Overall performance

[leftbehind]

P*ss poor


Shelvy very bad tonight

[canterburyaddick]

We struggled against a packed midfield and defence today apart from 2 extremely good goals.
Unfair to single out Shelvey, but he wasn't great tonight, but he was my MOM on Saturday and isn't going to do it every game at his age.
Apart from his goal Waggy looked pretty dangerous when he came on. But overall we huffed and puffed a bit. Still 3 points.

[leftbehind]

Of course he will not do it every game what player does?? but i have singled him out as it was a woeful performance half hearted, and he was just the worst of a bad bunch on the night.

I could get used to Waggie coming on more often and scoring though.

[Deleted]

We are stolling matches and this season so far. We need to step it up abit to get into the automatic promotion places. One of the next 6 games we should win on paper done and dusted.

Waggstaff cant start the game but effective as a final 10 mins sub as there is more space for him to run through. Reminds me of a Dane we once had... not Alan Simonson lol.

I think if the board helped Parky, who is doing a fine job, some funds to get a left winger, striker and maybe another experienced centre back we are in with a very good chance.

[bexleyboy]

We were dreadful last night. saved by a 25 yard out of the ble goal..

Negitive tactics poor team selection, to late in making subs..

To many players throught they did not have to try to win the game, midfield not good enough did not create one thing all night Bailey and Semedo not a combination for home matches..

Really poor displays last night Semedo, Sam, Shelvey, Burton all need a kick up their backsides not good enough

We need a leftsided player, if the board can't see that then we have real problems.

Racon has to start, with Bailey the best pairing in the div and possibley the championship, Sam and Wagstaff on the wings

[fatscholes]

FAO Bexleyboy....a bit harsh on the players mentioned. No doubt it was a poor game and we never got going from the first minute but we did win. I thought the tactics were not negative but uneffective due to small amount of closing down from the oppo, but more to do with attitude of our players. We werent running, finding space, making intelligent movement....as a team!
I think that Samedo was not needed last night as much as he has been & we were discussing around us at the time of the subs to take him off to be more attacking.....2 mins after the goal he made a great tackle when we lost the ball with a 3 on 2 break for Pool, so you need him on the pitch as we do leak goals without him. bailey started on the left and only moved inside once Shelvey had gone off. Although he does go missing in games for longer periods than you would like but came good around the 60 minute mark yesterday. I think though that Burton played well, feeding off the scraps that he was given. Him & Mooney can play together well and it has shown in the past they are our best striking pair.

It was a cold Tuesday night, small crowd, lower oppo, with the home crowd willing a win to close the gap on the top 2. So there was a bit of tension around. But all that said, we won with a good strike from a player that, if he can prove he can stay the 90 mins consistently, could be a great asset in the future.

[reamsofverse]

The problem is that we are not in the same class as Norwich to an extent where they have three or four individuals who can turn a game on it's head and win it with a moment of class.

We are more like Leeds who play collectively grinding out results without murdering sides so that is why we need new faces because at the moment it's Norwich all the way for me and us and Leeds in a straight fight for the other automatic spot which I would say they are favourites for especially if Beckford stays.

[valleyviper]

Must agree with most of the above, but why oh! why was Bailey playing just in front of the back two, when he got the ball things started to happen, but he was so far off the rest of the mid-field and forwards that a long thump up to Burton was played on most occassions.

As for Burton, he was so well marked that by half time it appeared that he had given up and should have been substitued instead of playing the full game, the opposition worked him out in the first ten minutes and stifled his game thereafter.

[ExeterAddick]

we need to have more belief that, if we keep the ball on the deck and pass it around at pace, we can undo most teams.
We seem to abandon that whole ethos after 5mins if it's not working perfectly, but our long ball game rarely leads to anything.

That 50 yard diagonal ball that Llera likes playing to Sam is getting really tiresome, especially the way he telegraphs it. Burton is the only one who wins headers for us, and even he's better on the deck so that he can play Mooney in.

Another pretty average performance I'd say, but again the positives have to be that we've won without playing well. If we can squeeze another 10% out of all the lads and keep the ball on the ground, I think we can still steal 2nd place.

[hongkongaddick]

I agree that when playing a side who've come for the draw, Racon is the better bet than Semedo in midfield. However, isn't he in France dealing with a family bereavement?

Unless Dickson goes, we have 4 ssenior strikers so don't need another one. LM is the weak point.

[leftbehind]

Must say im glad we have not lowered things here.

I noticed on another site that the poor performance Has turned into a complete fan bashing, with some strong words scum off the earth, C word being used more than I have ever seen, Terrorists, Pedo’s rapists & Murders do not get bashed as much there than our own fans voicing their own opinion rightly or wrongly.

Don’t want to get into that here as people are debating the poor performance without the nasty part, which is great to see.

[reamsofverse]

The difference between success and failure for us this season will be if a striker who has been there and done it becomes available for a smalllish fee or on a free, Akpo Sodje forget it he is not the answer at all and is no better than what we have.

The name on the end of my tongue is Glenn Murray although I would ove his strike partner Nicky Forster too because I truly believe that these too will be the closest thing yet to Hunt and Mendonca, they virtually guarantee you goals, surely to God they can be prized away from Brighton for affordable money, we even have the bagaining tool of Dickson although a swop deal would have been more realistic if we still had McLeod to offer them.

We need more goals Murray and Forster make their living scoring them and if we had one or both of these I would then say we are serious contenders for an automatic spot again.

I want us to be like Norwich, Leeds and Southampton in a sense of when a goal alert comes in from any of their games in which they have just scored, you can bet your bottom dollar that it will be Holt, Hoolahan, Beckford or Lambert who has scored it, their names are associated with a goal straight away.............I can't say the same about us we need a proloific obvious scorer.

[canterburyaddick]

Great to have a prolific goal scorer, but I like the fact that we get goals from around the team. Is there a better goal scoring midfielder than Bailley? Now both , that's something I would would like to see. But if we don't lay out cash we are not going to get any one better than we've got so it's a bit pointless speculating as we haven't any cash.
Mooney could be the answer, doesn't look sharp yet but is getting better and his movement is good. The goal on Tuesday will be good for his confidence.

[offit]

Jan 20, 2010 22:25:57 GMT reamsofverse said:

The problem is that we are not in the same class as Norwich to an extent where they have three or four individuals who can turn a game on it's head and win it with a moment of class.

To be fair though, didn't we win the (drab) game on Tuesday with a moment of class from Waggy?

[ExeterAddick]

It was an exceptional strike.
Still can't quite make my mind up about Waggy though - he's always looked better coming off the bench in my opinion.

One of our problems is our midfield has no balance. There's no natural width on the left, so it's tempting to say that we need a left winger, but that would leave Semedo, Racon, Bailey, Spring and Shelvey competing for two places in the middle. I doubt any of them would be happy with a place on the bench.

Bailey or Shelvey coming in off the left have done alright for us this season, but two wingers would help us stretch the pitch and play our natural passing game.

[canterburyaddick]

Trouble is I fear that we would then go back to 4-5-1, otherwise we leave ourselves short in the middle. Mind you did us Ok at the beginning otf the season.

[reamsofverse]

4-5-1 it has to be I think purely because in Burton we only have 1 striker.

[Deleted]

Lack of firepower was again on show tonight. The table never lies look how many leeds and norwich have scored.Play offs me thinks. People have said that we are in a better position than leeds as they will get burnt out let's hope they do though I wish we went on two cup runs beating man u and drawing with spurs and having two games in hand of the 3rd place team