Something in the water? V Harrogate, home, 3-0'clock Sat 10-04 -21

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Re: Something in the water? V Harrogate, home, 3-0'clock Sat 10-04 -21

Post by DJBlu » Sun Apr 11, 2021 10:46 am

Harry Genshaw wrote:
Sun Apr 11, 2021 9:03 am
Lee can't have touched it. On current form, if he had, it would definitely have gone wide!
Maybe it's the fluke he needs.
I had started to believe that he's an undercover agent for Tranmere.

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Re: Something in the water? V Harrogate, home, 3-0'clock Sat 10-04 -21

Post by Worthy4England » Sun Apr 11, 2021 10:51 am

Their manager in his post match was delighted with their first half tempo and intensity. He also points out that they were only good for it for 45 minutes. Couldn't keep it up for 90. Who'd have thunk it?

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Re: Something in the water? V Harrogate, home, 3-0'clock Sat 10-04 -21

Post by Worthy4England » Sun Apr 11, 2021 10:54 am

DJBlu wrote:
Sun Apr 11, 2021 10:46 am
Harry Genshaw wrote:
Sun Apr 11, 2021 9:03 am
Lee can't have touched it. On current form, if he had, it would definitely have gone wide!
Maybe it's the fluke he needs.
I had started to believe that he's an undercover agent for Tranmere.
He's not been playing poorly. Just shooting poorly.

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Re: Something in the water? V Harrogate, home, 3-0'clock Sat 10-04 -21

Post by BWFC_Insane » Sun Apr 11, 2021 11:05 am

Worthy4England wrote:
Sun Apr 11, 2021 10:51 am
Their manager in his post match was delighted with their first half tempo and intensity. He also points out that they were only good for it for 45 minutes. Couldn't keep it up for 90. Who'd have thunk it?
Because we stepped onto them and upped the tempo. We have better players than they do and by matching them we nullified their press.

The idea you can only play at tempo for half a game (an idea that seems to have been born about 3 weeks ago) is nonsensical. Nobody expects 90 minutes of dominance or whatever. But Evatt keeps saying in interviews he’s warned the players the opponents start fast and we should note that. It isn’t like in the last ten minutes Harrogate were so tired they couldn’t have a go at getting an equaliser is it? They did have a good go. They weren’t completely tired. It’s just we as an opposition decided to enter the game and we have the better quality of player.

Not you worthy but what baffles me a bit is the same people who used to be apoplectic that we weren’t doing toe to toe in games against premiership and championship teams spending ten, twenty or thirty times what we had available to us with clearly superior squads, are now seemingly ok to let us take it easy for periods against Colchester or Harrogate at home. It’s a bit perplexing. To me the result is all that matters and yesterday we found a way to come back. If we carry on doing that it’s all gravy. We are as you say seemingly a team that will do it on fine margins rather than take the thing by the scruff of the neck. Fine margins are good for me so long as we end up on the right side of them and done Freedman it.

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Re: Something in the water? V Harrogate, home, 3-0'clock Sat 10-04 -21

Post by Worthy4England » Sun Apr 11, 2021 12:26 pm

It's sort of back to fine margins for me Insano. I expect in the Prem more likelihood that a player can keep the intensity up for longer than a 4th Division player. I've held that notion for longer than three weeks. They're less likely generally to commit mistakes, more likely to be consistent. All part of what differentiates Prem and Div 4.

Reality for me is a few things happened, we stepped up a bit, they lost a bit. Evatt said he'd probably got his tactics wrong (I think he has Thomason as part of a more defensive set-up and Delf/Maddison/other permutation that's not Thomason as his more attacking set-up). Thomason helped relieve some of the pressure, which created more space and time. I think he's right, he went out with the wrong set up. There was not an isolated thing that fixed the first half problem (we increased tempo, so told you that was the problem), there were three things combined. They weren't totally non-functioning tired but you could visibly see that they dropped - they were starting to wilt about 35/40 mins through.

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Re: Something in the water? V Harrogate, home, 3-0'clock Sat 10-04 -21

Post by irie Cee Bee » Sun Apr 11, 2021 3:24 pm

Worthy4England wrote:
Sun Apr 11, 2021 10:54 am
DJBlu wrote:
Sun Apr 11, 2021 10:46 am
Harry Genshaw wrote:
Sun Apr 11, 2021 9:03 am
Lee can't have touched it. On current form, if he had, it would definitely have gone wide!
Maybe it's the fluke he needs.
I had started to believe that he's an undercover agent for Tranmere.
He's not been playing poorly. Just shooting poorly.
And its not his natural position but nobody else is up to playing there outside of Sarce. He gives it a good go though, driving into scoring positions to get the opportunities. Goal scorers are priceless and that's why they cost so much. They have that instinct to put them away. Its not easy under pressure in that box.

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Re: Something in the water? V Harrogate, home, 3-0'clock Sat 10-04 -21

Post by BWFC_Insane » Sun Apr 11, 2021 5:55 pm

Worthy4England wrote:
Sun Apr 11, 2021 12:26 pm
It's sort of back to fine margins for me Insano. I expect in the Prem more likelihood that a player can keep the intensity up for longer than a 4th Division player. I've held that notion for longer than three weeks. They're less likely generally to commit mistakes, more likely to be consistent. All part of what differentiates Prem and Div 4.

Reality for me is a few things happened, we stepped up a bit, they lost a bit. Evatt said he'd probably got his tactics wrong (I think he has Thomason as part of a more defensive set-up and Delf/Maddison/other permutation that's not Thomason as his more attacking set-up). Thomason helped relieve some of the pressure, which created more space and time. I think he's right, he went out with the wrong set up. There was not an isolated thing that fixed the first half problem (we increased tempo, so told you that was the problem), there were three things combined. They weren't totally non-functioning tired but you could visibly see that they dropped - they were starting to wilt about 35/40 mins through.
To me it’s relative. We are relatively far better now than we ever were in the premiership compared to our opponents. Irrespective of how good a league 4 or prem player is it’s about your relative competitiveness for me.

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Re: Something in the water? V Harrogate, home, 3-0'clock Sat 10-04 -21

Post by Worthy4England » Sun Apr 11, 2021 6:38 pm

Yes, I'd agree, I think we've got a decent L2 squad, I never expected us to win the Premiership.

We weren't anywhere near as good, before the January transfer window. Would you want to start Comley, Mascoll, Gordon instead of the current starters, such as Lee, Williams, John and Dapo? As with any squad, they're going to draw and lose a few on the way. As previously noted, had we gone at the same pace from start of season to end of December as we have since January, we'd have been on target for somewhere near 96 points - which wouldn't have been too shoddy by any comparitor you want to look at.

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Re: Something in the water? V Harrogate, home, 3-0'clock Sat 10-04 -21

Post by Dave Sutton's barnet » Sun Apr 11, 2021 7:01 pm

Feels like some bars are being hoiked skywards, the better to make room for "failure". Considering we were allegedly relegation candidates helmed by a know-nowt non-league manager who'd never amount to anything, I'd say being in with a strong shout of automatic promotion with a month left is quite a good result. But then, to me, it's relative. :wink:

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Re: Something in the water? V Harrogate, home, 3-0'clock Sat 10-04 -21

Post by officer_dibble » Sun Apr 11, 2021 9:03 pm

I was happy as long as we weren’t relegated 😄

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Re: Something in the water? V Harrogate, home, 3-0'clock Sat 10-04 -21

Post by BWFC_Insane » Sun Apr 11, 2021 9:31 pm

Worthy4England wrote:
Sun Apr 11, 2021 6:38 pm
Yes, I'd agree, I think we've got a decent L2 squad, I never expected us to win the Premiership.

We weren't anywhere near as good, before the January transfer window. Would you want to start Comley, Mascoll, Gordon instead of the current starters, such as Lee, Williams, John and Dapo? As with any squad, they're going to draw and lose a few on the way. As previously noted, had we gone at the same pace from start of season to end of December as we have since January, we'd have been on target for somewhere near 96 points - which wouldn't have been too shoddy by any comparitor you want to look at.
We are straying into a different conversation. My point was some of the people suggesting we can’t possibly be expected to play 90 minutes on the front foot at home to Harrogate or Colchester are the same ones who were very unhappy when we didn’t do just that in leagues where we were definitely the minnows and paupers. I’m not sure the ‘but they are league two players’ mitigates that argument either. To me it’s a lot of shifting expectations. And whilst I agree our expectations have been shifted in the last two or three months and incredibly pleasingly so...we started the season with most expecting a good tilt at promotion if not more. And we are ending it at least with a good tilt.

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Re: Something in the water? V Harrogate, home, 3-0'clock Sat 10-04 -21

Post by Prufrock » Sun Apr 11, 2021 11:01 pm

I think you're having an argument against something no-one is saying. We all want tempo in the final third, front foot exciting football. My point is that there is another team on the pitch, and what they do has a big impact on what you can do.

By all accounts Harrogate came and had a go yesterday, we struggled to deal with that first half (Evatt said they'd expected them to come and park the bus) then we worked it out and beat them. It's what we didn't work out against Colchester (who sat deep for half an hour while we probed dangerously, then stepped it to and we struggled. Evatt has talked a lot about them needing to work those things out during the game and that's fair.

The issue is when a team just comes and sits for the 90. You're suggesting you can somehow "manufacture" tempo and we'd somehow be better if we managed to deliberately have less of the ball. It just doesn't work like that. Those teams are set up to counter. One way to beat that is to go direct and play off second balls and box them in and wear them down with relentless direct pressure. We obviously can't and won't do that under Evatt. The other way is grind them down by suffocating them with pressure and tire them mentally and physically. I'd say our way had been pretty successful.

You can go through the gears much more easily when teams come out and there is space. If they camp on the edge of the box you can't just roll one in and go, especially with wingbacks high as teams are waiting to hit you direct, the way Leicester have been so successful against the big boys. Even City this year, with all the talent they have haven't blown teams away. They've turned much more into the tiki-taka parody Pep hates. All the ball, so clean sheet, and then you hope to wear a team down. It seems clear to me that we're aiming for a league 2 version of that. And it's also pretty clear both they and we have been pretty successful with it.
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Re: Something in the water? V Harrogate, home, 3-0'clock Sat 10-04 -21

Post by BWFC_Insane » Mon Apr 12, 2021 10:47 am

Prufrock wrote:
Sun Apr 11, 2021 11:01 pm
I think you're having an argument against something no-one is saying. We all want tempo in the final third, front foot exciting football. My point is that there is another team on the pitch, and what they do has a big impact on what you can do.

By all accounts Harrogate came and had a go yesterday, we struggled to deal with that first half (Evatt said they'd expected them to come and park the bus) then we worked it out and beat them. It's what we didn't work out against Colchester (who sat deep for half an hour while we probed dangerously, then stepped it to and we struggled. Evatt has talked a lot about them needing to work those things out during the game and that's fair.

The issue is when a team just comes and sits for the 90. You're suggesting you can somehow "manufacture" tempo and we'd somehow be better if we managed to deliberately have less of the ball. It just doesn't work like that. Those teams are set up to counter. One way to beat that is to go direct and play off second balls and box them in and wear them down with relentless direct pressure. We obviously can't and won't do that under Evatt. The other way is grind them down by suffocating them with pressure and tire them mentally and physically. I'd say our way had been pretty successful.

You can go through the gears much more easily when teams come out and there is space. If they camp on the edge of the box you can't just roll one in and go, especially with wingbacks high as teams are waiting to hit you direct, the way Leicester have been so successful against the big boys. Even City this year, with all the talent they have haven't blown teams away. They've turned much more into the tiki-taka parody Pep hates. All the ball, so clean sheet, and then you hope to wear a team down. It seems clear to me that we're aiming for a league 2 version of that. And it's also pretty clear both they and we have been pretty successful with it.
Or you can play like Liverpool do and bomb your full backs on and put balls into the box. Given Evatt talked about failure to do that against Colchester I assume that is the plan for such games. And it’s certainly what I think we need to do to break down those sides.

As for Man City they’ve fairly regularly scored 3 or more and in fact average over two goals scored a game. So not really sure your hypothesis is borne out by the facts. City have gears to go through in those games where a team sits in against them. My point is I’m unconvinced we do. So need to hit a higher gear by ourselves.

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