Just Back

They had players busting a gut to get on end of things in our 18 yard box i never see us doing the same but as i'v said previously once fletcher & mclean etc get upto speed it's going to take a good side to stop em winning lge

I thought we were too deep and toothless simply because of how we set up.

5 defenders (with two fullbacks asked to play as wingbacks) and a holding midfielder is always going go leave anyone up against it going forward. Soon as they scored the first the game was over.

We knocked it about really nicely and there were moments when we dragged Wrexham all over the place, yet didn't have anything to hurt them.

Easy criticism of Hurst but I felt he gave them too much respect today. As said pre-game, our back 4 has coped OK so far this season so no need to change it just for them.  I appreciate the injuries to Rose and Eisa really limited options but even a half each of Khan and Ainley would have allowed us to keep the previous system.

Best performance so far from Pyke, despite finding himself very isolated and starved of service.

Easiest criticism going of Hurst, but until he releases the shackles a bit we'll always struggle to break teams down and score goals.  The change to the defence is even more frustrating when all 3 goals were pretty sloppy.

Sounds like a pretty toothless performance.

How did Conteh play?

I know we're split as a fanbase on this, but a recurring theme has been attacking in the final third. I like Mullarkey a lot as a defender, but we do miss Efete's energy going forward and his willingness to get into the box. At the very least he's another body defenders have to keep an eye on and frees up our forward players a little more. Every time I've seen us play this season we look unenergetic and static out wide. Mullarkey, who was poor yesterday, is a safer bet definitely, but as it showed at Wrexham, going ultrasafe doesn't guarantee clean sheets..

I think there were some positives to take from the performance - we dominated possesion and generally looked very comfortable on the ball, lots of nice play and touches in tight areas and crisp passing. We were up against a top side in this league and in open play we largely didn't look out of place, apart from in the final third.

Plenty of negatives too, the obvious one being we were so utterly bereft of any goal threat, just 1 tame effort on target all game for all our nice possession. Our nice passing play forward is quite slow, so by the time our forward players are on the edge of the oppo box they are all back and well organised, hence why so many of our shots seem to be blocked. This is exacerbated by our crossing being genuinely dreadful, hits the first man or skied over everybody. On the rare occasion we get a decent cross in there usually isn't anybody in the box anyway, or not enough. We had 8 defensive players on the pitch - GK, 5 'backs', conteh, Pyke (a wing back attempting to be played as a striker, who looks exactly like the player being played out of position up front that he is).

I think the issue though is that the game crystallised the concerns that have been highlighted both pre season and especially as deadline day approached. We have nothing available behind rose striker wise. Pyke was surely signed as 4th choice, anexperimental 'can we get him to play up front' and looks like it. Yeah we have injuries but that was known about before the deadline and wasn't rectified. Remember all the talk of how having an expensive 20 goal striker left you vulnerable to injury and we would be better spreading the goals around the team? Well what we seem to have done is not sign the 20 goal striker, but also not left ourselves with any one fit who is capable of playing up front to a decent standard so we are still horribly exposed if rose is injured. Added to that is instead of spreading the goals around our little goal threat is so far centred on eisa anyway, with the same issue. Lastly I don't think the subs could have changed much about yesterday, but in general we don't seem to have much in terms of game changers on there. Khan came on for a welcome appearance and improved us a bit,  but we have to be honest, he's a decent player but one that failed to nail a place down in the first team of a mid table side last season. The fact we are so eagerly anticipating his return and hoping he improves us is perhaps a bit concerning.

We were playing a one side with mega bucks though, with a weakened team, so this one defeat isn't season defining. I said pre season that if, after this game, we were 12th that means we are doing OK. This was because of how hard our opening fixtures are. We are a little below that in 15th, and I'd say we have been disappointing, not terrible or anything but yeah a bit underwhelming. Basically due to the widely identified lack of goal threat. After the Swindon game our fixtures get a bit easier and we've got to take advantage of these on paper easier games and create more and score more, and start moving up the league, if we don't then yeah we need to be concerned.

I thought Pyke was one of our better players yesterday. Had a bit of pace about him, troubled their defenders, was often first to the ball and protected it too. Gnahoua showed flashes of class, Khan troubled them when he came on, Maher and Rodgers were better without Waterfall, Eastwood made some decent saves and punches, Conteh was solid, Amos had his hands full and was ok, but Mullarkey, Clifton and Holohan were very under par, Clifton seemingly played in a position where he couldn't influence the game.. That's how I saw it. Also thought the way to get at Wrexham is to attack them quickly not be ponderous like we were. We looked like we were trying to take minutes out of the game from very early in the first half. Personnel available didn't help, but team selection and formation tied our hands far too much..

Quoted from Bigdog

I thought Pyke was one of our better players yesterday. Had a bit of pace about him, troubled their defenders, was often first to the ball and protected it too. Gnahoua showed flashes of class, Khan troubled them when he came on, Maher and Rodgers were better without Waterfall, Eastwood made some decent saves and punches, Conteh was solid, Amos had his hands full and was ok, but Mullarkey, Clifton and Holohan were very under par, Clifton seemingly played in a position where he couldn't influence the game.. That's how I saw it. Also thought the way to get at Wrexham is to attack them quickly not be ponderous like we were. We looked like we were trying to take minutes out of the game from very early in the first half. Personnel available didn't help, but team selection and formation tied our hands far too much..

Have to agree to disagree on the Pyke aspect, I think he has looked mediocre in every performance I've seen from him. Certainly not matt Green level dreadful by any means, but just 'can do a job' up front level performance of being a body on the pitch, the game just passes him by.

Hopefully he improves when we have a run of games against weaker teams and create more chances (fingers crossed).

Quoted from toontown

I think there were some positives to take from the performance - we dominated possesion and generally looked very comfortable on the ball, lots of nice play and touches in tight areas and crisp passing. We were up against a top side in this league and in open play we largely didn't look out of place, apart from in the final third.

Plenty of negatives too, the obvious one being we were so utterly bereft of any goal threat, just 1 tame effort on target all game for all our nice possession. Our nice passing play forward is quite slow, so by the time our forward players are on the edge of the oppo box they are all back and well organised, hence why so many of our shots seem to be blocked. This is exacerbated by our crossing being genuinely dreadful, hits the first man or skied over everybody. On the rare occasion we get a decent cross in there usually isn't anybody in the box anyway, or not enough. We had 8 defensive players on the pitch - GK, 5 'backs', conteh, Pyke (a wing back attempting to be played as a striker, who looks exactly like the player being played out of position up front that he is).

I think the issue though is that the game crystallised the concerns that have been highlighted both pre season and especially as deadline day approached. We have nothing available behind rose striker wise. Pyke was surely signed as 4th choice, anexperimental 'can we get him to play up front' and looks like it. Yeah we have injuries but that was known about before the deadline and wasn't rectified. Remember all the talk of how having an expensive 20 goal striker left you vulnerable to injury and we would be better spreading the goals around the team? Well what we seem to have done is not sign the 20 goal striker, but also not left ourselves with any one fit who is capable of playing up front to a decent standard so we are still horribly exposed if rose is injured. Added to that is instead of spreading the goals around our little goal threat is so far centred on eisa anyway, with the same issue. Lastly I don't think the subs could have changed much about yesterday, but in general we don't seem to have much in terms of game changers on there. Khan came on for a welcome appearance and improved us a bit,  but we have to be honest, he's a decent player but one that failed to nail a place down in the first team of a mid table side last season. The fact we are so eagerly anticipating his return and hoping he improves us is perhaps a bit concerning.

We were playing a one side with mega bucks though, with a weakened team, so this one defeat isn't season defining. I said pre season that if, after this game, we were 12th that means we are doing OK. This was because of how hard our opening fixtures are. We are a little below that in 15th, and I'd say we have been disappointing, not terrible or anything but yeah a bit underwhelming. Basically due to the widely identified lack of goal threat. After the Swindon game our fixtures get a bit easier and we've got to take advantage of these on paper easier games and create more and score more, and start moving up the league, if we don't then yeah we need to be concerned.

My feelings pretty much, losing to Wrexham and even Swindon (if we do ) are not my concern .

It's beating Crawley , Colchester , Morecambe and Sutton at home - all games we should probably be winning as we do have a better team than them ; we play them all in the next few games and I would say judge us more after that when a more balanced amount of the good and bad teams have been played .

If we drop points and go back to drawing 0-0 at home against  bottom 6 fodder I think my current optimistic outlook may drop .

We e got to do better offensively. Simple as. We don’t create enough chances and we are short of forwards.

Same old same old, toothless, and creatively lacking going forward. It was the same time and again, get the ball to the Winger/Wingback they put in a poor cross that is either short, too long or when there's only one in the box and repeat.

Conceded goals the same way we always seem to concede, one waiting for the second ball to come in instead of pushing out and stopping it and not following midfielders in from the edge of the box because we've all been drawn into the 6-yard box.

We did everything far too slowly, every time we attacked, the player had already gone before the pass was made or we let Wrexham get back and regroup while we pinged the ball between Conteh, Maher, and Rodgers.

All those saying we had possession is all well and good but all that did was stop Wrexham from putting more past us. We can have 60, 70, or 80 percent of the possession as we tap it around the back 4, but if we don't do anything with it, it's pointless having it.

I thought the players let Hurst down yesterday. I said about 5 minutes into the second half, they didn't look up for it and they'd come out with their heads down, and not up for putting up a fight.