Holmes_and_Watson

Bah! Downes got the ball

Well wide from Brooks. But we're seeing a lot more space to run in behind them.

Yay! That often elusive second. Goal machine Adams. But only playing up there unless someone else asks loudly enough. 🙂

Lovely pass from deep. AA free on the back post, but you can see why he had a go.

Momentum: we have a good spell. We try a trick to get past someone. It doesn't come off. But we commit so many forward, they get a break. That extends into them getting a decent spell. I guess there's a RussBall lesson in sticking to the system.

Fusion

One of his chums ("the saucers are real") was talking about Project Blue Beam. That had a bit about our secret rulers having an earthquake machine, mind control lasers and global hologram projectors. I guess his weather control fits into that. All part of the insidious picture. If only we'd wake up and see it. Utter nutters.

Cushion

Exactly. If things are that far gone that players pick their positions, something is very wrong. I mean, if Baz were to ask to go up front instead of in goal, would...actually that's a bad example. 🙂

Is that not the speed limit change? Walking pace if you're in the Saints midfield. 🙂 Yup, I had that second line, and I wasn't for wasting it. 🙂

Thanks, as always, for that @AlexLaw76 Lots of interesting points. As aware as we are, that Autos are gone, with far too many games available. 7 games to prepare for another 3, if we do well. Ended up the weakest in that race out of the 4. Hopefully, his "if I leave" comments were honest ones, based on our position and the cub's expectation. If he's looking for any "oh no, don't leave!" responses he's kidding himself. The expectation is to go up. Without Wilcox, and returning players who can play different systems, the button might get pushed. If it doesn't, the squad he gets next season is very likely to be his last stab at taking us up. That's the cold reality for managers. He's wrong about there being no criticism during the run. There were plenty of eyebrows raised at some of the draws. Lots of the same things. Cites the possession but can't understand how we can't transfer that into wins. Well, that's sort of the point of his system. So, if he can't figure it out... Odd that he says it's not about styles, when he is welded to his, and it has a definite impact on all the things he highlights as issues. Martin mentions fight and momentum, when those are the things he trains the squad out of. We have work rate and a desire to win. But we play a style that clearly stops players taking risks, and Martin has chucked those crisp, short passing moves in recent times. Yes, running would help, but it's going to take more than that. I'll take the picking the desperate to play players, as a call to arms from them. Otherwise, he's basically put Stephens on the teamsheet in permanent marker. While the foundations of the club might be better than at the start of the season, that just underlines the utter shambles SR made of it last season. And I typed all that having seen the benefits for his approach; aware of the games we've had efforts in and even appreciating what Stephens brings to the squad. And it's not over yet, with the play offs to come.

Pain

Interests

Baz KWP, THB, Bedders, Manning Smallbone, Downes, Stu AA, Adams, Fraser Plenty of bench options available depending on what's needed. Bree, Stephens, Brooks, Charles, Aribo, Sule, Edozie, Lumley, Rothwell Yup. Manning. Smallbone is picking up the Stephens duties first half. Manning just giving Stu some needed support higher up and centrally, as Stu supports the attackers. Just more balanced.

There is no plan B 🙂 From 2021: "We have a Plan A because we really believe in it. There’s going to be pain, because it’s a big change and a lot of the players haven’t played this way before, but if we really believe in it and enjoy the process, let’s stick with it. I said that if I get sacked at least I will do it doing it my way and I’ll be comfortable with that. Plan B suggests doing it completely differently. If you watch our team, we tweak it all the time - we change the formation, we change the way we do things in certain games depending on the opposition - but we are passing the ball a lot, we are trying to dominate possession." Martin seems to be casting around for solutions. We've had games where we create a lot, but don't finish. Behind the surface stats, we see opponents get lots of time to reset, impacting the quality of our attacking play. We still get chances, but can we be making better ones. We struggle to change tempo, to change possession into sustained attack. We struggle to have clear directions in play, with players interchanging to do lots of good build up and control, while not being able to anticipate or be well placed to get on the end of it. And Martin is fine with the basics of that, saying "“For us, it is about taking as much fight out of the game as we can and controlling it with the football.” We've got the control, but the fight goes out the team with it. We work hard, and we've worked to the last minute and had some success when we've needed it. But all too often, we've not turned control into outcomes at key points in the game, where there is an element of emotion and momentum. We reset, forgetting that there's often a reduced risk in putting rattled opponents out of the game. You can still control and press an advantage. So we've seen Stephens getting an expanded role; Or trying to unlock Sule, or try 3 mobile attackers, or a more physical side. And variations between. Martin hasn't stuck with any of it, except having Stephens involved. We had one player early in the season saying what a change it was to have to relearn everything. But Brooks and Rothwell get dropped in. Often alongside the weaker links in his system. We've got players good a lots of things, but not quite enough of them to really unlock what Martin is looking for. Other managers play to the strengths they have. Often, they've no resources to do anything else. We're well down the path, with many of the same issues. One problem is that it's probably beyond teams at our level to be well stocked with such all rounders. Unless we go up, Martin will know he's failed to find a consistent solution, with the best squad he's had by a mile. Next season, he'll be following Plan A with a number of new faces. With a 2 year tenure being the average in this league, he'll really have to get it clicking enough for another promotion push.

Aribo MK2.0 is still a bit of a mix. There are times where he'll take a very safe option, ignoring far better options (he's not alone). He can make his pass, then makes sure it's not coming back to him by waving it away, or merging into his marker. But moments later he's picked out good space, or tackled well or supported the attack. He's another one who struggles to play his natural game in Martin's system. Being asked to be on the end of any pass, while drawing out players to create angles, to supporting others, to making runs or decisive passes. You get the feeling he'd rather just be a little further up to play the supporting role in a more standard system. I had to check the team sheet to see if Rothwell had started the game. Anonymous. It could be his role was to provide some deeper support, while Stephens got a much freer role. I saw Stephens in forward areas that you'd expect someone with Rothwell's shooting boots to be.

He's publically fell on his face twice when trying to work with players at a certain level. For all the self promotion, he doesn't trust himself or his approach at all when dealing with certain people. With us, he thought he'd learned from that. But clearly nothing had changed. On a more general point, it's good that anyone drives themselves to learn, brush themselves off and go again. Leading from a lower league may just really suit him. We ended up with a fragile, egotist devoted to a style that quickly became a confused mess. He had more than run his course with us, before he left. We'll just have to see if our current getting chippier, egotist, devoted to a style of play goes the same way. 🙂

Martin played Perraud at centre half. At the end of the game praised some, but not him. He got lumped into those who might have too high an opinion of themselves. A later comment from Martin, said with a smile or a chuckle, dismissed Perraud as not being at all suitable for his system. It was such a binning off of a player that, considering the positives Martin brought to others at the time, strongly indicated off the field issues. Lots of cliques and wantaways last season, so I concluded it was a legacy of that, that had carried over with some players into the new regime. I quite liked Perraud, and his effort. He got moaned at by a previous manager for his "outcomes" which were no worse than a lot of others at the time. Just another deal that didn't work out for a number of reasons as we slid down.

Ear

Another attempt from Martin to try and unlock some of his system’s deficiencies. He will see it as finding a solution for the players to deliver within his wonderful set up. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem capable of getting the right players on the pitch together at any one time, let alone implement any actual solutions. The core principle of possession is well in place. We gifted a chance or two from the flanks, that Martin is fine with. And we were outnumbered from one of our own corners. Also much the same as all season. Blackburn in the second half did have spells of momentum, and got a few shots away. But broadly, Martin will be fairly happy with that defensively. We’ve tried physical combinations. We’ve tried direct passes to the wing for one player to race on and hope for support. We’ve tried variations up front and, with Stephens, we’ve tried variations on inverted fullbacks and more direct approaches through the middle. None of those seems to have worked as yet, and the more it fidgets from one to the other, the further a solution seems to be. We lacked any kind of midfield creativity today. Stu was the big miss. His technical ability allows him to support, get a good pass away and take players on himself at times. Rothwell had a very quiet game, filling space to support Downes and Aribo more than being able to get forward himself. Stephens was fairly solid, and popped up in a lot of positions. But we lost any kind of linked play with that line up today, and he was certainly part of that. He did get a ball over to Aribo that came off the bar. Without it, we needed to get balls out to Fraser or Brooks quickly and provide numbers centrally to support their attacks. That would have needed a certain amount of urgency. Brooks had a couple of good moments early on. He provided AA with a really good chance. We ended up with 3 samey players on at the front today, none of whom really got into the game and didn’t offer any variation. Martin did bring on Smallbone and Adams and we immediately looked a bit more structured. Fraser had done so little today, I was wondering if it should have been Brooks to stay on. Momentum had gone a bit again, by the time we brought on Sule and Edozie. Sule did okay getting a good chance and taking on his man. Edozie was lively. But without much end product, although he wasn’t really helped. Blackburn didn’t play a high enough line for Sule to really get into space out wide. His best chance was through the middle. That was the second of our two chances on target today. It felt like a bit of a reset where Martin was trying out some variations again. He’s been doing this over the last few weeks which has arguably cost us a run in at the automatic places. So, now it’s play offs I expect we’ll see more of it. His system doesn’t bring the best out of our players. Or rather, it brings out some good qualities in some of the players, but at the expense of other areas. We don’t seem able to get enough of them on the park at any one time in his gameplan to put teams away. This is with a number of players who would slot nicely into the systems of other clubs in the division. Tougher the way we like to set ourselves up. As it was virtually the last kick of the game. Smallbone’s free kick was an utter shocker. Something you can pin the lack of drive, inability to capture momentum and risk rather than system to win a game of football on. He’d made a really positive impact for us apart from that.

That's the worst free kick I can remember for ... well, it's the worst one I can remember... what on Earth was the point of that with seconds to go.

Last minute free kick!

Lots of hard work there from Aribo. But he should have passed it back to Edozie in the first place.

Total RussBall 🙂

Good chance. You'd want Sule to be the man to get through. But couldn;t get it past the keeper.