Worried

[dougdeep]

 

[SJ's Love Monkey]

 

[dwayne]

I've just seen the board this afternoon and these calls for 4-4-2 are very interesting. LI will you allow me to be smug here after the bmuff friendly I was ADAMANT that CKR on his own upfront would not work and I must say I'm shocked that it's taken Mark Mcghee 5 games to come to that realisation!!

Now an exciting feature of the Colchester game before we got hammered was the link up forward play between Knight and CKR, let's see some of that please MM!

 

[London Irish]

Are you sure

from where I was he couldn't pass, tackle or shot, created nothing and spent the whole 2nd half doing nothing.

The bloke is complete a pile of shit. I have never seen him have a good game for us. Never once come out of the ground and said to mates "thought nicholas played well today" !!

Mind you it doesn't help when you play 4 central midfielders across the whole midfield and leave out the frenchman who played well last week.

When we were singing bring on the frenchman, the way mcghee was watching the game, he probalby thought we meant the keeper!!!

Yes, I was there Gerbil

Nicolas did his job, which he cleaned up some bad ball well and spread the ball around neatly in deep midfield.

Yes, I'd like him to operate with more confidence further up the pitch, but that is not really his game right now, but it may come with more experience.

I thought in the second half we pressed back Hull well and created some good chances. That's all you can ask our midfield to do.

The damage was done in the first half when our midfield didn't do that.

 

[London Irish]

Now an exciting feature of the Colchester game before we got hammered was the link up forward play between Knight and CKR, let's see some of that please MM!

We saw a whole game of it against Reading. How did you feel it went?

I've just seen the board this afternoon and these calls for 4-4-2 are very interesting. LI will you allow me to be smug here after the bmuff friendly I was ADAMANT that CKR on his own upfront would not work and I must say I'm shocked that it's taken Mark Mcghee 5 games to come to that realisation!!

You can smug when 4-4-2 earns us some points - it hasn't in one and a half games yet

Better that you display some intelligence in realising that set formations are neither right or wrong in themselves, it is the particular mix of players picked to operate those formations that can be right or wrong - and the opposition also comes into it as a big factor too. Discuss football intelligently please Dwayne and don't fall back on the easy answers, comforting though they may be

 

[rool]

Discuss football intelligently please Dwayne and don't fall back on the easy answers, comforting though they may be

Crikey, if that is the criteria for discussing football on here I'm never going to be able to post again.

 

[dwayne]

regardless of who are opposition is and what mix of our meage midfield we choose to employ.....4-5-1 will not work with CKR playing as the 1

 

[El Turi]

regardless of who are opposition is and what mix of our meage midfield we choose to employ.....4-5-1 will not work with CKR playing as the 1

Thing is I don't think it will work with anyone at the club as I don't think any of our strikers are up to playing up top by themselves.

 

[London Irish]

regardless of who are opposition is and what mix of our meage midfield we choose to employ.....4-5-1 will not work with CKR playing as the 1

Why were people on here pretty happy after Derby then?

And why did we dominate Crewe - another team like Derby that havn't lost a game yet - for 75 minutes of a game?

The 4-5-1 can work. But it depends on the opposition's strengths and weaknesses and the form of certain key players of ours.

What 4-5-1 has given us this season at certain times is a good command of midfield. That's key to matching much better teams than us in this division.

Other systems may be appropriate at different times and at even different moments within the same game (eg. it was right to switch yesterday when the central defender had the measure of CKR). But to say we must never play 4-5-1 is not backed up by the facts of our 4 games thus far.

I say here and now I hope McGhee considers putting out the Crewe formation at Preston. Preston are hugely organised in midfield and disrupting their link to Cresswell and Nugent will be the key to us getting something out of the game.

But if we revert to 4-4-2, and it may be right to do so, we have to be confident that weakening our midfield will bring the rewards up front. Leon did OK up front yesterday but the question marks remain whether he is a clinical enough finisher, 3 chances yesterday no goals. Jake is unproven, El Turi also. Big Mac can trouble good defenders but is not a natural finisher either.

We have some big questions to answer about CKR's natural partner in a 4-4-2.

Easy answers there are not. I hope people realise that whatever McGhee does, they are all tough choices.

 

[dwayne]

Why were people on here pretty happy after Derby then?

And why did we dominate Crewe - another team like Derby that hand't lost a game yet - for 75 minutes of a game?

The 4-5-1 can work. But it depends on the opposition's strengths and weaknesses and the form of certain key players of ours.

What 4-5-1 has given us this season at certain times is a good command of midfield. That's key to matching much better teams than us in this division.

Other systems may be appropriate at different times and at even different moments within the same game (eg. it was right to switch yesterday when the central defender had the measure of CKR). But to say we must never play 4-5-1 is not backed up by the facts of our 4 games thus far.

I say here and now I hope McGhee considers putting out the Crewe formation at Preston. Preston are hugely organised in midfield and disrupting their link to Cresswell and Nugent will be the key to us getting something out of the game.

But if we revert to 4-4-2, and it may be right to do so, we have to be confident that weakening our midfield will bring the rewards up front. Leon did OK up front yesterday but the question marks remain whether he is a clinical enough finisher, 3 chances yesterday no goals. Jake is unproven, El Turi also. Big Mac can trouble good defenders but is not a natural finisher either.

We have some big questions to answer about CKR's natural partner in a 4-4-2.

Easy answers there are not. I hope people realise that whatever McGhee does, they are all tough choices.

The common theme with Derby and Crewe was that we had some nice spells of possession, a lot of pretty passing but never looked like scoring, not great in my eyes. I know Mcghee is looking for progression this season and wants a bit more fluidity, but this will not happen with 4-5-1. I would rather switch to a more direct style similar to last season (exploit the pace we have with CKR,Knight and Carole) and have the midfield acting as a stopper (especially against the likes of Preston as you say). We simply do not have the creativity in midfield to put 5 there and play a passing game, and have the midfield acting as the engine room.