Yesterday

Tactics: appeared to be to keep it tight and lump it forward to Deano and Hux in the hope that they might create something out of very little. With the added flexibilty of Thorne and MacKenzie on the to give us 4 players to lump it at if Plan A didn't work. Couple of problems with this: it's now 10 months since we kept a clean sheet away, so keeping it tight is not really the brightest plan. And secondly, once the opposition work out what is going on they can direct all their resources to keeping Deano and Hux quiet - which good as they are they are going to manage pretty well.

Personnel:
Centre backs: Fleming and Shackell does not work as a combination. Fleming and Doherty does not work with as a combination. Which leaves us with Shackell and Doherty. This does not fill me with confidence. Fleming, in particular seems to have lost some of his strength and bustle.
Left back: the curse of XXL has struck and Charlie has turned into a left-footed Sutch. At least we have Drury to come back.
Centre midfield: Safri was man of the match for me. Although his habit of passing to players in green shirts confused his colleagues who clearly hadn't been trained to expect anything as radical as that. As for Hughes and Jarrett, neither even comes close to replacing Francis, or Holt in his prime for that matter.
Right midfield: the good news is that Marney goes back to Spurs at the end of the season. He appears not to have a football brain at all - no anticipation at all. He put in one good corner. But one moment at the end summed him up: we had loads of players in the box - we probably had them outnumbered, certainly out muscled - anywhere in the box would have done, and he lumped high over everyone and way out past the far post into the crowd. Either he's not interested or he's just s**t. I don't much care.
Attack. Huckerby and Ashton didn't work.

What's to be done: well if we're not selling a striker we don't need Morrison. Between them the four front line strikers we have will score goals - if they have a decent midfield behind them. We need a "box to box" midfielder. We need someone who can play right midfield. We need a new centre back. Frankly, to fill those three gaps I would sacrifice Green.

We also have the MK game to try out a few things. i'd go with:

Ward
Colin Doherty Shackell Brennan
McVeigh Marney Safri Huckerby
MacKenzie Ashton.

Posted By: Winged Eel Creosote, Aug 21, 12:11:55