Meanwhile, now he has his feet under the table it’s 11 points in 6 games for Blooms with a crap Luton squad. Unfortunately I still think they’ll go down, but we would have gone up with him as manager.
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i still have confidence in Dodds, with the pressure off hopefully we can play with frwedom !
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I thought we played reasonably well again. Although our wide attacking players aren’t doing enough at the moment and Kone looks a bit isolated. I’ve heard suggestions Sadlier is fit. If that’s the case I’m astounded he isn’t at least on the bench.
Is it me or is there some really poor body language of late? Several players noticeably pissed off at the support in recent games and not really acknowledging the spectators at the end. Hopefully just down to collective frustration at recent results.
Far too early to cast judgement on Dodds. He’s clearly able to structure the team to move the ball around nicely, get it forward and maintain a fairly solid defensive base behind. Whether he’s able to really motivate the side and get the best from the individuals remains to be seen.
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I haven’t given up yet , Wrexham think they are promoted the smugness may backfire . If and yes if we win on Tuesday we are back to 3 points , we have stevanage at home wrexham are away to wigan . It could be level or 2 points , surely they have run out of brown envelopes for the ref . The time we lost to Bristol rovers at home their fans celebrating like they had won the league , we thought we would go down only to find Bristol rovers lost the last game and relegated . But if not let’s start experimenting in the last 4 games to get some momentum for the playoffs. The good thing is I don’t think wrexham will stay up if they go up .
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Not sure they are a crap side. They were in the Premier league last year.
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Completely agree. We’re all very down after the last 2 games but things will look very different if we win on Tuesday.
Well, that was a really disappointing day overall. The first half I thought we were excellent, playing in a way that we haven’t done for some time (bar the last 20 minutes at Rotherham) - on the front foot, aggressive and with tempo. We certainly are still currently lacking in the final third, particularly with Kone not being quite himself, but generally we dominated, looked confident and had that bit of swagger about us again. Unfortunately, once again we didn’t score when on top and this proved to be fatal today. Reading had shown some signs of life towards the end of the first half, but were much improved second half, while we lost our way a bit again. We just don’t seem to be able to put together a 90 minute performance at the moment. And, like Tuesday, the subs once again sucked the impetus out of our performance - a bit of a theme in general recently (again, Rotherham apart).
It seemed a 0-0 all day though until an error from Humphreys - unfortunately playing that bit deeper after the subs he found himself in an unfamiliar position and made an error.
For me we have one last chance on Tuesday - if we can win we are still in with an outside chance, but we MUST win that to put some semblance of pressure back on Wrexham, and turn our momentum around. More likely though, it looks like we are going to finish 4th or 5th, so need to play ourselves back into goal scoring form, and get players around Kone more quickly so he can get back to his best. If we can do that we certainly have a chance in the playoffs - there is no team hugely to fear and we can certainly compete with anyone in the division (bar Birmingham, obviously).
My last thought was one I had earlier this evening. If we hadn’t brought in anyone in January except JUST Aaron Morley on a permanent deal (and Taylor), and retained Taf, Hartridge, Wheeler and Hanlan, I genuinely think we’d be still in the top 2, despite losing Matty. The huge number of signings made without the input of a manager/head coach have led to a bloated squad which must be tough to manage. I think we all knew that losing Morley was going to pivotal, and so it has played out. What a player that lad was for us, a truly brilliant passer of the ball, regardless of anything else, I miss the pleasure of watching him play, although I do have a nagging feeling that we are going to watch him pass us off the pitch at Wembley in May. That would be so galling, but perhaps it might highlight to those in power that sometimes data cannot tell everything you need to know, you need to use it alongside your eyes. Morley was THE player who made us tick, and we haven’t been the same without him.
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Great post @Quarterman. The hill I’ll die on this season is that losing Morley has impacted us more than losing Bloomfield (although I don’t minimise the impact of the latter). Morley completely dictated the way we played in the first half of the season.
On the playoffs, I’d love to get excited, but our record against the other top 6 teams this season is shocking. We have a lot of work to do to turn this around.
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If Rice were to be given the old tin tack by Lomtadze, maybe there could be a path back for Bloomfield at some point?
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Probably the most frustrating thing recently has been our apparent attempts to walk the ball into the goal. We are taking so long to get the shot away it gives the opposition plenty of time to get behind the ball. It drove me mad seeing Dale Taylor do that last season, it’s probably going to take years off my life watching us do it as a team in the run-in this season.
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My thoughts entirely. Not signing Morley was a big mistake. We haven’t been the same team since he left.
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There is no way Rice is going to get sacked and as for Bloomfield coming back that is pure fantasy. Automatic promotion looks almost impossible but I maybe in a minority but I believe we can still get promoted through the playoffs. Although our form is not good and goals have dried up , you only need a win, a draw and a win to get promoted. With our squad , we can do that.
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I certainly don’t think you can say auto promotion is over although you might be able to say that if we fail to win on Tuesday. Win on Tuesday and it is right back on.
Of course we should have kept Morley but Hanlan, Tafazolli, Wheeler and Hartridge are not good enough and were rightly moved on in January.
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And if we get to the play-offs can we sack Dodds and get Ainsworth in on loan?!
From what I heard Bloomfield leaving isn’t quite as portrayed, he wasn’t pushed out and quite a few of the players didn’t say goodbye as they felt he abandoned them. Bloomfield didn’t like the data driven method and not willing to be just the coach ( rightly or wrongly ) I don’t think he liked the owner either. He is not coming back , our poor form is a combination of all the changes , see how we go next two matches and if we haven’t closed the gap experiment.
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This is ironic, considering we’ve had 50 shots in two games. We certainly aren’t shot shy. But somehow, I was also left with the same feeling as you. i.e. as if we weren’t shooting at the opportune moment
I don’t think many people will agree with your take on Bloomfield. Many think he was pushed.
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Just what i’m hearing from club contacts Bloomfield wanted to leave some time ago. He should have stayed to the end of the season if he wasn’t happy his stock would have been higher with a promotion. He was not pushed he just wasn’t willing to work with the structure.
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Thats the way it seemed to me too Bookerblue. But I’ve no idea, ultimately all we know for sure is Bloomfield chose to leave. We were also told in a recent trust meeting, that an attempt to keep him was made, i.e. a contract was offered. But we obviously don’t know the details. After that its rumour and opinion, including the rumour he attended an interview with Millwall earlier. Anyway, its history now. They’ll be plenty of time to ruminate on all of this in the summer.
We clearly miss Morley, but I think the biggest lesson to be learnt is not to use loan signings, particularly from teams in the same division as us! I would hope the time is coming to an end when we are reliant on them. But the only reason that’s the case is because to paraphrase Football Manager, we’ve had a tycoon takeover and can splash the cash! Although its not our cash, its a billionaire tech bro who hasn’t even visited his plaything yet (as far as we know).
We might have had 50 shots over the last two matches, but how many clear cut chances have we created? Pretty much 0 in my opinion.
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