Much as I agree with most of this post, one of the things that made me most irate with early Dodds was his clear instruction to Dan Harvie to never cross the halfway line and just boot the ball long when he got there. It was so frustrating watching one of our most exciting and skillful players actively checking himself when instinct was about to take him on a mazy run and he looked bored and fed up by the tactics he was playing. There’s every chance, if he had stayed fit, we’d be talking about him in the same tone we are Kone and Humphreys - a skilful player who’s had the fun sucked out of them by the tactics Dodds is employing. And that is the rub of the “anti Dodds” argument on here. It’s not that people can’t acknowledge the difficult cards he’s been dealt since coming in - it’s that they don’t forsee any major shift in tactics or strategy if he remains.
Harvie was my POTS pre Birmingham, or at least, a very strong contender. He is sorely missed by this team.
Harvie is a superb player. Adam Reach looked (at least to me) to be an adequate replacement at left back in the handful of games he played there, but for some reason he stopped being used in that position.
What a brilliant post - sums up my thoughts exactly.
Worth noting here that Dan Harvie is out injured because of a tackle deep in the Birmingham City half at St Andrews.
Agree with your first paragraph, amazing what changes as you get older!
Agreed on Sadlier, Back, Harvie and Kone treatment.
Why do you believe we made several bids to sign Morley permanently. From what I’ve been told no permanent bids were made, MB wanted to sign him and DR refused to sign him on a permanent saying the data was not good enough. Hence the £100k loan bid only.
I have no idea if the Dan Rice / Morley thing is true, but assuming it is… if your data tells you Morley wasn’t good enough for us, the problem is with the data, not the player!
Morley’s record in the quarters in league games…
P19, W14, D4, L1
2 goals, 4 assists
Not bad for a number 6 eh Data Dan?
Brilliant post, @eric_plant apart from reservations raised by @aloysius re Dan Harvie’s role under MD (arising from the latter’s obsession with defensive strength) and by @Commoner re the only attempt to retain Aaron Morley being the offer of a very modest fee to extend his loan period by a few months.
Didn’t Ian Evatt tell the press that we’d offered £100k for a permanent deal, even though that was the same as the loan fee we’d paid.
edit: Of course my memory failed me - we’d offered £100k to extend the loan, nothing permanent.
as I said, my understanding was that we did indeed try to sign Morley on a permanent basis but that having met Bolton’s asking price on a couple of occasions they then changed that asking price
Much like the Matt Bloomfield situation people can decide what to believe or not but I’d hope you would know I wouldn’t just make that up
so you agree with the above? It’s absolute bullshit. As I said, Dodds only had him for four matches, but here is his “heat map” from one of them, which also shows that he got an assist:
Reservations duly expunged. In Plant we trust.
Great. And the other three?
I can’t find the post but someone above rightly pointed out that, while the football under Gaz was often defensive, there was a ‘plan for how to score’ (or words along those lines).
It is difficult at the moment to see what the plan for scoring is. I think we continue to play some decent stuff through the thirds. But we don’t have any clear plan to convert that into goals.
Early season we created a lot through under-lapping runs from full back. That’s much harder without Dan Harvie. I’m not saying we should ask Leahy to do the same, but we do need an alternative way to score.
Trouble is it’s very difficult to see what that should be with the current players available and their form/fitness. Most goals will involve one or more players winning a 1v1. That could be someone winning a foot race to reach a through ball, taking a player on for skill 1v1, or winning a contested header in the box.
Earlier in the season we had full backs sprinting into space, Fred, GMac and Sads taking on full backs and Kone able to roll his marker and bring others into play (or shoot). All of that has largely gone for various reasons.
Arguably Vokes could have been played into fitness to give us an aerial threat to play through. Otherwise, it’s hard to see what else could have been done beyond better recruitment or our wingers recovering from loss of form/injury.
The only thing I can see working is reverting to a back 4 with a much higher line and a more aggressive press to win high turnovers. That would mean bringing Low back in for Bradley. We’d also have to hope that Fred, GMac, Sadlier could start producing from wide areas again. Udoh could potentially play there as well.
Agree with much of what you say there. I too enjoy the live football whatever the outcome (mostly) and agree with almost all of what you say about support, generalisations on Dodds/Bloomfield etc etc, people only having a facile knowledge of formation tactics, etc etc…but my question was - as you were quoting Shanks about supporting whatever - essentially what did you think about the tactics on Saturday and do you feel there is no room for criticism?
And what does his heatmap look like prior to Dodds’ appointment?
the point was to counter the idiotic comment that Dan Harvie was never to cross the halfway line
this is the point I’m making that it’s very difficult to have a sensible discussion when people are coming out with stuff like this
There’s a heatmap above and it’s quite instructive to look at average player positions under Dodds vs Blooms. Our full backs (Pattenden/Grimmer and Harvie) played higher under Blooms than our wingbacks do now. That’s without taking into account we have an extra CB and all three CB positions have deeper defensive positions that our most attack-minded CB did under Blooms.
You’ll also notice that while Kone’s position isn’t wildly different all of the supporting cast are - which is unsurprising when we now have 5 players sat deeper than 3-4 were previously. He now sometimes has a player near to him whereas he had at least two in the past.
This may be partly down to injuries, but a lot of our attacking intent has been sacrificed in the name of control. Although, ironically because we offer no attacking threat any idea of control is only ever a deflected opposition shot or set piece away from disappearing.
People are on Fred’s back, but he now plays deeper than Grimmer/Pattenden did early in the season. At his most productive his average position was almost level with Kone. Is it any wonder he has no goals or assists and confidence is shot to pieces playing as a de facto defensive right back? Equally, is it any wonder that Kone’s form and confidence are also non-existent when he now has to do everything on his own?