I'd be interested to know where yesterday's second half performance leaves Scott Neilson. In the first half he had Guiseley in all sorts of problems when he ran at them but drifted in and out of the game too often to have any real impact. As others have said he does have a tendency to come inside which loses width.
Wondering the same...
Perhaps there's a wider question concerning Neilson's best position.
It's not like the "width" issue hasn't cropped up before.
Always easy to forget it's as much down to the team to feed wingers (spreading the ball) as it is for wingers to take responsibility when they become isolated or have the ball.
But whether that was the case yesterday (like in previous games) I honestly couldn't say, just we looked sharper after H/T.
Perhaps Neilson would be better centrally behind a front man/2 ?
That's where he seems to pop up...
Surely it's no co-incidence he spoke about scoring more goals even before the season started ?
In any case it begs the question what would the ideal team look like ?..
Wouldn't mind seeing Neilson on the right with Arnold on the left.
And drop Mackreth, that's one option...
tbh not convinced swapping sides will solve the underlying issue of whether Neilson is a 4-4-2 winger, personally I'm not convinced he is.
But even so, it looks strong enough to at least try.
That doesn't mean I would autmoatically drop Mackreth however, another underrated player IMO.
Whatever your opinion it's a round peg in a round hole.
In summary, if Shop and Pope are up front then perhaps either Mackreth makes way or it's 4-3-1-2...? Or Neilson in a 4-3-3 ?
Perhaps the other issue at large is our inability to "unlock" teams.
I don't particularly subscribe to Hurst's view that Guiseley made life difficult, but you can certainly say we've failed to unlock teams who've come to defend in the past.
It's great Hurst made changes and found width yesterday.
But let's remember, we don't always HAVE to go with width, players in the centre can be just as effective.
My point is our wingers couldn't "get round the back" when they played 5/6 at the back before.
Horses for courses...
For me there's a need to continue to also work on unlocking teams through the centre (lest we risk suffering more 0-0 frustrations in the future) and tbh, think we could do worse than watching Guiseley's 10 minute attacking 2nd half spell for inspiration !
The more adaptable we are at adopting different successful playing styles the better IMO.