Even though we beat both Barnsley and Luton, I felt both of those teams looked much more comfortable on moving the ball around the pitch, as does virtually every other team in the Championship compared to Charlton. If we are going to set up so defensively away from home, we need to be much much better at retaining the ball. Instead we just invite wave after wave of attacks and don’t have the defensive capability to keep a clean sheet.
After sleeping on it woke up feeling a bit better. I am still concerned, the tactics and performance not good last night but if you had giving me the points tally for February on jan 31st I would of taken it.
Reading, Hull and Middlesbrough are all in a rot and will be panicking just as much as us, at least we have been picking up some points.
This team might not be the best and lack concentration but they don’t lack heart and guts, they have shown us time again that they can recover from set backs and need to do that again.
Its on a knife edge and think will be a lot more twist and turns yet which will test our nerves but it was never ever going to be easy this season.
Woke up and I’m still raging. Such an unavoidable defeat and if anything to get 3 points on the board. Accompanied by the managers comments, piss take.
That's exactly what it was last night - a piss take. If we accept these tactics we are not doing anybody any favours. If Bowyer wants to play that way he can F off somewhere else and he needs to know we feel that way. He cannot continue to be negative like this in the way he sets up. He can't blame the players as he can get the message on the pitch through subs or at half time to not play in this way.
Our midfield and defence are utterly woeful, just woeful, and imo the worst in the league. ESI bought in 4 midfielders in Jan and none of them are good enough. This team is worse than last year.
I’m not in the ESI blame camp, although I’d liked to have seen a more productive window. We have players than can turn in good performances when the set up is right, we just can’t afford too many players to have an off day. Bowyer has got it just as wrong as he has right lately and that’s not good enough.
Unbeaten against the top 5 - We compete and take our chances. It’s almost like Bowyer is forced tactically to play on the counter.
Beating teams below us - Big 6 points at home where we had to be the team on the attacking foot.
Games against midtable - This is where we come unstuck I feel. Bowyer ends up playing to conservative, our performance levels drop and we get beat.
You can't play negatively to scrape a point with those three liabilities in central defence, Sarr is also a liability at times bit at least he provides an outlet and some sort of threat.
The moment we saw Pearce on the team sheet it was obvious what sort of a game it would be.
Our midfield and defence are utterly woeful, just woeful, and imo the worst in the league. ESI bought in 4 midfielders in Jan and none of them are good enough. This team is worse than last year.
I don’t think that is in question. We had Aribo and Biélik this time last year.
The current midfield looks distinctly worse than that. Worrying and you have to agree, for supposedly minted owners, that transfer window was a limp-wristed attempt at strengthening.
That was a sickener. Checked the score when I woke up briefly, 0-0 in the second minute of injury time. Went back to sleep.
Sounded too negative, the team looked too negative, as it has in the last three away games.
I definiteely think we play better football with Naby Sarr in the side rather than the hoofing from Pearce and Lockyer. Hopefully he'll be back on Saturday. Also don't know why McGeady is being used as a bench-warmer. I thought that would be Smith's job.
May watch the highlights later if I can bear it.
Wouldnt bother with the 'highlights',there werent any.
If we finish 21st Bowyer will have worked a miracle.
The fact that we have not done a 'reverse Liverpool' and finished mathematically bottom 3 by the end of February is a tremendous achievement by Bowyer given what he has had to work with.
Roland we know about but this new lot have not really pushed the boat out to help Bowyer either but the PR is good and people (want to) buy into it.
We all get pi**** off after a defeat, particularly one like tonight in time added on to time added on almost, yet are people seriously calling for Bowyer's head?
He's doing a tremendous job in circumstances that are adverse for all sorts of reasons.
Have to disagree somewhat. Whilst I agree Bowyer performed miracles to get a team to fight & scrap when he had no choice other than to play kids.........but now he has experienced players to pick from. Tonight is no different to many performances this season, esp away from home. Stoke & Middlesborough are just 2 I could mention- set up negatively & with no creativity and with the hope to try to nick a point. Not for me I'm afraid. Over the past week Barnsley have gone to Fulham & won 3-0. Luton beat Brentford at home & tonight Wigan won 3-0 at Reading. We havemt scored 3 goals away from home all season, and only a handful of times at home. We have had the least attempts at goal out of all 24 teams in this league. Pathetic. That's not down to playing kids. Or injuries. Or being tired. Or having a dodgy ref, a last minute free kick or not having the rub of the green. It's down to coaching & tactics.
Nailed it @golfaddick or should I say smacked it right down the middle. I am getting so so pissed off with our defensive set up. Even when we win games it feels like we get away with it - Brentford, Leeds, Barnsley etc.
We were pathetic against Stoke and Bowyer addressed this against Forest. We weren't all over them, I don't expect that, but we got players forward supporting each other quickly and supported the front players sufficiently to create a threat. I said after the Forest game that Bowyer did well until the last 20 minutes when he turned into a coward again. We got away with that one, but at least I thought we wouldn't see that Stoke approach again. How wrong I was. To make the mistake once is excusable, twice is close to unforgiveable. I have no issue with playing negative when you have Vennings and Dempsey starting, you are playing the hand you are dealt, but we don't have to play that way now.
Without Sarr, our central defenders can't pass apart from simple nothing balls. They get a nose bleed when they try to do anything more ambitious. Maybe that is harsh on Oshilaja who does try to play decent balls without Sarr's quality, but he does try. Pearce and Lockyer need Sarr. Hopefully a tight calf doesn't seem too serious, but with the way we treat injuries, Sarr's foot will probably drop off tomorrow!
I have no issue Davis playing the role he has, but Pratley is better at it. But Pratley is injured. Cullen does his job well. But if you don't have Sarr, playing two defensive midfielders makes us too negative. Sarr gives us added creativity that allows us to play with the two defensive players and one creative one. he also gives us added threat at set pieces whether he touches the ball or not.
What Wednesday needed to do last night was suffocate Oztumer, which they did. It is easy enough when you don't have much more to worry about. If you watch the game again - I don't recommend, look at the clearances we make. 100% of them are picked up by Wednesday players. Look at the clearance they made - most are picked up by Wednesday players. This is not because they are so much better, but because we sit back too deep and are too defensive minded. It means they created more chances that they have all season. And if you buy enough tickets you have more chance of winning and that works the opposite way round in terms of our defence.
Sarr has to be fit on Saturday or I fear more of the same. Bowyer is probably too proud to admit it, but he does need to stop being such a coward. I am so livid, I would happily say it to his face.
We statutes strongly and looked the better side for the first 15-20 minutes but I think perhaps Wednesday got the better of some refereeing decisions and our impetus drained away. Wednesday started to get back in it and we didn’t really grab a hold of it.
Second half they created a lot of chances and we couldn’t maintain control for long enough to stamp our authority on the game and they kept coming at us. We had a couple of good chances ourselves and were unlucky not to score but they could have had a few.
In hindsight if me and the lads had been a bit more positive especially in the last few minutes we’d have come away with a point or maybe even 3. It’s something for us to think on going forwards as we’ve conceded a fair few in time added on this season and it’s not jail about the defending, we should t be in those situations in the first place.
If we start with Cullen alongside Davis at Huddersfield then the games already gone imo. We need a big response after last night, we need to be positive and have a go.
For those watching on Red Button. Hands up who didn't know exactly what would happen when the commentator said they had not scored a home goal this year...
Like day follows night any stat like that is worth a bet on us because we are so charitable.
If we start with Cullen alongside Davis at Huddersfield then the games already gone imo. We need a big response after last night, we need to be positive and have a go.
If Sarr and Pratley are still out and with no Lockyer, Bowyer will have no choice but to go with 4 at the back on Saturday as he has other centre halfs. I suspect he’ll go 4-4-2 and bring Purrington back for Alfie who needs a rest. I’m not even going to try to suggest what midfield he sets up.
Didn’t see it but to play one of Oshilaja and Davies in midfield is detracting from any chance of playing good football - to play both makes it impossible - thought bowyer had learnt that last Saturday - just don’t get it - the game must be a lot more complicated than I realise
Don't understand how Bowyer sees football. He says we hit the bar and Doughty underhit a pass or otherwise we could have been winning. Well by same logic Wednesday could have been 5 - 0 up by then with much better chances missed.
The polarising views are out in full force now. After Luton we were happy as larry, and now we're getting people calling for Bowyer's head?! Probably means the truth is somewhere in the middle.
We need to stop this shithousery and cultivating an underdog mentality. I think that's why Bowyer says "we deserved something/we were unlucky/we were robbed" ad nauseam. I am also sick of it. But I get it I think. We still have a Duchatelet-sized pomme frite on our shoulder, and until ESI have that relatively clean slate in the summer, I am prepared to accept that it still lingers.
But surely Bowyer knows he has to hold his hands up sometimes? And that he needs to take a bit of managerial responsibility. It's a big learning curve he's on, and he has lots of room to develop, but you can't excuse yourself all the time.
All this said - we're 18th. We are 16th over the last five games, which isn't the worst thing. We are clearly able to perform (as Luton showed, and especially with Lyle in the side), and we do not shirk from the challenge. We got it wrong tonight tactically, but I doubt we have the same approach on Saturday. I certainly hope not, anyway - I'm off up to Huddersfield - and I expect we won't let this affect us too much mentally.
COYR.
Great post.
I think / hope Bowyer will learn to hold his hands up and accept responsibility over time.
Don't understand how Bowyer sees football. He says we hit the bar and Doughty underhit a pass or otherwise we could have been winning. Well by same logic Wednesday could have been 5 - 0 up by then with much better chances missed.
They're comments that'll be for the benefit of his own players - Deep down Managers / Footballers probably dont care what fans think of their post match comments.
The comments aimed at the fans will always be the cheap rhetoric that'll be designed to get people excited and eager for future events
Alex Ferguson was probably the most successful manager of all time and I do not remember him ever coming out and saying it was his fault or saying his players were shit .
We all may know it is nonsense and I am certain Bowyer knows the same but coming to the press and saying "I was shit" or "the players were shit" pretty much never works. What happens when you lose the following week?
The set up seemed wrong to me, way too much respect for a seriously poor Wednesday team- we should have gone at them. Trouble is our team looks mid table League One. Oshi, Pearce, Lockyer and Davis would not get into other Championship teams.
Before the game I read people saying our bench looked strong but it had Hemed, a no goals striker a poor QPR team did not rate last season; Smith, a kid who could not get into a poor QPR team this season; McGeady who was utterly at fault for Blackburn's first with a woeful attempt to block their player who had been binned off by an average League One team, Lapo who is all heart but not the finished product by a long way; Purrington whom most had written off a few weeks back and Green whom has really only shown fleeting signs of quality.
This is on ESI, they promised the world and delivered stocking fillers.
There was a comment I saw on here which said we had a free kick in their half in the 93rd minute, which we sent back to Phillips. 30 seconds later, they scored. i mean what the actual f&""k? From that position, why not lob it into the box, and maybe pick up a deflected winner, or a corner which sees the seconds ticking away where our keeper is a long way from the action? Sending it back to our keeper invites them onto us. I was gutted for the team after the Hull draw, and their were a couple of other sucker punches this season, but last night we brought that squarely on ourselves by not attacking.
There is little point in playing two strikers if the rest of the team are so far back they are out of contact. Last nigt, we were up against an out of sorts team who hadn't scored a goal at home this year. I followed this on here, and it sounded like one way traffic. We changed nothing at half time and the second half started worse. Had we nicked a point, it would have been pure luck - our game management entirely depended on the Massive's inability to score from all their chances, so while I was so gutted I couldn't even post coherently last night, this morning it's just anger. All the teams around us won - some against better opposition. We needed a win, but we sat back and cowered.
Huddersfield needs a better mentality, or this will repeat on saturday.
One of the most disappointing things for me is that last season we had the best midfield in the league by a long, long way.
Okay we have stepped up a division, but the midfield we have available to us now just isn’t of the same quality.
With Cullen and Williams fit and playing we are half way there, but we are missing two big pieces of the jigsaw. Gallagher was one of them, but that’s gone.
That’s why we don’t get players in support of the attackers, that’s why we play the ball to the opposition so often, that’s why we are unable to protect the defence as well as we should.
We seem to lose the midfield battle most of the time, and for our management team to be former midfielders, it is what disappoints me more.
How many miracles can the management team achieve though against all of the odds resources wise.
All the best kids sold by RD; Aribo foolishly allowed to run his contract down, getting in Beilik was a wonderful decision.
Then in the summer after promotion our budget is cut. We are scrabbling for players. Shopping in Tooting market at closing time because Lidl and ASDA are too expensive.
Through some kind of miracle they bring in Gallagher who is amazing, manage to pull in favours for Leko, Field and Kayal. Then Jan comes and they are all taken away for one reason or another.
MS comes riding in with his super duper deal phone where he has just downloaded the Trash Nothing app and Freecycle website as Tooting is too expensive but finds we are beaten to the freebies so heads off to Hewitts Farms past it's sell by date, bargain bucket, take what you want for free aisle.
Comments
Beating teams below us - Big 6 points at home where we had to be the team on the attacking foot.
Games against midtable - This is where we come unstuck I feel. Bowyer ends up playing to conservative, our performance levels drop and we get beat.
The moment we saw Pearce on the team sheet it was obvious what sort of a game it would be.
Without Sarr, our central defenders can't pass apart from simple nothing balls. They get a nose bleed when they try to do anything more ambitious. Maybe that is harsh on Oshilaja who does try to play decent balls without Sarr's quality, but he does try. Pearce and Lockyer need Sarr. Hopefully a tight calf doesn't seem too serious, but with the way we treat injuries, Sarr's foot will probably drop off tomorrow!
I have no issue Davis playing the role he has, but Pratley is better at it. But Pratley is injured. Cullen does his job well. But if you don't have Sarr, playing two defensive midfielders makes us too negative. Sarr gives us added creativity that allows us to play with the two defensive players and one creative one. he also gives us added threat at set pieces whether he touches the ball or not.
What Wednesday needed to do last night was suffocate Oztumer, which they did. It is easy enough when you don't have much more to worry about. If you watch the game again - I don't recommend, look at the clearances we make. 100% of them are picked up by Wednesday players. Look at the clearance they made - most are picked up by Wednesday players. This is not because they are so much better, but because we sit back too deep and are too defensive minded. It means they created more chances that they have all season. And if you buy enough tickets you have more chance of winning and that works the opposite way round in terms of our defence.
Sarr has to be fit on Saturday or I fear more of the same. Bowyer is probably too proud to admit it, but he does need to stop being such a coward. I am so livid, I would happily say it to his face.
We statutes strongly and looked the better side for the first 15-20 minutes but I think perhaps Wednesday got the better of some refereeing decisions and our impetus drained away. Wednesday started to get back in it and we didn’t really grab a hold of it.
Second half they created a lot of chances and we couldn’t maintain control for long enough to stamp our authority on the game and they kept coming at us. We had a couple of good chances ourselves and were unlucky not to score but they could have had a few.
I think / hope Bowyer will learn to hold his hands up and accept responsibility over time.
The comments aimed at the fans will always be the cheap rhetoric that'll be designed to get people excited and eager for future events
We all may know it is nonsense and I am certain Bowyer knows the same but coming to the press and saying "I was shit" or "the players were shit" pretty much never works. What happens when you lose the following week?
The set up seemed wrong to me, way too much respect for a seriously poor Wednesday team- we should have gone at them. Trouble is our team looks mid table League One. Oshi, Pearce, Lockyer and Davis would not get into other Championship teams.
Before the game I read people saying our bench looked strong but it had Hemed, a no goals striker a poor QPR team did not rate last season; Smith, a kid who could not get into a poor QPR team this season; McGeady who was utterly at fault for Blackburn's first with a woeful attempt to block their player who had been binned off by an average League One team, Lapo who is all heart but not the finished product by a long way; Purrington whom most had written off a few weeks back and Green whom has really only shown fleeting signs of quality.
This is on ESI, they promised the world and delivered stocking fillers.
There is little point in playing two strikers if the rest of the team are so far back they are out of contact. Last nigt, we were up against an out of sorts team who hadn't scored a goal at home this year. I followed this on here, and it sounded like one way traffic. We changed nothing at half time and the second half started worse. Had we nicked a point, it would have been pure luck - our game management entirely depended on the Massive's inability to score from all their chances, so while I was so gutted I couldn't even post coherently last night, this morning it's just anger. All the teams around us won - some against better opposition. We needed a win, but we sat back and cowered.
Huddersfield needs a better mentality, or this will repeat on saturday.
All the best kids sold by RD; Aribo foolishly allowed to run his contract down, getting in Beilik was a wonderful decision.
Then in the summer after promotion our budget is cut. We are scrabbling for players. Shopping in Tooting market at closing time because Lidl and ASDA are too expensive.
Through some kind of miracle they bring in Gallagher who is amazing, manage to pull in favours for Leko, Field and Kayal. Then Jan comes and they are all taken away for one reason or another.
MS comes riding in with his super duper deal phone where he has just downloaded the Trash Nothing app and Freecycle website as Tooting is too expensive but finds we are beaten to the freebies so heads off to Hewitts Farms past it's sell by date, bargain bucket, take what you want for free aisle.
Not Bowyer or JJ's fault.