We suck at defending

[cafcdamo]

Like being back at school, nobody wanted to defend, except the back 3, the other 7 (George included) didn’t do their jobs, we’d attack with Karoy and George and Nathan and Tayo going forward , which left no one minding the house. Oxford had a 4 on 1 to score the winner.

I watched Corey in the 1st half as he was right in front of us, he had zero interest in defending , his job was to track back marking Goodrham (Man of the Match and scorer of both their goals).

Something else which really gets my goat also is we play a small man up front in the middle so every clearance is headed straight back (today Isted cleared ball, Oxford headed back , start of the attack that scored their goal) . Can anyone tell me how many balls May held up and stopped ball coming back, same as the last 5 matches (0).

Dean Holden you are to blame. Make it right.

[earlpurple]

Bring back Lee Bowyer? He was very strong on getting players to run back and be tough. Well much of the time, but the last few months or so he was at the club our defence was terrible and we were leaking goals - that was after Ryan Inniss got injured.

We didn't always play attractive football but we had "hard" men, including Darren Pratley. I guess it wasn't always nice to play against us. I think teams enjoy playing against us now.

(Ok, Lee Bowyer was our manager in the games against Scunthorpe when we lost 5-3, the 4-2 defeat to Burton in 2020 and the 4-4 at home against Rochdale just after that. Also when in the Championship we had some terrible games where we refused to take the game to the opponents at all and lost 0-1, or we took a lead then defended deep the rest of the game).

[vaangard]

Whatever the formation we play, it has been decades since a manager (Curbs) had our three tiers move forwards and backwards as a unit. It's like they are on elastic rather than string. Gaps appear between the lines, meaning there are open spaces to run into and we don't win second balls. It is not rocket science, but simple organisation.