BFTG Bournemouth - sponsored by no midfield

[Wycombe Royal]

No idea why Pog was dropped for Kanu though.

I can only assume it was to give him a rest, and use the squad to keep players fresh.

[BR2]

No idea why Pog was dropped for Kanu though.

I can only assume it was to give him a rest, and use the squad to keep players fresh.

If Adkins had come out with that then fine we know why but to say nothing leaves us all in the dark.
If I were a professional footballer and had been dropped and replaced by Kanu I might question if I were in the right job.

[bradleylewsrfc]

I also like the idea of;

----Alf----Sharp----
-----Pog-----

Pog holding up the ball and playing either of the top two through. With potentially HRK coming in instead of Pog when he needs a rest. Don't get me wrong Pog is great as a lone forward but at the moment our midfield and wingers don't overlap or get themselves into a through ball-esque position. Whereas Alf and Sharp have more pace and movement.

[maffff]

No idea why Pog was dropped for Kanu though.

I can only assume it was to give him a rest, and use the squad to keep players fresh.

If Adkins had come out with that then fine we know why but to say nothing leaves us all in the dark.
If I were a professional football and had been dropped and replaced by Kanu I might question if I were in the right job.

Quite. I understand why Pog might need to be rested, although not something I'm sure I agree with - he's in form and looking fit, I didn't see us resting Guthrie..

But even more so, why HRK? again, I understand why you might, but going on how tripe he's been for the most part this season, I don't agree.

[BR2]

This "resting" lark.
We left the League Cup early.
We are not in Europe
Pog is in his prime and playing well and is a target man-we have nothing similar so if he is "rested" the system has to change for that game.

Most clubs play a certain way and if a player is injured the one coming in knows exactly how the team plays.
At the moment I don't think we have a Reading way of playing-the wingers seldom take their defender on the outside,the midfielders don't bust a gut to get in the box (well done Steve Sidwell yesterday BTW) and players seem happy to leave things to somebody else both in our box and in that of the opposition.

BTW is Roberts resting or retired?-whichever, we need another Pog-build striker IMHO to replicate what he does if rested, suspended or injured because the players don't seem able to change their ways when he is not out there with the ball still being hoofed to the central striker.

[Sanguine]

For me the problem arises when we have the ball with one of the centre backs and instead of letting them walk the ball forward and find a pass. Guthrie not only comes too deep, but by virtually demanding the ball off of Pearce/Gorkss, effectively taking both centre backs out of the game as well as meaning we only have one man in the centre of the park. I'm a fan of Guthrie (and Adkins FWIW) and it's obvious he wants to get on the ball and try to dictate the tempo, but that's never going to happen by running up to Pearce, shouting at him until he gets the ball and receiving it with his back to goal.

Unfortunately, if he doesn't, our centre backs choose the 'welly it up the field' option.

Regarding the triangles, you can't make a triangle with one player. No debating Guthrie has gone off the boil a bit, but his performances have IMHO correlated with the display of the team as a whole. Guthrie would have loved a couple of options and the chance to make some pretty triangles on Saturday, but that was impossible since the midfield was either empty, or McCleary was running blindly in circles whilst Williams picked his nose.

[Wycombe Royal]

If I were a professional football and had been dropped and replaced by Kanu I might question if I were in the right job.

Yes, that would be very harsh on the football.

[BR2]

If I were a professional football and had been dropped and replaced by Kanu I might question if I were in the right job.

Yes, that would be very harsh on the football.

The football is definitely harder than this player.
Now edited-the proof reader has been sacked.

[Ian Royal]

After that it just highlighted how blunt our attack is and that we seem to be incapable of winning a header or causing any sort of chance from a set piece.

I'm regretting buying Huddersfield tickets

I don't agree about the set pieces, yes we had an off day on Saturday, but normally we are at our most dangerous from set pieces. What we lack is runners from midfield. We never break quickly and when we do it is normally McCleary who has no option but to shoot as no-one else has bothered to get into the attack with him. We never seem to have midfielders arriving into the box and that in my opinion is why we get so few shots on goal.

Take Saturday how many times did Guthrie or Williams arrive in the box to support the strikers? I can't remember a single occasion. There is no point having wingers and overlapping full backs if there is no bugger in the box to get on the end of a cross.

THIS THIS THIS

[genome]

I also seem to remember our goal coming from a midfield run at the defence from Royston

[Ian Royal]

I also seem to remember our goal coming from a midfield run at the defence from Royston

Run and deflected shot from him that fell to ALF from what I saw.

[AthleticoSpizz]

Gorkss 5 - Grabban didn't really cause Gorkss any problems, but the guy is a lower leagues defender, looks shaky on the ball, and he is the architect of most of our punts upfield.
.

Staggered by these comments - were there two Gorkss on the field? - because we saw a very different one play. Leaving aside the diving header clearance that turned into a sublime pass out to McCleary on the right (probably not intended or absolutely brilliant if it was!) he produced a succession of perfectly weighted and placed passes during the game, particularly during the first half. At one point my son and I actually joked that he could become our creative midfielder.

+1

[If you still hate Futcher]

It was the worst game I have seen since the Wigan or Villa games last season. I thought you had all been over-reacting about Charlton - how wrong I was.

McCarthy 5 - Should have stopped the second one
Gunter 7 - man of the match
Gorkss 6 - Ok and played one superb curling pass on the ground down the wing to show up Guthrie
Pearce 5 - Defended ok, but it can't be fun receiving the ball from a frightened Guthrie so many times in a match
Cummings 7 - he looked good, but then he usually does
McCleary 5 - can't remember much he did
Guthrie 4 - not irreparably bad, but two assists confirm this was his worst game for us
Williams 6 - ok
Obita 5 - as good as me in central midfield
Sharp 6 - about 5% better than Alf would have been
Robson-Kanu 6 - high-quality scapegoat performance

Pogrebnyak 5 - nothing


Drenthe 2 - so worrying to see a professional sportsman in that condition
Le Fondre 7 - did nothing and then scored

Not sure I would give Gorks 6? Surely he was at fault for their second goal. He seemed to freeze! Why didn't he throw his body in front of the shot? Ritchie had ages to miscontrol it, control it and then pick his spot.

He did which was the problem (as well as not being close enough to him) as the shot went between his legs and wrong footed McCarthy. If he'd stood up the shot would probably have hit him, not that any defender would in that situation.

[Ian Royal]

Gorkss 5 - Grabban didn't really cause Gorkss any problems, but the guy is a lower leagues defender, looks shaky on the ball, and he is the architect of most of our punts upfield.
.

Staggered by these comments - were there two Gorkss on the field? - because we saw a very different one play. Leaving aside the diving header clearance that turned into a sublime pass out to McCleary on the right (probably not intended or absolutely brilliant if it was!) he produced a succession of perfectly weighted and placed passes during the game, particularly during the first half. At one point my son and I actually joked that he could become our creative midfielder.

+1

Gorkss
Long balls: 13 (second only to Guthrie) 7 accurate (pretty good actually)
Pass Accuracy: 63% worst of the starting outfield players except HRK.
Tackles: 0
Interceptions: 3 (pretty good actually)
Clearances: 5 all 'effective'
Shots Blocked: 0

Statistically rated as our second worst starting outfield player.

Now clearly, statistics aren't everything. They're dependent on the reliability of the people recording them and they don't really cover the real gamute of footballing performance or its contextual subjectivity. But it doesn't exactly undermine the argument from some that he wasn't very good.

Even our midfielder with the least good passing still got an accuracy rate more than 10 percentage points higher. And in case you think that's an unfair comparison, you really really don't want me to post up Pearce's figures.

[bcubed]

I know it's a minor issue, but that said can have a big impact. Our throw ins seem to be taken so slow. Every one of Bournemouth's throw ins on Saturday were taken quickly, catching out our players every time. We take so long to actually take a throw in that all of our players are marked by our opposing players each and every single time! Most of the throw ins in their half resulted in Sharp having to to come deep to acquire the ball! We eventually sped them up towards the final 10-15 minutes but by then it was too late. Again minor issue but can have a big impact in terms of retaining possession and catching the opposing team out.

This is a very good point, as this has been a real cornerstone in RFC's ability to put pressure on opponents for many years. The difference this season is so stark in this specific area, yet highlights a lack of urgency across the board.

The slow throws started under McDermott, I've been moaning about them for a couple of years. They're always the same, wait for fullback to come up and take throw, he either throws it long down the line for a flick header, or to a player who knocks it straight back to the fullback who took the throw.....

As far as dropping Pog for HRK is concerned, he didn't, certainly not to start with. Obita was playing through the middle with HRK on the right, I commented on it at the time. I reckon there's a good chance Pog might be off in January anyway, we're less than 4 weeks from the window now, if that's the case, then you can understand why he not be the preferred option, let's face it, if you're going to play one striker, you've got Pog, who's been much better recently, but not exactly prolific, ALF who seems to struggle when he starts and is a great impact player, or Sharp who had scored 1 in 1 start......

I'm not sure what people want Adkins to do - we'd just come off arguably our worst half of football vs Charlton, where we were completely over-run in midfield, and then he gets slated for dropping a striker and playing 5 in midfield?
Incidentally a member of my family met him on Wednesday, and he actually apologised for the performance on Tuesday.....yes, we won that game, but it was hardly a performance to be proud of, so changing things was surely exactly the right thing to do?

Even Dellor was defending him this morning on BBCRB against the moronic bellends calling for his sacking....

Spot on

The slow and ineffective throw is not a new phenomenon
It may have gone wrong when we stopped the multi ball system when it was all about catching the opposition off guard?

[Ian Royal]

Guthrie was the key to us speeding them up late on. Rather than leaving them for the full back he just took a couple straight away. He looked to do it once in the first half at least too, but no one was paying any attention so he had no option.

[3points]

Gorkss 5 - Grabban didn't really cause Gorkss any problems, but the guy is a lower leagues defender, looks shaky on the ball, and he is the architect of most of our punts upfield.
.

Staggered by these comments - were there two Gorkss on the field? - because we saw a very different one play. Leaving aside the diving header clearance that turned into a sublime pass out to McCleary on the right (probably not intended or absolutely brilliant if it was!) he produced a succession of perfectly weighted and placed passes during the game, particularly during the first half. At one point my son and I actually joked that he could become our creative midfielder.

Me and my son had the same conversation.

[3points]

I know it's a minor issue, but that said can have a big impact. Our throw ins seem to be taken so slow. Every one of Bournemouth's throw ins on Saturday were taken quickly, catching out our players every time. We take so long to actually take a throw in that all of our players are marked by our opposing players each and every single time! Most of the throw ins in their half resulted in Sharp having to to come deep to acquire the ball! We eventually sped them up towards the final 10-15 minutes but by then it was too late. Again minor issue but can have a big impact in terms of retaining possession and catching the opposing team out.

This is a very good point, as this has been a real cornerstone in RFC's ability to put pressure on opponents for many years. The difference this season is so stark in this specific area, yet highlights a lack of urgency across the board.

Completely agree. goes back to an earlier comment made about "blackboard" tactics. Adkins clearly likes to set things up in the same way as all our throw ins are the same. Why the winger doesn't just throw it in to the full back as the full back is jogging up to take the throw, I have no idea. has been a real bug bear of mine for the past few home games

[Ian Royal]

And as pointed out already, it's been a feature for much longer than Adkins has been in charge.

[3points]

And as pointed out already, it's been a feature for much longer than Adkins has been in charge.

Agreed - but it is noticeably slower now