Its about time we stopped making excuses and blaming the referees everttime something goes against us
BUT Mr Kettle had an awful game Its not every time from me. He was poor. Got in the way of players several times he was slow unresponsive often and as I highlighted he got the petty things but missed the bigger calls right under his nose.
He was pretty rubbish, but not as bad as the last time and thankfully it didn't affect the outcome of the match in any way
Ref books a Reds player for time wastage that is mirrored at least dozen times every match. Riddiculous. Ahead of a Dale player drags a Red shirt virtually of the back of a Crawley player in the centre circle, ref plays advantage, first opportunity to caution the dirty northerner and the ref appears to have forgotten. Awful ref. Unconvincing win. I think Young struggled 'alone' today. I understand Yems has covid. Hope he makes a quicky recovery. All in all its 3 points. We move on.
Its about time we stopped making excuses and blaming the referees everttime something goes against us
kettle was a clown without a red nose dressed like a ref. Todays referee performance was embarressing.
BUT Mr Kettle had an awful game Its not every time from me. He was poor. Got in the way of players several times he was slow unresponsive often and as I highlighted he got the petty things but missed the bigger calls right under his nose.
He was pretty rubbish, but not as bad as the last time and thankfully it didn't affect the outcome of the match in any way
Normally see sense in what you say Steve but we always blame the ref - its something that permeates through from Yems to the forum. We see ourselves as victims when in reality we make our own results over a season. if we continually blame the ref, we are just trying to excuse our own inadequacies.
When you win a game you must always look for the positive reasons why so I’ll give it a go, it’s just harder than usual on this occasion. Morris deserved his man of the match, apart from one poor early header Ludwig had a strong game. Tunnicliffe not quite back to the stellar levels of last season but him and Francomb did well to repel waves and waves of attacks.
The negative issue remains the link between the midfield and forwards which was near non existent today. In fact it’s a long time since I seen so many passing moves break down so early and, worse, we seem to lose the battle for every second ball. Rochdale had a couple of decent wide forwards Done who has hurt us in the past and the guy with the fetching hairdo on the other side, but elsewhere they lacked the confidence to punish us.
Both Appiah and Nichols were below their high standards but at least Nadderz got the kind of scruffy goal he doesn’t get enough of.
I thought the issue was the Payne-Hess partnership, both decent defensive mids of different types, Payne the tidy passer and Hess the more physical player, but neither could get really get our passing game clicking and bring in the wing backs enough. Tilley did have some good moments though, Ferry below par. The subs didn’t improve things at all and I was surprised Marshall wasn’t given a go after his positive cameo last week.
I fear this same team will get found out up north next up but of course there is the old cliche of not changing a winning team and seeing if we can work on the things that didn’t go well today. Be fascinating to see how Yems calls it
I was a bit surprised Mark Marshall wasn't brought on to be honest too, even if just to waste time later on in the match
there was a moment when a Reds player (I forget who) was dribbling and hanging onto the ball at the edge of the Rochdale 6 yard box late in the game that looked like 'time wasting' - never seen anything like it - perhaps he was trying to draw a foul and a pen.
Certainly one of the less enjoyable games I’ve seen this year. Three point sis always welcome but there were way too many under par performances and being honest Rochdale were the better side for the majority of the game, certainly in terms of ability to keep possession.
Ludwig stuck to his task and defended well but boy does he look a liability when he has the ball at his feet!! For me Hessenthaler looks a better centre back in a three than he does a midfielder in a two. My feeling is that we were overrun in midfield for the majority of the game and had it been 0-0 or 0-1 it would’ve been changed much earlier.
What confused me was we seemed to make the subs to remedy that but then changed it again very soon after which gave us the same problems. Hutchinson replaced Nadesan to give us an extra midfielder to match up their 3 but within 5 mins we’d gone 442 and left Hess and Payne outnumbered again. Payne spent the last 20 mins looking over his shoulder running backwards to try and counter the two attacking midfielders (20 and 23) who were both playing between the lines. We couldn’t step out to press and it left our midfield 20 yards too deep to pressure the ball. It made no sense.
I’d have changed to a 3 in midfield and let Hess and Payne mark their attacking players and Hutchinson pick up their deeper man or even let one of the forwards drop in to do that job so we could pressure the ball more.
Up front second half we literally stopped looking after the ball and the incessant long ball hopeful punts forward gave Nicholls and Kwesi no hope so it just kept coming back too quickly.
I know it’s last man standing a little but I can’t help feeling that we’re a better footballing side than that and far more capable sometimes of getting the ball down and retaining possession than we’re showing.
Certainly one of the less enjoyable games I’ve seen this year. Three point sis always welcome but there were way too many under par performances and being honest Rochdale were the better side for the majority of the game, certainly in terms of ability to keep possession.
Ludwig stuck to his task and defended well but boy does he look a liability when he has the ball at his feet!! For me Hessenthaler looks a better centre back in a three than he does a midfielder in a two. My feeling is that we were overrun in midfield for the majority of the game and had it been 0-0 or 0-1 it would’ve been changed much earlier.
What confused me was we seemed to make the subs to remedy that but then changed it again very soon after which gave us the same problems. Hutchinson replaced Nadesan to give us an extra midfielder to match up their 3 but within 5 mins we’d gone 442 and left Hess and Payne outnumbered again. Payne spent the last 20 mins looking over his shoulder running backwards to try and counter the two attacking midfielders (20 and 23) who were both playing between the lines. We couldn’t step out to press and it left our midfield 20 yards too deep to pressure the ball. It made no sense.
I’d have changed to a 3 in midfield and let Hess and Payne mark their attacking players and Hutchinson pick up their deeper man or even let one of the forwards drop in to do that job so we could pressure the ball more.
Up front second half we literally stopped looking after the ball and the incessant long ball hopeful punts forward gave Nicholls and Kwesi no hope so it just kept coming back too quickly.
I know it’s last man standing a little but I can’t help feeling that we’re a better footballing side than that and far more capable sometimes of getting the ball down and retaining possession than we’re showing.
Totally agree - we were all over the shop tactically and shape wise to be honest. Steep learning curve for Lewis but maybe he’s a lucky general still getting the win
Was the sort of game I’m not used to seeing, don’t think I’ve ever seen such a flat performance get us 3 points! Having said that, there were plenty of positives like Tunnicliffe getting minutes, Ferry looking very solid again (shame he went off early) and Ludwig also very solid and made plenty of great tackles and interceptions. I also thought we improved from previous games in that we found teammates with headers more often rather than aimlessly forwards and the midfield were a lot better bringing the ball down and making a pass rather than playing head tennis!
However, once the ball was at feet, we looked a bit void of ideas and as some others have mentioned, didn’t often manage to get the ball to progress from the back to midfield to forwards. I think we missed Powell in this respect.
Goal always looked like it would come from the right with Tilley prob being our best outfield player for me.
Granted it wasn’t exciting but there’s positives and east stand was sunny and we won!
BUT Mr Kettle had an awful game Its not every time from me. He was poor. Got in the way of players several times he was slow unresponsive often and as I highlighted he got the petty things but missed the bigger calls right under his nose.
He was pretty rubbish, but not as bad as the last time and thankfully it didn't affect the outcome of the match in any way
As I said to the people around me at half time, the biggest worry was not that Rochdale were starting to get into the game, but that Mr. Kettle had had a very quiet first half !!
True to form, as someone said earlier, he ignored the blatant pull back that refs are told to card every time, then booked Archie D for the "time wasting" that others are equally guilty of in every game. Maybe he "snapped" at the point.
On another thing, I wonder if our Heinz Variety friend is gathering stats on the front three ??
