Digweeds Trousers
New member
Interesting game tonight and I think we need something from this given whats to come in the next 10 days:
Walsall vs Brighton Preview
Neil @ 3:16 pm Monday 16 March 2009
Saturday came as a bit of a shock, didn’t it? I mean, we know Bristol Rovers had been on a run of form, but that result seemed to come from nowhere.
Someone by me said that it seemed that too many players, having failed to win on Tuesday night, had decided that the playoffs were out of reach and it was time to get the deck chairs out. However, I’m not too sure of that and think that the result actually showed some weaknesses in the squad and the tactics. At least three of the goals came from a defender or midfielder running from deep and, in all cases, no one from our midfield tracked them back. I thought that the lack of pace and mobility from our central midfield, Hughes especially, was cruelly exposed, as, on several other occasions, the furthest Rovers player forward was an unmarked midfielder. I mean to say, a 0 – 5 defeat when the top scorer in the Division hardly got a kick means that we must have been sadly lacking in other Departments.
That all won’t be helping Hutchings as he tries to pick the team up ready for the visit tomorrow night of another team desperate for points at the wrong end of the table, in the shape of Brighton.
Before the game at the weekend, I was advocating making some changes and giving a few of the youngsters a chance between now and the end of the season, but that should change after the terrible performance. The temptation might be to make wholesale changes (and Hutchings has threatened that), but I’d favour the approach of sending out the same eleven (injuries permitting) and telling them to prove that the Bristol result was a fluke. What we do know, however, is that the injured Roberts and the suspended Ricketts will both be absent.
As for the opposition, they will be without Glenn Murray (a player who cost them some 300,000 last year, in an example of how the other half live), as he picked up another injury following his return to the side at the weekend, and Gary Borrowdale, out with a knee problem.
Dangerman?
Needs no introduction to fans of lower league football, it’s Nicky Forster. The man who once cost Blues £700,000, has 172 League goals, 26 of them coming for Brighton in just 63 starts.
Predictions?
Brighton won 5 – 0 on Saturday, while we were losing 0 – 5, in a strangely co-incidental manner. That 5 – 0 win, however, was against Manager Russell Slade’s former club, Yeovil, and he would have had them wound up after his strange sacking form the West Country team earlier this season.
Looking past that, Brighton are in the bottom four, although it is their home form that it letting them down badly. Away, they have won 4, drawn 6 and lost just 6, comparable with our own record.
We should have too much for them in this game, but the effects of the humiliation on Saturday will be the great imponderable. I’ll still go for a home win.
Walsall vs Brighton Preview
Neil @ 3:16 pm Monday 16 March 2009
Saturday came as a bit of a shock, didn’t it? I mean, we know Bristol Rovers had been on a run of form, but that result seemed to come from nowhere.
Someone by me said that it seemed that too many players, having failed to win on Tuesday night, had decided that the playoffs were out of reach and it was time to get the deck chairs out. However, I’m not too sure of that and think that the result actually showed some weaknesses in the squad and the tactics. At least three of the goals came from a defender or midfielder running from deep and, in all cases, no one from our midfield tracked them back. I thought that the lack of pace and mobility from our central midfield, Hughes especially, was cruelly exposed, as, on several other occasions, the furthest Rovers player forward was an unmarked midfielder. I mean to say, a 0 – 5 defeat when the top scorer in the Division hardly got a kick means that we must have been sadly lacking in other Departments.
That all won’t be helping Hutchings as he tries to pick the team up ready for the visit tomorrow night of another team desperate for points at the wrong end of the table, in the shape of Brighton.
Before the game at the weekend, I was advocating making some changes and giving a few of the youngsters a chance between now and the end of the season, but that should change after the terrible performance. The temptation might be to make wholesale changes (and Hutchings has threatened that), but I’d favour the approach of sending out the same eleven (injuries permitting) and telling them to prove that the Bristol result was a fluke. What we do know, however, is that the injured Roberts and the suspended Ricketts will both be absent.
As for the opposition, they will be without Glenn Murray (a player who cost them some 300,000 last year, in an example of how the other half live), as he picked up another injury following his return to the side at the weekend, and Gary Borrowdale, out with a knee problem.
Dangerman?
Needs no introduction to fans of lower league football, it’s Nicky Forster. The man who once cost Blues £700,000, has 172 League goals, 26 of them coming for Brighton in just 63 starts.
Predictions?
Brighton won 5 – 0 on Saturday, while we were losing 0 – 5, in a strangely co-incidental manner. That 5 – 0 win, however, was against Manager Russell Slade’s former club, Yeovil, and he would have had them wound up after his strange sacking form the West Country team earlier this season.
Looking past that, Brighton are in the bottom four, although it is their home form that it letting them down badly. Away, they have won 4, drawn 6 and lost just 6, comparable with our own record.
We should have too much for them in this game, but the effects of the humiliation on Saturday will be the great imponderable. I’ll still go for a home win.
