Pre-Season Friendlies

Where fellow sufferers gather to share the pain, longing and unrequited transfer requests that make being a Wanderer what it is...

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irie Cee Bee
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Re: Pre-Season Friendlies

Post by irie Cee Bee » Fri Aug 28, 2020 11:22 pm

brommers95 wrote:
Fri Aug 28, 2020 11:16 pm
The goals from tonight if you can bear to watch. Forewarning, it’s not pretty but I’m optimistic come the season, it’ll be reet.

Center Backs being out-jumped. Need to fix that as I expect an aerial bombardment from most Lg 2 teams.

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Re: Pre-Season Friendlies

Post by GhostoftheBok » Fri Aug 28, 2020 11:31 pm

brommers95 wrote:
Fri Aug 28, 2020 11:16 pm
The goals from tonight if you can bear to watch. Forewarning, it’s not pretty but I’m optimistic come the season, it’ll be reet.

That's a group of players who have not been drilled enough and aren't up to speed yet. Not the manager's fault, we've not had time to sort it out yet, but I'd be surprised if many of those lads had played 3-at-the-back before.

Looks like Baptiste(?) missing the header, Taft not taking it seriously enough to close properly and the 'keeper thinking he's Manuel Neuer for the first one. Second one is a balls up from a corner and the last one they were all over the place. The apparent lack of effort worries me more than the lack of organisation. Nobody was exactly throwing themselves into blocks for the team there. Inexperience of the 'keeper showed too.

Still, it's a 44 second clip. Won't be hanging myself just yet.

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Re: Pre-Season Friendlies

Post by Harry Genshaw » Sat Aug 29, 2020 7:54 am

Blimey. Fair play to Crewe for that last goal, total football! The kind of thing I was hoping to see from us.
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Re: Pre-Season Friendlies

Post by BWFC_Insane » Sat Aug 29, 2020 9:19 am

The alarm bells ring a little after a positive pre season when you lose your last two games 8-1. Yes the opposition are both a league above but still. I don’t think Pre season results are all that indicative but Evatt looked a bit flustered in his interview last night. I hope that if the total football 3-5-2 is a bit much to start with that we find a way of playing and getting results because you cannot be a slave to a way of playing.

Obviously none of us have seen pre season games so we are all clutching at straws. The first two goals do look bad there though. The first especially. A long quick and two on two...that can’t be right.

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Re: Pre-Season Friendlies

Post by Worthy4England » Sat Aug 29, 2020 9:34 am

I think the exclamations of "fer feck's sake" said everything needed to be said. Think there's probably a lot of squads that'll have had little time together in L2. Some probably with a bigger nucleus than us. Last time we had a "fast start", it kept us up on the last day of the season. Hopefully it all comes back good, soon. As Evatt is fond of reminding us, losing is habit forming.

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Re: Pre-Season Friendlies

Post by LeverEnd » Sat Aug 29, 2020 9:51 am

BWFC_Insane wrote:
Sat Aug 29, 2020 9:19 am
The alarm bells ring a little after a positive pre season when you lose your last two games 8-1. Yes the opposition are both a league above but still. I don’t think Pre season results are all that indicative but Evatt looked a bit flustered in his interview last night. I hope that if the total football 3-5-2 is a bit much to start with that we find a way of playing and getting results because you cannot be a slave to a way of playing.

Obviously none of us have seen pre season games so we are all clutching at straws. The first two goals do look bad there though. The first especially. A long quick and two on two...that can’t be right.
I'm all for taking on a young up.and coming manager and giving it a go, but as you say let's hope there's the possibility of toughing it out when 'Brand Evatt' is not going well.
Impressed with how we've recruited up front, but struggle to.see how we shut teams out if on the back.foot.
I'm sceptical and slightly cringing at some of Evatt's interviews, but if it works it will be fantastic I'm sure.
I'm.dont want to.be negative but after recent years I'm hedging my bets. Having said that I'm.back up North and getting my first ST for 3 years and really looking forward to watching live football again.
(Ps last time I had a ST we got promoted - I've always been considered a lucky charm 😜)
...

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Re: Pre-Season Friendlies

Post by Bruce Rioja » Sat Aug 29, 2020 11:44 am

Who the feck's that in goal? His display reminded me of Simon Farnworth. :shock:
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Re: Pre-Season Friendlies

Post by Dave Sutton's barnet » Sat Aug 29, 2020 11:52 am

GhostoftheBok wrote:
Fri Aug 28, 2020 11:31 pm
brommers95 wrote:
Fri Aug 28, 2020 11:16 pm
The goals from tonight if you can bear to watch. Forewarning, it’s not pretty but I’m optimistic come the season, it’ll be reet.
That's a group of players who have not been drilled enough and aren't up to speed yet. Not the manager's fault, we've not had time to sort it out yet, but I'd be surprised if many of those lads had played 3-at-the-back before.

Looks like Baptiste(?) missing the header, Taft not taking it seriously enough to close properly and the 'keeper thinking he's Manuel Neuer for the first one. Second one is a balls up from a corner and the last one they were all over the place. The apparent lack of effort worries me more than the lack of organisation. Nobody was exactly throwing themselves into blocks for the team there. Inexperience of the 'keeper showed too.

Still, it's a 44 second clip. Won't be hanging myself just yet.
My tupporth:

First goal, Baptiste doesn’t win the header, as might well happen - he’s 5ft11. Doesn’t mean he can’t play there (and it doesn’t mean height always wins headers - he’s actually higher than the grounded striker) but it’s a problem if the oppo’s centre-forward - who is likely to (1) be above 6ft and (2) playing very centrally if most sides play with a variant of one up top - is going to pick on him like SKD would on a bullyable opponent. (Worth noting, perhaps, that he’s only an inch taller than Baptiste.)

If that’s going to happen, we might have to think about switching the personnel within the back three when the opposition are in possession - and there’s no clearer presentation of that situation than when they have a goal kick. We could put Santos in the middle with Baptiste switching to the right, presumably tracking runners off the flick-on. It complicates the transition from defence to attack but not by much - doesn’t take long for Reekz to peel wide and Baptiste sit in. More difficult might be if we turn over possession and they go long again...

Anyway, back to what happened. Baptiste loses the header and the supporting forward is arguably offside, but I can’t tell on my phone and it doesn’t matter much anyway.
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Point is it gives him a head-start on Taft, who has to take the ring road to get between him and the goal. He does take a while to do so - I think he gets a well-timed and non-illegal hold-off - and his attempted block looks bad in retrospect.

As for Crellin, I don’t think his advanced starting position is that bad. Had that goal-kick bounced slightly differently he’d have been on it, and he’s quickly back in his area - certainly way before the shot. What might need work is adjusting his angles and preparedness for shots when running backwards into position - a very different orientation from coming off your line.

One last thing about that first goal. Wind back to the beginning and you see two Crewe centre-backs in the area ready for the short one. This is not a long-ball team but they mix it up, and from the sounds of things Evatt’s Barrow also knew how to do so too, for all the “philosophy” noise - initially praise, now already tinged with worry in some quarters, and not just the Gobshite Corners of ESL and Twitter.

Second goal off the corner is awful, and Evatt will know that. They wanted it more, so they won three different first-to-the-ball battles.

Third goal we were led to believe came as we were chasing the game, but it was no long ball over depleted back line. When the move starts (with the Crewe player at bottom left in this frame) we’re in place in numbers, if slightly out of formation:
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But what follows is a lesson. From the freeze frame Crewe take six touches, each one a positive and targeted pass (or finally shot): four are forward, the other two go slightly backwards to set up a superior subsequent advancement. Six times it reaches a Crewe player who knows his job and remains unhassled by a Bolton player stopping him doing it. It’s the sort of pass and move we want to see at the UniBol, but from the home team please.

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Re: Pre-Season Friendlies

Post by GhostoftheBok » Sat Aug 29, 2020 1:52 pm

All of those goals are a mess in their own way and you can always find fault when the opposition score, but my hope is that it is the players not understanding the system for goals one and three. If that is the system operating properly, we're in a spot of bother.

For the first we tried a high press and, as you say, they bipassed that and went long. The trouble is that both wingbacks were up the pitch and neither deep mid dropped back to cover that. It reminded me of Dougie's system, where we had two holding midfielders and as a result neither actually did the basic job of covering the back four. As soon as that ball went long we were in trouble, because their forwards were 2-on-2 with our defenders which you never want. We should have been able to go 3-on-2 with them, but neither wingback drops in and nor does a mid and so the three at the back are wide open trying to cover the space.

Worst case on that goal is Crewe did that on purpose. They dropped their centrebacks deep which pulled our whole line forward as we tried to press and then they just went over it all, leaving the lads with no clue how to respond. Without seeing the whole match we can't really say, but it's a concern that it might just be something Crewe's staff saw from watching Barrow. Most likely not, but Bolton taught me to worry a long time ago.

The third one is arguably worse, because it is from open play and it is the same story. As the ball is played forward they are basically 5-on-4, with our wing backs both up the park and the back three spread wide trying to cover space. A mid drops in this time to make that four, but a simple lay off and run and they are right through us. It's nice football, but there's no cover on our part. When the ball goes through Santos tries to tuck in and cover and that leaves their left-sided player totally free and with a good 10-15 yard start on our wing back, which is why he has time to take the piss and play another pass. When the shot is taken the wing back is still chugging back into the box.

Again, the hope is that we are just not drilled enough yet. My nightmare is that we basically have a pass-and-move version of Owen Coyle. Watching Baptiste lose that header all I could hear in my head was a Scottish voice saying "individual battles"...

My view with managers is always that they need a year to make it "their club" and then another year to get it all sorted, so I'm not slating Evatt in any way. It's just worth noting these things and seeing if they remain issues over time.

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