One Mansfield is another's lawn. Away to the Midlanders New Year's Day 3-0' clock'

[Prufrock]

On it's own I don't think it was that bad. Similar to Charlton (a) in that we were far superior between the boxes, but we're your classic jigsaw. And the shotgun is never far away. And obviously we're not considering it on its own.

The second goal was bad, but that can happen at L1, blustery conditions, they react quickest, Rico doesn't recover well and they score. But that first one oh my. You'd be annoyed at U11s defending like that.

Then we got a goal back started ok in the second half. But the wingback swap was mental. Never looked looked scoring, and their heads have totally gone.

There's been no coming back for a while. Mad to be considering throwing more money at this. But it isn't my money and looks like that's the 'plan".

[GhostoftheBok]

In a sense it's all of our money.

It's certainly the money of the poor sods who paid into the bond.

[irie Cee Bee]

Evatt getting very close to saying that we were winning the game apart from the scoreline.

"It doesn't help when you go two goals behind in a game you've got full control of."

Bolton Wanderers' 24/25 season, from the writers of This Is Spinal Tap.

Thats the problem isn't it? Evatt measures success by possesion numbers and believes by his logic that it translates to winning games, even if possession is hardly ever in the attacking third. Like a boxer leading on points only to be knocked out asking how did I lose this fight?

Come on Evatt..teach the side to defend and then teach them to pass the ball forward to attack and not sideways and backwards. Teach them how to kick on target. Football really isnt that hard for people who play it everyday. Possession wins you nothing in football.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Evatt getting very close to saying that we were winning the game apart from the scoreline.

Thats the problem isn't it? Evatt measures success by possesion numbers and believes by his logic that it translates to winning games, even if possession is hardly ever in the attacking third. Like a boxer leading on points only to be knocked out asking how did I lose this fight?

To be fair, it wasn't like we weren't in their third - we had 50% more touches in their box than they had in ours.

But once again, for the fourth league game in five (Lincoln the exception), majority possession translated to fewer shots and fewer shots on target. Those are important metrics, too.

And none are as important as wins: that's now 1 in 5 of those, 4pts from a possible 15, 0.8ppg. Not good enough. Just. Stopped. Winning.

[GhostoftheBok]

To be fair, it wasn't like we weren't in their third - we had 50% more touches in their box than they had in ours.

A fully confident team wins that game with the openings we had, or at minimum draws it.

Evatt said himself they got "bored" of the patterns. They were opening Mansfield up time and time again, then messing up the last bit and they lost faith in it working.

He put the wrong players in the wrong parts of the pitch, so it's his own fault; but ultimately his tactical system worked and we still lost.

Previously Ian's main issue (outside big games) has been the system not quite working and that causing losses. When he got the system working we won lots of games. Now we lose even when it does work.

There is no way to consistently win games from that position.

Ian will say that that game was a fluke and we are now seeing improvement that we need to stick with. That may be enough for the board.

[boltonboris]

That miss from Dion Charles.. Simply incredible how we misses those so often