Post
by Josh1873 » 12 Oct 2022, 11:24
I'm back with a new username. ADY wasn't relevant anymore! Anyway, here goes. I hope you've got a cuppa and a pack of biscuits ready...
Well, that was abysmal. I can accept poor half arsed performances as a one off. It happens. The players are humans and are entitled to off days. I get it. However, this is not a one off. You can no longer offer ‘it’s one of those days’ as an excuse. We are now 13 games into this season (admittedly still early days) and we’ve been well below par in at least 5 matches (the 4 defeats and the underwhelming performance v Yaxley). That’s over 38% of matches played we’ve turned in utter dross displays. It’s not the sign of a team that will win promotion, is it?
The Romulus, Sutton, Spalding and Boldmere defeats have all seen the same template. The opposition players simply wanted it more. They put in more effort, showed more desire and out battled us. Wasn’t this squad supposed to be ‘better’ at battling and scrapping for points when the going got tough? I’ve seen little evidence of that. If anything, they’ve gone into hiding rather than rolling their sleeves up.
These losses haven’t just been unlucky defeats where the game could have gone either way, we’ve been hammered, in reality. At no stage in the aforementioned games have we looked like scoring. Let alone winning the game!
We have shown no tactical plan, other than long ball, after long ball, after long ball. Which is easily dealt with via basic defending. The opposition have created numerous chances and always looked capable of scoring, while we have created next to nothing. There's no plan B at all, and I’d argue we’ve shown no plan A in these games.
It’s all well and good looking dominant against teams the lads and I could give a game (the likes of Yaxley and Daventry) but time and time again we are found wanting against teams in the promotion race.
It was a concern and question last season. A question we couldn’t find answers to when we needed. It’s been a question this season, and so far, we’ve yet again come unstuck against the teams battling for play-off spots/promotion.
What was alarming last night was how much Paul chopped and changed formation. He must've changed formation at least 3 times during the match and rotated numerous players numerous times. Unfortunately, it looks like he maybe doesn't know our best formation, or how to get the best out this group, and was just changing formation trying to stumble on a formula that works. It was baffling.
Earlier in the season, the 4-3-3 formation worked, the front 3 of Insall, Gregs and Sim, were on fire. Before Hayward sustained injury and Holmes left, we had some level of protection and control in midfield. We've lost them, and teams have figured us out. They take control of midfield and win the midfield battle. We're currently getting dominated in midfield and it’s costing us.
Maybe it’s time to go 3-5-2 of 4-4-2, dropping one of the front 3, which would hopefully give us a chance of controlling midfield again.
Yes, we’re still in a healthy league position. Yes, there’s still time to fix the currently broken tactics/squad (on that point, do we have the budget due to yet another season of early cup exits?). Yes, the season is still young and there’s a lot of football left to play. But I can’t shake the feeling of déjà vu. The start of this season has played out exactly the same as last season. It all feels very much like ‘here we go again’. There’s a lot of familiar questions, and I suspect we’re going to get the same incorrect answers as we saw last season. I wonder how much longer we will see the same patterns repeating themselves. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
I know I'm seen as a bad egg, and Mr Negative (I'm hardly on my own, let's be honest!), but this is how I'm feeling right now. Apologies. We need a good win on Saturday to get back on track, but we're facing a side, in Corby, who will be there or there abouts, do we have what it takes to beat such a side? Sadly, based not just on this season, but on last seasons, and the COVID affected seasons, evidence, I'm not convinced.
