Go out and move mountains to sign whoever is Jones’s best friend centreback in January. We stop leaking goals at the back and we won’t waste our window of opportunity that is the top-of-the-league goalscorer.
Until we get another Lloyd Jones to play alongside the real one, I think we’re destined to struggle defensively. Hector has been an enormous disappointment and Ness has gone backwards.
Just seen the Players' Marks thread. Hector - 7 dominant Hilariious. You need to change your medication.
What did he do wrong? Their goal was a wicked cross, almost impossible to defend, and he looked to defend on the front foot for the rest of the game, didn't let them play in front of him. Jones did so even more forthrightly, but they're both unafraid to mix it
His positioning, as always, was dreadful. He barely won a ball if he was challenged. He always lets attackers run beyond him, assuming that someone else will pick them up. He has zero organisation skills.
Cheltenham had one shot on target. He must have done something right
Umm. They are bottom of the league and have scored something like 10 goals all season. So one shot on target is par for the course. Otherwise we contrived to make the Gloucestershire race track look good.
Jones is a million miles away from being as good as Naby Sarr let alone Matt Taylor or Michael Morrison.
We shouldn’t judge individuals based on the disappointing overall team performance this season. Matt Taylor is who I’d compare Jones to, he’s pretty consistent and does his job well without standing out. I’m struggling to think what makes him a million miles from those three. The 11/12 defence was very strong as a unit but part of that was because they were settled.
He’s has had to play alongside Hector who’s made more errors and has question marks over how committed he really is. We’ve played various players at GK and FB, and even now our FBs are arguably WBs (signed for Holden’s 3-5-2) with their main strengths in going forward rather than defending. I’m hoping Watson and Edun get better with game time rather than become players we need to replace.
In front of them our wingers are very attacking, they play more like wide forwards than wingers expected to track back and regularly support the FBs.
Jones is a player I think could step up and be part of a promotion team, but we need to improve the quality around him and the others who could also make the step up.
I believe the club expected Ness to be a dominant force this season, but he's struggled since his patellar tendon injury. I believe it was just a grade one.
Going (a little) off topic, it just shows how strong and well Joe Gomez has coped with some nasty injuries and surgeries. His last was a full patellar tendon rupture. You don't see many (or any) recover from this and return to elite football. The scar can be found online and is not pretty!
I get that Fleming needs to boost his confidence, and it’s true that he won five headers, and it’s true that we all want him to do well. But it’s also true that if we want to progress as a club we can’t keep carrying players like Jones. If he was young, and especially if he was an academy graduate, you could making an argument for nurturing him, but he’s 28 and is unlikely to improve radically.
We need a dominant, Santos-style centre back as a matter of urgency.
We’re transitioning from having a ‘stop clocked’ gameplan that doesn’t work 22 times out of 24 to one that adapts. Fans and players will need a bit of time to fully get used to it.
I think the key to it was in Fleming's interview where he said Jones is someone who doubts himself. He's second guessing himself in key moments and it's costing us dearly atm. But it's not being helped by the management. Nobody on here thought he should've started last week and yet MA started him. I doubt anyone thought he should've came off the bench yesterday instead of REG slotting back, and yet they brought him off. Just leave him out.
He’s been excellent for us in general this season despite being part of a defence that has conceded 45 goals so far.
However, he’s had Hector, Ness, Thomas, Elerewe, REG, and Gillesphey all partnering him at different times in different positions, in different tactical set ups throughout the season.
He’s been asked to play on the right and left of a three, in the middle of a three, and on the left and right of the two centre backs in a back four.
He’s literally played with 6 other centre backs, and in every position possible as a centre back. Behind him he’s gone from having AMB, to Isted, back to AMB. In front of him he’s gone from Dobson at the base to Coventry, Bakinson, and also REG.
There has been no consistency or stability throughout the whole team and on top of that, he signed for us when Holden was here, he also was just coming back from an injury so worked himself into fitness, Holden got sacked in August, to play under Appleton who has just been sacked…
Bloody hell, it’s no wonder he’s found himself low on confidence and not playing as well as he showed when he first came in.
He could do with a week out and hopefully, he’ll be back ready to go against Reading on 10th Feb. There’s a good player in there and we’ve seen bits of it already. Hope we can build his confidence back up and he contributes to the rest of the season in the way we all know and hope he can.
The lack of clean sheets has gone from an annoyance to an epidemic, he’s lost his experienced partner and had a rotating array of dodgy defenders next to him, he’s had his side switched and then the formation. He’s been asked to be the wider defender who pushes out in a 3 when knowing when to go and when to stay is his big weakness and from there he’s struggled to recover. He’s also a defender who likes to step out and play a bit and those sorts of defenders are more susceptible to crises of confidence when it stops coming off - see John Stones at various points in his career. A mistake leads to a mistake leads to a mistake and now he looks shaky all the time. We saw this with Lavelle, he was never brilliant but his head dropped so badly he was freezing in the moments where he’d been good previously, not closing attackers down or throwing himself at shots. A bit of time out and then being in a more established and consistent defence that actually gets coached will help hopefully.
I called him a shit player in the comments after the game. I am sorry I said that as he was good after the mistake and he had the balls to apologise to the fans. Its also great to see Alfie sticking up for him
Jones, Hector & Thomas are all squad players in a top six team, hopefully only one of them is still here next season and we mostly see whichever one it is in the Motors Trophy.
I don’t really think this requires lots of analysis. Jones is a good player, but like 95% of League One players, he’s inconsistent. If he was more consistent he’d be playing at a higher level. It’s as simple as that.
Still do not understand why when he first got the ball he did not pass back to AMB, he was facing our goal, or has he no confidence in his goalkeeper?
There was a Blackpool player too close to AMB.
Correct. If you watch the highlights you can only just see the player in the edge of the shot.
I did notice that there was quite lot of booting the ball out of the penalty area into touch going on, perhaps more than normal. I imagine they’d been told to cut out the mistakes, and keep it simple. Felt a bit more sympathy for Jones after noticing the Blackpool player.
I really think he has been overhyped at the start of the season, he was making a lot of errors early part, and wasn't always leading to goals.. And as fans we was to focused on Hector..
Seems a nice lad, but he is bottom half league one player!
Liverpool obviously saw something in him all those years ago, but that was then, he's now at or past his peak and frankly is a very average league one player at best.
I'm sure he's a nice lad but we really need too do much much better.
Comments
In front of them our wingers are very attacking, they play more like wide forwards than wingers expected to track back and regularly support the FBs.
Jones is a player I think could step up and be part of a promotion team, but we need to improve the quality around him and the others who could also make the step up.
Going (a little) off topic, it just shows how strong and well Joe Gomez has coped with some nasty injuries and surgeries. His last was a full patellar tendon rupture. You don't see many (or any) recover from this and return to elite football. The scar can be found online and is not pretty!
Joking aside, him and May have saved our latest transfer window big time
‘stop clocked’ gameplan that doesn’t work 22 times out of 24 to one that adapts. Fans and players will need a bit of time to fully get used to it.
However, he’s had Hector, Ness, Thomas, Elerewe, REG, and Gillesphey all partnering him at different times in different positions, in different tactical set ups throughout the season.
He’s been asked to play on the right and left of a three, in the middle of a three, and on the left and right of the two centre backs in a back four.
He’s literally played with 6 other centre backs, and in every position possible as a centre back. Behind him he’s gone from having AMB, to Isted, back to AMB. In front of him he’s gone from Dobson at the base to Coventry, Bakinson, and also REG.
There has been no consistency or stability throughout the whole team and on top of that, he signed for us when Holden was here, he also was just coming back from an injury so worked himself into fitness, Holden got sacked in August, to play under Appleton who has just been sacked…
Bloody hell, it’s no wonder he’s found himself low on confidence and not playing as well as he showed when he first came in.
He could do with a week out and hopefully, he’ll be back ready to go against Reading on 10th Feb. There’s a good player in there and we’ve seen bits of it already. Hope we can build his confidence back up and he contributes to the rest of the season in the way we all know and hope he can.
Seems a nice lad, but he is bottom half league one player!
I'm sure he's a nice lad but we really need too do much much better.