Loved your post on the PNE forum Smudger. Very classy. I certainly appreciated your historical knowledge of their club, Im sure they did even more.
The clear the air talks the squad had after Coventry has worked. Seems to be lots of encouragement instead of pointing fingers. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
The difference between last season and this season in defense is so dramatic. Would people generally agree that the gap in attacking players between the prem and champ is greater than the gap in defenders?
J am sure that the improvement in the last two games is due to the positivity gained by playing hughes down the middle. The 433 formation tonight didn't seem to make any difference on the scoreline tonight with our "park the bus" opponents actually having more shots. Possibly a game more suited to a team including Deeney
Sky are going to have to get creative on Friday. Two wins without our 'most important player' and Munoz has been here a couple of months now. What will they talk about??
Good win tonight, was never gonna be a pretty one but even at 0-0 I thought we played on the front foot Hughes was great in the middle and Sierralta a rock at the back again. Only negative was Zink still looking a fair way off the pace when he came on
Just remember in his last cameo Zinc scored a tap in after keeping up with Sarr. Most of our attackers haven't managed that all season.
Attacking player zinc is clearly not the guy to bring on when we are 1:0 up with 10 to go his game management was shocking leave him on the bench please
As a lot have already said our defence is very good this season, however I actually think that most of the credit for that should go to Vlad. Though it has to be said that to his credit "The Kid" has gratefully inherited the superb defence that Vlad created and has just carried on where Vlad left off, hence the defence remains in good nick. We are now beginning to see real improvement with our MF and forward play in the last couple of games, and I think that is mainly because "The Kid" has finally seen the light and dropped the two albatrosses that have been weighing us down and switched to a 433 formation. However having said all that and even though we are winning loads of corners and free kicks in and around the box, our set piece play is remains as ******* abysmal as it has all season, with the exception of our penalty conversions. Therefore if we could only improve on the rest of our set piece delivery and conversion rate it could well be full steam ahead for HMS Pisstheleague.
I disagree. It didn't come off but it appeared to me the right change at the time. Sometimes, the best defensive change is adding/switching an attacking player to get a little more control. Ultimately it is easier to stay 1-0 up if we have the ball in their half. I thought Sierralta and Cleverley were the standouts today. Sierralta was colossal in the second half - a brilliant response to an uncharacteristically ropey first half. On a few occasions he showed a surprising amount of quality on the ball - both with his passing and dribbling. Cleverley did his usual running and pressing etc. but I thought his passing was a lot better today - a number of really good switches. Kiko was an even better outlet than usual too. We didn't create too much, and Preston were very organized and set themselves up for a draw. But good to see us stick with the shape and passing style away from home against a decent side and the win is a fair reward.
I'm sure with some more minutes under his belt he'll be re-charged and will end up batterying the opposition and be transformed. He will be end up being electric .......... I'll get me coat
I think he needs to get to grips with the term game management, 3 late appearances last 3 games, shocking against qpr and tonight and coasted through the bristol game as nothing to play for as I said imo just leave him on the bench
They've both hardly played so it's difficult to really judge them. They both need more mins from starting or from longer spells coming off the bench. Both have shown glimpses of quality at times.
Troy gives his support to the "senior pro" group during the latest "clear the air" meeting. His striving to be a full part of the current orchestra has resulted in a "couple of niggling injuries" from overexertion.
Job done, feels exciting. Something about the squad has changed, not just the football but body language and stuff from Sarr is much better. The obvious answer is just a 6-0 win but conspiracist in me says it's the formation, the tactics and no Troy.. but just enjoying it for now.
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Agreed, if we go up and that is a big if, we will owe a lot of it to the way Ivic set up our defence because it has been the bedrock of our season. Sannino gets a lot of stick on here, but a lot of what we achieved in 14/15 was on the back of the tactical regime he installed.
Yep. Was mentioned on the Hive commentary, and I noticed it too. Very evident that players were making a point of applauding the idea, even when execution wasn’t what I should have been. Body language was much better all round. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Troy comes back, given he’s the main culprit for throwing his hands up in frustration when he’s not given the perfect pass.
It must be awful to play with Troy, everytime you go forward it must be in the back of your mind that you will get a rollicking if you try and be brave and go solo or take a shot yourself.
And also knowing that unless u give him the ball 2 feet from the goal line with no one to beat he won't score. I'd imagine playing with Troy is like having a boss who is much worse at your job than u r, telling u to do things that u know are counter productive or ineffective and then yelling at u when it goes wrong even though its really their fault.
The pen was a lucky break. Without that the forum would be full of criticism again over how insipid and lightweight our attack is away from home. 8 goals in 15 games, or something like that? With 16 games to go we are effectively 4th c6 points from the top 2 taking other's games in hand into account. Other than the win on Saturday, we are a long way from showing the form needed to get into the top 2 and stay there. On the positive side, we are looking more and more secure in the play-offs, giving us a 1 in 4 chance of promotion.
