Just Back V Blackpool

I watched the highlights on the OS. Bart was unlucky to concede their goal. He saved the initial shot, clattered into Murray, the ball squirmed into the clear and their man was up first to reach it and slot it home. The real issue is that nobody stopped their runner I. The middle who went last about three without a challenge.
Jed’s equalising free kick was a stunner. They didn’t really set up their wall very well and at the point of impact only one of the wall jumped. The rest just watched it sail over their heads and into the back of the net. The keeper was beaten all ends up. It was a superb finish by Jed. He went on to terrorise their RB in the last ten minutes and looked really up for it. His cross for the winner was inch perfect and Cooper does not miss from there. I forgot to mention that Mahoney had a decent twenty minutes but he should have been on after the break.Evans came on to replace a tiring Dutch and Ben hardly broke sweat for a three minute cameo to replace a cream crackered Smith.
 
I’m so fed up with Rowett. totally stubborn and clueless. He is destroying the confidence of the best group of individuals we’ve had for a while.
Murray scores two and hits the bar on Tuesday so he swaps him with Cooper so it’s Cooper’s job to get down the left with Malone what a twat taking our tallest defender out of the central position🤷🏻‍♂️ It looked like Murray and Cooper changed this themselves after Cooper was struggling. Why not change approach when they only have 1 striker instead of sitting back. No cohesion and the team look like they don’t know what the approach is. It looks to be pass it across 3 slow centre backs then hoof it forward to Matt Smith with his back to goal! the players must be well fed up, surely everyone can see they understand and play better in a 442. Rowett perhaps you are not stubborn but suffering from insanity as you do the same shite expecting different results. If you don’t wake up you will be sacked and we’ll probably end up going down with a team whose confidence has been shot to bits by your approach.
 
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I'm beginning to wonder about Rowett. Playing ten men but does nothing to change things around at half time when it was blazingly apparent that what we were doing was just not working.

I also notice that when there was a break for injury their team was across getting a drink and their manager and assistants are on the touch line talking. On our bit a couple of players getting drinks and Barrett talking to them, Rowett still sat in the dugout!!

5 defenders and we still get caught on the break by their lone striker. Eventually we did change things when Mahoney came on but why wait till we are 1 down ffs.

They are chanting "you're fucking shit" and dead silence from us, as in all honesty it was hard to argue. Really flat atmosphere till the first goal.

Bad organisation up front, Smith winning everything in the air but with his back to goal as the ball is being hoofed forward by the CBs. Nearly every time it just dropped to their defenders. Get it down the wing and cross it!!
 
I'm beginning to wonder about Rowett. Playing ten men but does nothing to change things around at half time when it was blazingly apparent that what we were doing was just not working.

I also notice that when there was a break for injury their team was across getting a drink and their manager and assistants are on the touch line talking. On our bit a couple of players getting drinks and Barrett talking to them, Rowett still sat in the dugout!!

5 defenders and we still get caught on the break by their lone striker. Eventually we did change things when Mahoney came on but why wait till we are 1 down ffs.

They are chanting "you're fucking shit" and dead silence from us, as in all honesty it was hard to argue. Really flat atmosphere till the first goal.

Bad organisation up front, Smith winning everything in the air but with his back to goal as the ball is being hoofed forward by the CBs. Nearly every time it just dropped to their defenders. Get it down the wing and cross it!!
Their player should have been taken down (one for the team) by one of three of them. Fortune favoured them for the goal though. Re Smith we focused too much on playing the long ball up to him. When you’re playing against 10 men you need to make the pitch really wide which we didn’t do. No intelligence from the players to do so. Malone who was in acres of space most of the time was ignored or probably not seen.
 
I’m so fed up with Rowett. totally stubborn and clueless. He is destroying the confidence of the best group of individuals we’ve had for a while.
Murray scores two and hits the bar on Tuesday so he swaps him with Cooper so it’s Cooper’s job to get down the left with Malone what a twat taking our tallest defender out of the central position🤷🏻‍♂️ It looked like Murray and Cooper changed this themselves after Cooper was struggling. Why not change approach when they only have 1 striker instead of sitting back. No cohesion and the team look like they don’t know what the approach is. It looks to be pass it across 3 slow centre backs then hoof it forward to Matt Smith with his back to goal! the players must be well fed up, surely everyone can see they understand and play better in a 442. Rowett perhaps you are not stubborn but suffering from insanity as you do the same shite expecting different results. If you don’t wake up you will be sacked and we’ll probably end up going down with a team whose confidence has been shot to bits by your approach.
Mate, I'm staggered that he didn't change formation after the sending off.

If you play against ten men, you stretch them. Two wingers out wide and create more room inside. Three centre back to mark one man up front snd one less runner into the box? Really?

Basically, it took two set pieces to break 10 men down. Not open play in pulling them apart.

Sounds as though we played right into their hands snd made life very difficult for ourselves...as usual.

Very, very hard to understand this.
 
A laboured, one dimensional performance and a streaky win.

We started well. There was some good movement from Jed and Billy down the right, some similar play down the left with Molly and Saville and Smith was playing a good role as a target man. Benik was running well but rarely got onto the second ball from Smith. They were pressing well and being aggressive in the middle but not really looking a threat. The game changed after 15 minutes. A good through ball to Benik caught their defence napping. He was beyond their last defender who pulled him back. The ref had no choice but to send the lad off for an early bath. All my mates said that we should get the ref to change his mind and get them back to eleven but he wasn’t listening. Every body knows that we are poor against ten and today proved the case. Sadly our tactics didn’t change. My mate described it six or seven passes along the back line and then a hoof forward to Smith, and he wasn’t far wrong. There was a decent chance to Benik and some promising moves forward. We pressed them hard at the back but we just couldn’t make that telling pass or get the run of the ball in the box and the half finished goal less.

I was sure that GR would make changes at the break. What was the point of playing five at the back when they really only had one attacker? Surely play a back four, put Mahoney on in the middle and press them back. We carried on in the same vein in the second half and some good forward movement and some good pressing. And then the inevitable happened. We had a good press forward but lost the ball and they moved like lightning through our middle. Their midfielder took it past two or three in the middle, laid off a good pass inside. Bart came out, parried the shot but it fell back to the attacker who slotted it home. Their mob went nuts. One up with thirty five to go and with only ten men. Finally we changed formation with thirty to go. Off went Billy Mitchell, we went a back four and on came Mahoney. Our movement forward was better and we threatened more. earlier we did get the ball in the back of the net but there was a push in the box and Saville’s header was ruled out. We continued to press and the fruits of our labours was a free kick just outside the box. Molly and Jed shaped up to take it but it was Jed who hit the sweetest of free kicks into the top left for 1-1. We continued to press and Mahoney looked a threat down the left. A decent cross was cleared by their outstanding defender number 21 who was here there and everywhere all afternoon. Right at the death we scored the winner. A Mahoney corner went out to the right and Jed hit it straight back in. There was Cooper to rise unchallenged to head it home and make it 2-1. The Den erupted and their mob was silenced. We saw out the added five with no drama.

Bart played well, had little to do and tried hard to keep out their only shot on goal but was unfortunate to concede. Billy was steady at RWB and put in a couple of decent crosses. Ballard was class for all 95 minutes. Murray was solid and Cooper played well and took his goal well. Molly was lively but never really threatened all the time. Dutch was solid and aggressive and Saville had his good and average moments. MOM was Jed. His goal was top drawer and he had a great last ten minutes where he looked a real threat on the left. Smith was a decent target man but his good work came to very little. Benik had some good movement and work rate but also fell over when it really mattered.

All in all a very welcome three points. A clueless manager took a little too long to change tactics but eventually found the winning formula with a streaky win. They all count!
Too right he should have gone 442 immediately, poor management decision to leave it so long. I still think Cooper is out of form despite the goal. He made an horrendous f@ck up early in the game which nearly cost us a goal, his passing it totally off most of the time. People around me saying hes injured, if that's the case he shouldn't be on the pitch, murray and Ballard are more than capable of running the middle if we play 442
 
He has more tactical knowledge in his little finger than NH had in his whole body. It was just a pity that he never used it yesterday when they were down to ten men. The irony was that he is a manager who sets out not to lose and I am sure he felt that eventually we would just wear them down and score. When we went one down he realised that he had to do something drastic to turn things around. And he managed it but it was still a streaky win. We really should have been out of sight in the first half but we just couldn’t manage it. Still, three points is still three points and if NH had been in charge it might have been no points.
The next three days could be pivotal. If he can move on one or two and sign at least one attacking player then things could look up. If Jed goes late on Tuesday….which I think is doubtful…..and we are left with this prolific strikers in Bod and Brad then we could be deep in the brown stuff by November!
 
Thanks Silver for your report which basically mirrors my thoughts on the game. Keeping five at the.back against ten especially when it was a defender who got the Red Card was ludicrous. If mere mortals like us can see it why cannot Rowlett? As to their goal, as soon as Bod moved lout of his six yard box I could see he was going to make an "Horlicks" of it. His angle of approach was all wrong and he went down too early. I could and merrily would have killed him. Poor 'keeping. He has something wrong. Maybe an injury? Otherwise as my friend "The Reverend: said "Those three points were the luckiest we'll get this season". I told him he was right but would he stop sticking pins into his effigy of Rowlett?
 
Thanks Silver for your report which basically mirrors my thoughts on the game. Keeping five at the.back against ten especially when it was a defender who got the Red Card was ludicrous. If mere mortals like us can see it why cannot Rowlett? As to their goal, as soon as Bod moved lout of his six yard box I could see he was going to make an "Horlicks" of it. His angle of approach was all wrong and he went down too early. I could and merrily would have killed him. Poor 'keeping. He has something wrong. Maybe an injury? Otherwise as my friend "The Reverend: said "Those three points were the luckiest we'll get this season". I told him he was right but would he stop sticking pins into his effigy of Rowlett?
Yesterday I thought Bart could have done better but having seen the replay think he was unlucky Murray whacked him as he tried to gather the ball.

BUT, having said that, Reg Davies would have taken the ball, Murray and their scorer out in one hit and come out with the ball and smiling 😉
 
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Mate, I'm staggered that he didn't change formation after the sending off.

If you play against ten men, you stretch them. Two wingers out wide and create more room inside. Three centre back to mark one man up front snd one less runner into the box? Really?

Basically, it took two set pieces to break 10 men down. Not open play in pulling them apart.

Sounds as though we played right into their hands snd made life very difficult for ourselves...as usual.

Very, very hard to understand this.

Don't think Rowett did much wrong Tactically, what was missing was urgency in the First Half, we simply took too much time to get the ball forward. Not calling for us to lump it forward, but just a bit of token closing down by them was enough for us to pass the ball back and start again. Must have wasted half the first half that way. Players need to be braver and go past a lone player trying to close them down or look for a supporting player forward of them.
 
...but just a bit of token closing down by them was enough for us to pass the ball back and start again ...

This is the same over and over every game. No real pace or ability to go past players, slow ball movement which Rowett has said too. He must see it in training so why doesn't it change? Defenders and cdm don't really have this ability is my reason and he recruits defensive players with defensive ability and there you go Rowett, there's a big reason added to your defensive setup.
 
This is the biggest issue with Rowett all are tactical changes and subs are usually reactive to us going behind, where we then look like a team that can create chances and score goals - even against Real Fulham.
 
Funny some Backpool fans claiming the Ref did them, it was stone wall sending off for their fella on Afobe, the Free Kick for us where we scored was two arms in the back of Ballard, completely unnecessary but spot on by the ref. Their 'two' penalty shouts, one was a fair shoulder to shoulder barge and the other an embarrassing dive trying to go over a foot that had been withdrawn already. Finally the worst of the lot, our winning goal, the foul was their player shoving Murray Wallace into one of theirs, who was getting no where near ball Jed crossed to Cooper.
 
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Yesterday I thought Bart could have done better but having seen the replay think he was unlucky Murray whacked him as he tried to gather the ball.

BUT, having said that, Reg Davies would have taken the ball, Murray and their scorer out in one hit and come out with the ball and smiling 😉
He should never of been coming for the ball purley, that’s how I see it on the replay’s. Could be wrong but defender was there
 
I can never understand when a player is in the position of being last and pulling back/fouling a forward who is through and 'may' score.

If he does score and no foul is commited by the last defender then at least that team still have 11 players on the pitch, which at least gives them a decent chance of getting back into the game. If I were a manager it would infuriate me.