Just Back

Appreciate the conditions weren’t great but I’ve never seen a team move the ball so slowly, and control the ball so badly. It was painful to watch at times, it was making my eyes bleed. Everything needed 5 or 6 touches, movement was non-existent, anything on the floor was trickled into someone immediately in front, anything over the top was hopeful at best.

Took me 20 minutes to realise Wood was playing, absolutely anonymous. He had umpteen opportunities to put the ball in and couldn’t muster a single bit of quality - this from someone at a Championship club?

3 individual errors for the goals - Rogers, Thompson & Cartwright. The third one completely kills us after we’d had the smallest flicker of hope with Vernam & Rose coming on, brain dead.

Artell blaming the ref is a joke - it wasn’t the ref’s fault we were 2 down and effectively finished within 22 minutes AGAIN. The incident he mentioned with Obikwu wasn’t a foul, was about 30 yards from goal out on the wing and there were 3 or 4 defenders covering.

We are in deep, deep shít. It’ll be a miracle if we stay up but if Vernam and Rose can get 7 full games in each, there’s a hope.

Quoted from Bigwinn1975

The biggest conundrum I have is the defence.

New players come on board and games 1-5 they are great. Think Mullarkey, Rodgers, Tharme, Hume…

We all agree they are mustard- a real addition to the shocking defensive  set up

Then they collectively turn bad.

Why???

I know we have big questions elsewhere like goalkeeping, strikers and midfield, but the biggest drop off in performance from start point is defence?!?

Think it’s simple and obvious, they have to play behind the worst midfield we’ve probably ever had and in the last twenty years that’s some achievement!

Quoted from Hagrid

In fairness to the lad. He’s got 3 goals and he’s 18 years old and expected to lead the line with very very little service

Well he's 20 and a full international,  but otherwise fair points.....

This midfield is poor. Individually and as a collective. Worst I can remember.

He should be tearing this league up

Quoted from Lincoln Mariner 56

Well I watched all the game on tv and thought the ref was consistent which is all you can ask for. Yeah he could have made a couple of bookings and given some fouls but I prefer refs who aren’t over fussy and just let players get on with it.

Ref certainly wasn’t at fault for any of the three goals we conceded.

Considering the number of bad refs we've had this season this guy was pretty good.

It's all so frustrating and tiring.

It seemed we'd turned a corner after Donny, but now that six-game undefeated streak feels like an anomaly and this is who we really are — a fragile, badly-formed squad of sub-par lower-league players thrown together with little cohesion and no real identity.

No obvious plan of how to play, and no sign of one. Games have been lost by huge margins and way too early in games. We might play okay but we're just not staying in games to be competitive.

Now the manager is seeing things that the fans aren't. Maybe Artell sees things differently from the dugout but I didn't see why today the referee copped it from him so much.

No wonder the atmosphere is flat at BP; there's nothing to get behind. The two victories we got this month were massive. They were satisfying in that they showed fight, but the quality isn't there. We scraped two wins and, other than that, it's been a truly abysmal 2024.

I do not envy the board one bit. They sacked Hurst when I think 95% of the fan base thought it was right to do so. Artell's appointment seemed grounded in logic and, as usual, I didn't sense much disagreement.

I can understand why they didn't fire him after the Donny game, and the following run seemed to back that up. I appreciate we've just lost to two teams who could both be playing L1 football next season, so there's that to take into account.

The issue for me is that staying up isn't worthy of praise. It's the very least we should expect from a new manager. Artell had 26/27 games to achieve something and, points-wise, he's done absolutely nothing. We're closer to relegation with games running out and some of our home defeats have been record-breaking.

Personally, and I said this a while back, he went beyond the point of no return. In other words, no matter what he does now, it's just a matter of time before he goes.

We go down, he could and perhaps should go. We stay up, great, but nothing to celebrate. I really don't see how he's instilling confidence in the fans to part with more £££ for next season if it's based on what we're seeing right now.

Of course, I truly hope I'm wrong. I know we had some shocking home defeats under Buckley in his first spell before things clicked. Maybe history will repeat itself.

But that's a big worry for me. We're stuck in a loop. Once again, underperforming in L2, fighting for survival, fans not really seeing anything to truly get behind. This whole squad could go in the summer and I wouldn't care that much (bar Rose). And I'm usually someone who looks for the positive.

I just really struggle to get behind what I'm seeing. I just don't see what 1878 see. I don't doubt Artell is intelligent, but is he 'football smart'?

We're a hard club to manage, but so is everyone else! No one has it easy down here, unless they're bankrolled (and even then the manager is under greater pressure to deliver success sooner).

I dunno. I'm just fed up of feeling this way all the damn time. Sure, we might even beat Bradford next week, and that'll make everyone happy. It'd be a significant win. But how long before it's back to the same old. Going back to my earlier point, I just don't get bigger plan.

I'm not overreacting; I thought he should have gone after Donny and was happy to be proved wrong when we picked up results. But looking at his record overall, there's no sign yet that he's a manager for the long term. I'm not getting any glimmers.

I'm not saying he needs to go now, but I really do worry that we'll be stuck saying the same things again next season as soon as it becomes apparent we're not going anywhere. More clamour for him to go, more time and money given to someone to spend who won't see out half the contracts he gives to his signings.

When are Pearson and Davies going to come to the end of their Teflon free association with the defensive excrement show we see every week.?

Just one stat I’m stuck with after another poor performance and result.

Nineteen away games - one away win. Swindon have 2 and a bunch of teams 4. How the hell do we go 19 games with 1 win without the inevitable conclusion we really are this bad.

Two wins at BP and it won’t matter but huge pressure on Monday’s game as I don’t trust us to get anything away now.

Quoted from HerveJosse

When are Pearson and Davies going to come to the end of their Teflon free association with the defensive excrement show we see every week.?

I will start my response by saying this is one of the worst teams I can remember watching in my 60+ years of following town. The re-election team in the late 60’s were pretty dire but when your eleven or twelve years old your just happy going to watch a game of professional football so it’s hard to compare never mind the time difference.

Anyway re the defence I will repeat the dire quality of our midfield doesn’t help but I thought both today and Saturday v Wrexham that on the whole the defence played ok. It sounds crazy when you concede six goals but other than those goals I didn’t really worry too much about us conceding a la Walsall and Donny games. The issue is individual errors probably cost us all six goals and it’s hard for any coach to eradicate these.

First goal v Wrexham - poor control from Holohan, poor challenge when ball lost and questionable keeping

Second goal - weak tackles in and around their penalty area, failure to make early foul to stop the break, ppoor challenge by Hume.

Third goal - Poor clearance by Tharme great finish by Mullins, probably not a goal against 90% of other L2 teams.

First goal today - Rodgers - just put it in row z

Second goal - terrible control by Thompson

Third goal - poor goalkeeping.

Add the fact that these players pretty much all lack pace and composure and I’m not sure the coaches could get  much more out of them. The recruitment has been so poor they don’t have much to work with.

I will also repeat the comment I made on Saturday, is Hume really any better then Glennon? He’s no quicker, not as good going forward and defensively it’s touch and go. Losing Glennon significantly dimishes us in the attacking third but everyone seems to disagree so maybe it’s just me that thinks he should be playing. Christ I’d play him in front of Hume at least he can control the bleeding ball.