I don’t think he will be as good as Aaron Morley, but that is only because I rate him as comfortably the best passer of the ball I’ve ever seen play for Wycombe. But if Boyd-Munce can be anywhere near as effective it would be great and, I think, help the team immeasurably.
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Malone is here and Shev was last seen wanting Luton to win ahead of Wycombe Wanderers
Jumping the shark, I think they call it
Absolutely right about the space down that side I saw that county had someone in the Frank Adams but did we
I didn’t realise that fact Morris Ital. Very observant of you. Well for all the coaching staff and the Ai stuff that we use, surely we should have someone on the opposite side of the ground to the coach to observe what going on at the opposite side of the pitch. Perhaps someone should tell the club because we could all see what was happening down that side of the pitch but it took Dodgy 55 minutes to notice it.
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Maybe I’m applying the uneducated eye test, but to my uneducated eyes our play out from the back was extremely risk averse. The spectacle of defenders shuffling the ball between each other with the nearest midfielder on their heels seemingly being instructed to not move about to create room for a pass to them or another was about as frustrating a half of football I’ve watched for a while.
If this is the data-optimised way the spreadsheets tell us association football should be played, I’m pretty sure crowds will dwindle like they did under Al*n Sm*th.
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So Quarterman. If we can all see we have no right back for 58 minutes why can’t the coach or any of the coaches sitting on the bench. Stockport 7 must have thought it was Christmas.
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It reminded me of the Richard Keogh 5 at the back messing about with the ball at the start of Blooms time as manager.
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If he is good enough pick him.
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You’re making the assumption that Dodds has a clue what his strongest 11 is. On current showing I see little evidence to support this theory.
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Pipe dream, yes. But this pipe dream in my head is still believing in an audacious £1.25m bid for Morley in the dying moments of the transfer window. Those Bolton Wanderers’ bonds will be maturing soon at the heady 8.5% they offered their fans.
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I honestly don’t know. I have a pet peeve in football generally that managers (head coaches) seem reluctant to change glaring issues like that with early substitutions. Almost as if they are afraid to upset players. For me, I would’ve taken Casey off after 15 minutes for Grimmer, and told Junior to tuck into almost a standard right midfield until we got control of that side. If Junior couldn’t or was unwilling to do that, get him off early as well. By all means then come out at the end and say tactically it was my error, and apologise to those players subbed, but it might have meant we got something from the game.
Regarding Dodds specifically, it was a complete cock up, but he needs time to learn (well, at least more than 2 games). Bloomfield persisted with a dull and ineffective back 5 for a long while, and then made the same mistake over and over again while defending leads (bringing on defender after defender), but he learned and grew as a manager in time. He has to have the chance to do that. If he can’t, he should go of course.But hopefully he’s intelligent enough (and not too stubborn) to do so.
For Dodds, for me his biggest failing to date is the tempo we play at. Too slow, not urgent or proactive enough and very little pressing and ball turnover or tackling. I dont actually think its set up to be particularly defensive, but it is lifeless a lot of the time, which is why people are bored by it.
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Question - did Abbott play No.6 during his loan period last season?
If so, why didn’t he play there on Saturday?
This feels about right. We’re decent on the ball.
Off the ball we collapse back into shape, rather than counter press. If and when we lose the ball and the opposition break fast we struggle to get into shape and do not look comfortable with a scramble defence. We could do with some tactical fouls to prevent this.
I think if we can keep the ball but move it faster and do it ten yards higher up the pitch we will score goals.
Defensively, we look quite weak in midfield and can’t reliable win balls coming into the box. That’s going to be a problem if it continues and we let teams reach halfway before starting to press them.
If an employee of WWFC called me a customer I would very quickly put them right. I would, of course, expect good customer service. A supporter is a partner in the club, the supporter collective are the very soul of the club, the real owners. An “owner” who buys the club is the current “custodian”.
The same if they called the club a business. Football could never be a business, there is too much emotion invested. It should, of course, be run in a business like way.
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That’s not what jumping the shark means 
The rut Bloomfield had got into was a classic case of persisting with a formation and tactics that were ill suited to the players available (defenders who could pass the ball quickly and accurately enough to break a high press, wing backs who weren’t good enough to fulfil an over demanding role). That was in the context of Bloomfield having his budget cut and backing himself to improve young players.
In theory Dodds should have centre backs available that have been selected by Rice and Stockwell from the statistics database as being especially good at the passing game required to pass your way out of a high press, so either it’s down to the coach not being able to get capable players to execute the tactics or the player recruitment process has failed to identify suitable players.
Getting into a similar rut with the vast amounts of money lavished on this squad is beyond frustrating, though thanks to the way “modern” clubs are structured, everyone can pass the buck on to the next person without anyone seemingly taking any accountability for their mistakes and failures.
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I’m happy to see Dodds persevere with a back three if that’s what he thinks gets the best out of his expensively assembled squad, though he needs to start Fin Back next week as right wingback - and we’ll need to sign another in this window. I’d then drop Casey for Grimmer as the right sided central defender. Quitirna and Fred should play as wide attackers either side of either Kone, Udoh or Fink. That just leaves the midfield to sort out. I’m not sure which of Abbott, Boyd Munce, Henderson or Mullins is the first choice six. I’m assuming it’s now Abbott, but he seemed more Scowen than Morley on Saturday. If we can’t find a ball playing 6 in our squad despite all our signings in central midfield then I really do think more heat needs to be placed on Tom Stockwell. It’s the position we’ve been most needing to fill since the start of the year and the fact none of us really know now who’s meant to be in that role doesn’t reflect well on our Director of Football Strategy & Data Intelligence.
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Spot on again. Now go for the hat trick (if you haven’t already of course - I just had to stop in my sluggish tracks to make this comment).
Brilliant post.
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Morning Eric. Was worried you were unwell as we’d not heard from you for a while.
I had to google Jumping the Shark. Apparently it’s a reference to a tv show - probably in the days when I didn’t own a set - called Happy Days.
I am therefore unable to relate your reference to the situation of Shev and Malone.
Hope you agree that the last 24 hours on the Gasroom - certainly on this thread - have been a very welcome return to mature, constructive discussion.
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