounter right at the business end of the season to leave us in charge of our own destiny with regards to automatic promotion
Blows my mind that some Wycombe fans seem genuinely annoyed about it
Thankfully the mood in the ground at the end was one of jubilation and celebration with people looking forward to Tuesday. Adams Park is a far better place to be on matchday than the Gasroom, that's for sure
Possibly arguing semantics slightly, but the problem with playing 3 centre backs is people always automatically feel like you’re playing 5 at the back.
And woe betide you doing that at home, because everyone jumps up and down that you’re being ultra defensive.
The bigger problem is 3 CB formation can easily become 5 at the back because the opposition targets the wing backs to push them into a 5 at the back formation.
The huge problem with 3 CB’s is that, by having a 3rd CB you a removing a player that can get forward in the middle and support the midfield (or attack).
You either need to have ultra attacking wingbacks (that can do a job tracking back) and a DMC not protecting the back line but ready to fill the gaps the WB leave to stop a counter. Or one of your CB ready and able to carry the ball forward into midfield allowing your DM to push forward.
If either of those aren’t happening you can’t push your opponent back towards their goal.
We have the players to do it (Not Leahy ans Grimmer at WB) and I think Dodds is trying the later (Taylor made forward ball carrying runs at time earlier in the season but I don’t think it comes completely naturally and can have horrific results in a high block situation)
Fred needs to be playing in one of the wing back positions for me. He was really good when he came on yesterday and he nailed that position towards the end of our championship season.
I agree wholeheartedly. You don’t get teams who are pushing for promotion playing like 1970s Brazil at this stage of the season when there’s so much at stake. The pressure to win or more importantly not to lose, is suffocating. Wrexham aren’t playing particularly well and they have had ten 1-0 wins this season but their fans are thrilled. We win 1-0 and some fans are complaining. We are top scorers in the division averaging just under 2 points per game and only the runaway leaders Birmingham have a better GD.