Doddsy in his own words, does this sum it all up?
“I don’t think we deserved to lose, but we didn’t do enough to win”
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@glasshalffull1 what did you think of the game on Saturday? I saw it as a vital game that we needed to win. Did you think MD got it right?
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Apologies in advance @glasshalffull1, I hope you take this in the spirit it’s intended. I’m not having a go, but your stats are a bit disingenuous.
Gaz took over a team in dire straits with a good chance of dropping out of the league with no money to improve it. Not a comparable situation.
Blooms took over a successful team, but one that relied on faking head injuries and playing the underdog - even when we had a bigger budget than the opposition - to be successful. He tried to implement a change in tactics to make us more expansive and entertaining. Something he achieved to great effect, even though it was understandably a rocky start due to the need to change almost everything about how the team played. He also lost his best attacking player to Bristol City round the time he was appointed.
Dodds has taken over a team with some problems, that had started to be found out a bit and a huge squad he didn’t ask for. None of that is his fault. I - frankly - don’t really care about the results that much. I’d have expected us to probably fall away under Blooms just as we did under Dodds.
So, what are the issues then?
Overly defensive football and creating literally no chances of any note in the vast majority of his game. This is depressing to watch. I’ve lost count of the games we could have still been playing now and wouldn’t have created a chance in, let alone scored.
So, do I trust him to change things up? Well, why don’t we look at his record in his only other job where he’s had a decent amount of time in charge.
Dodds’ record is that he took over a Sunderland team on the cusp of the playoffs last season as interim manager. There was no expectation that he’d take them up, but his role was to give the team some freedom and unite the fanbase after a bad managerial appointment.
What did he achieve?
He took them to the edge of relegation managing to win TWO of 13 games. His team failed to score in EIGHT of those 13 games. They also scored just 7 goals overall in that spell.
Does that sound familiar..? Considering my concerns are about there being no attacking intent and the team creating no chances - let alone scoring - his record at Sunderland is a deeply concerning look at where we’re heading with him in charge.
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And we definitely deserved to lose. Orient had at least three chances you’d expect the net to bulge. We managed a single weak shot from about 25 yards that their keeper held easily. As you’d expect.
The issue, I think, is that even though the team were set up with a slightly more attacking intent he’s coached out any natural attacking intentions from the players. Even bringing Lowry on for Scowen didn’t work as it forced our most inventive attacking player - Humphries - to play even deeper, where his skillset is of no value.
I keep raising it, but it drove me insane at the time that there’s ten mins left in the game. We’re a goal down. Orient have a half hearted attack with three players. We have EIGHT players behind the ball? That’s due to the team’s instructions. And those come from our manager.
If we can’t commit anyone forward through disproportionate fear of conceding in a game we must win when a goal down, when will he take off the handbreak and attack?
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I noticed that as well…
Where is that picture from?
It’s from yesterday when we were presented with the Guinness World Record Certificate for being the first team in the world to be third tier top scorers at the turn of the year and successfully protect the oppositions net from bulging in 11x 45 minute first half performances by the end of the season.
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Well, they might want to let us keep it as we’ll definitely break the record next season as it stands. Keep up this rate of scoring and we’d expect a stunning 40 goals over a 46 game season making Scott Parker’s Burnley look like Keegan’s Newcastle.
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EFL player awards. Talking about Kone.
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Just watched it. Thought Mike came across pretty well, albeit club interviews are as dull and useful as Mike’s teams’ football.
I just wish there was a way to ask him about his teams never scoring goals.
Like, “Mike in your time as a manager your teams have failed to score in over half their games. Do you think this is due to how you setup a team? And are you happy with this? You’ve also kept a lot of clean sheets. Are you happy to sacrifice goals for clean sheets?”
The honest answer to this question decides whether I personally want him to carry on or not.
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Hi Mike
Fred Onyedinma hasn’t scored a goal, provided an assist, or played well since mid December.
What’s the reason you’ve chosen him to start in four of the last five league games?
What’s the reason you’ve chosen him to start as an auxiliary right back with limited license to get forward in four of the last five league games?
Fred spends most of his time tracking the opponent’s left-back/left winger and rarely gets forward with any support. It’s no surprise that he’s done nothing under Dodds’ system that does nothing to accentuate his skills/attributes and is just affecting his confidence.
And he’s well-known as a confidence player, which is why he’s always played best under Gaz who was a graet man manager.
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You make a good point here that Dodds is stifling the positive attributes of Fred and a number of other players. If the club sticks with Dodds then I think we will need a big turnover of players to implement his ultra defensive system.
I might be misremembering with Bloomfield but I think that it was his weddedness to the five at the back that was causing a lot of angst at the time. We seemed to be doing the same thing for quite a while, expecting things to change but they didn’t.
However, he did manage to change it and things improved. Obviously, it might not’ve been because of this but, sometimes, it seems that fans can see things that others cannot.
Also, Dodds can talk about control but how many games can you control when you don’t score in the first half?! From what I have seen, teams in control of the game have been leading rather than not letting a goal in.
Finally, under Dodds, we had a chance to get some of the floating supporters that many seem to mention to Adams Park with matches against Wrexham and Charlton. Honestly, how many of them will return after those two?!
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Humphries is the best example. Amazing craft, guile and shooting ability around the oppo box.
Mike plays his as a right-sided deep-lying playmaker. He only gets into a position to affect the game at set pieces.
A chronic waste of his talent.
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For me controlling a game is about being comfortable that you’re very unlikely to concede while also offering a real threat going forward - when you choose to use it.
A good example would be some of Mourinho’s old teams. They gave up possession, but never looked likely to concede even if they had 35% of the ball. However, they always had pace and threat on the counter - sometimes the threat even came because they gave up the ball in order to suck teams in.
In fairness to Mike against the bottom half dross we do have control in the first sense. However, we never have it in the second sense. This is one of the least threatening Wycombe teams I’ve ever seen.
And it’s just carried on from his Sunderland time as well.
In 15 out of 29 games (52%) his side have failed to score across two clubs. Both of which had some of the best attacking talent in their respective division at the time.
What’s the common denominator?
Also, you’re 100% right about the floating fans. Who’s going to come back to watch this kind of dull football? I won’t be travelling from Vauxhall to watch it when I could instead spend the time with my young son and I’ve been an on/off season ticket holder for 35 years. So, what chance do we have with people trying to form a connection to the club?
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I will support the team till my dying day, but that doesnt mean i wont criticise the management or moan when things arent going well.
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