I sat watching in a pub in Sheffield surrounded by Wednesdayites. They were quiet throughout except for the goal. Nobody had a good word to say about them. They were genuinely delighted to have taken a point from that game. Most were staring into their beer during the game as Wednesday offered little for the fans to get excited about. On balance it's a game we should so easily have sewn up by half time, but i hope it gives all the team a kick up the arse and stops them getting complacent.<br>
first half we were playing some nice stuff and shoudl have been atleast 2 clear, second half we started hitting and hoping, sdpace in midfield disappeared, was cryin out for a change in the middle with pritchard coming on.
on that showing wednesday won't be challenging for auto's, looked hard to beat but didnt create a chance in the entire game really how they managed to get a point without having a shot, infact reminded me of us last few years, all huff and no puff
We already have one of those - he's called Paul Hayes !
What we need is a nippy/pacy striker that Slater alluded to over a month ago. 15 mins to go, last thing that opposotion defenders want who are getting tired & leggy (and on a yellow) is someone running at them.
credit to Semedo - he is quite a presence in the midfield and stopped us getting on top but i still maintain he can't play football and will never be part of a successful side. Agree that we need some more ptions to bring on up front and in particular some powerful runners who will stretch the defence and allow the midfield to get forward more. Forget Benson - he is being frozen out along with Francis and Doherty - and no, thats not voices in my head, its fact so the sooner they go, the sooner we can get what we need coz we're lacking a bita t the moment. Not moaning mind you and we have far more ability than last year and are now playing the game in the right way even if a little too open at times.
Passed them off the pitch in the first half and kept the ball brilliantly and most importantly - on the ground! We seemed to completely abandon this game for the second 45 and resorted to playing like Sheffield Wednesday by constantly pumping aimless long balls into their box.
We panicked after they scored when there was no need to and someone from management needed to calm them down and tell them to compose themselves. We should have got Stephens on the ball more and tried to get balls into Jackson and Wagstaff running in behind the defence.
Michael Morrison, Hollands and BWP had good games.
Wednesday won't do much this season and were only interested in kicking us off the pitch and playing route one football . Clinton Morrison as MOM is a joke. How was Prutton not sent off?
Also, what is the point in winding up opposition players during the game. Are some of our fans that thick to realise it can fire up a lazy bloody 3rd choice striker and give him a shot of energy. Wait till the FT whistle!
If one game told us who will be challenging and who won't there would be little point in playing the others. At the moment we have played 6 and got 14 points - Average 2 points a game and you will get promoted so we need to keep this up. Wednesday apparently had a few injuries so can excuse their approach (which was to spoil the game). The biggest thing we nee dto address is how we cope against the other teams who will try to spoil the game. Going to be more of an issue at the Valley I think -maybe the extra quality Green could have added would have made a difference - could be we need to take more of our chances- Wednesday had one chance and scored one goal - teh fact that tehy only had one chance reflects well on the defence but the fact they scored from it reflects badly.
Looking at it again, JJs flick was unlucky but Hamer needs to take some of the blame. Still, these things happen, just I don't want to see too many teams have only one chance against us and score one goal like last night. This isn't the premier league it is league one - teams should need 5 or 6 opportunities. Maybe Wednesday were just lucky
Started very well, and gradually got worse as the game went on. The goal was excellent in formation and finish, sheer class. Wagstaff and Solly were working well down the right in the first half, but the crossing was just not good enough. Their goal showed just how much work needs to be done on set pieces, however I did spot that they were sending a man to run behind Hamer as the ball was about to be delivered to pull him off balance. My Grandson asked the question " what is the point of taking Hayes of, if you are going to send Euell on to do exactly what Hayes was doing" ? If we are going to concentrate upon sending long punts down the channels for BWP, then we need a 20 goal man in the middle to take advantage, preferably the taller the better. It seems a shame to appear critical when lying unbeaten in third place, but it's when you are winning that you need to demand better, here's hoping.
Not hitting the panic button at all. A draw was better than nothing, but we need to make our dominance count when we are on top. Real shame Stephens didn't get that goal, but apart from a shot from Taylor which fizzed wide we didn't do enough in front of goal to warrant the win and as we are shakey at set-pieces i couldn't see it staying 1-0. Although for the first 20 minutes we looked cracking. But then just stopped which was odd.
Maybe time to make a couple of changes to freshen up and keep the players on their toes. Not big changes just here and there.
Also, what is the point in winding up opposition players during the game. Are some of our fans that thick to realise it can fire up a lazy bloody 3rd choice striker and give him a shot of energy. Wait till the FT whistle!
This. Flipping winds me up when people start giving Morrison stick as soon as he comes on. I turned round to my mate and said "that will fire him up, just watch him score" And hey presto, he did.
Also, what is the point in winding up opposition players during the game. Are some of our fans that thick to realise it can fire up a lazy bloody 3rd choice striker and give him a shot of energy. Wait till the FT whistle!
Not sure there's much I can add to what's been said already except that maybe Megson's not being given enough credit for making he change to his formation so early. Rarely see a tactical sub made so early in a game and clearly he could see that playing 1 up top was allowing us to the time and space to build from the back and capitalise on the movement of our midfield.
Soon as he matched up and therefore pushed up we started dropping deeper and deeper leaving us with the long punt as the outlet of choice. CP could/should have countered this but the options on the bench didn't really help in this respect.
Combined with a couple of players not being quite on their game last night a bit dissapointing we couldn't cary on like the first 25 minutes but overall not unhappy with the draw when last year it would probably have been a loss.
Cheers for that Bournemouth, Megson set us up incorrectly but realised that early and switched which saw you become less of a threat and us become a little tighter, I think the early helped us in more ways than one, it means we had ample time to level and forced an early change by Megson.
We have to look it as 1 point gained, we lost 1-0 at the Valley last season
Not sure there's much I can add to what's been said already except that maybe Megson's not being given enough credit for making he change to his formation so early. Rarely see a tactical sub made so early in a game and clearly he could see that playing 1 up top was allowing us to the time and space to build from the back and capitalise on the movement of our midfield.
Soon as he matched up and therefore pushed up we started dropping deeper and deeper leaving us with the long punt as the outlet of choice. CP could/should have countered this but the options on the bench didn't really help in this respect.
Agree, a lot of people ignoring what Wednesday and Megson did.
Or goad the quiet Sheff Wed fans to make some noise and better supprot their team. Yes I was thinking that was pretty thick too.
As for Megson's early sub - I can't understand why you have to wait till half time if you can see something isn't working - fair play to him on that. I think it wasn't just the change in Wednesday but also possibly that we stopped looking for a second to a degree - Our defence were coping well and Wednesday were battling defensively and in the middle but not offering anything going forwards and the players may have felt hold what we have. Then when they get a goal out of the blue it can be difficult to get back into the mode you were before. I'd like to see us try to win games 3-0 - we wont always do it of course but that should be the mentality as if we play a bit safer it could be taking away a lot of our advantage.
that was the worst game I've seen us play so far this season. Started off brilliantly with BWP screamer but from then on after the Stephens chance we faded badly. Hayes didn't even bother to try and win header's and what was hamer doing for their goal. otherwise it was a fairly average performance from the rest of the team and we nearly scored twice from corner's. But we are still unbeaten and Hollands get's my MoM
We were very rugged and rough and didnt create any chances, so in a way I am happy with the point. For us, we have got so many injuries and we definitely havent seen our strongest team line up. The likes of JJ, COGBA, Bennett and Weaver are potentially match winners and match savers for us. Also I think you played long ball more then we did in that game! Cause apparently Megson is just a 'hoofball' merchant. But anyway, I know both our teams can play better and we have both shown we can play better, I know you are unbeaten at this stage which must give you real confidence. I would be surprised if we arent both up their come May.
First time I've been into The Valley for a few years. Firstly thought the atmosphere in the 1st Half was fantastic. Sat in the East Stand and the North was rocking.
In terms of the football, great first half an hour. I hadn't seen us play that fluently since a few of the early Championship games in 2007. Second half pretty dour, SW seemed happy to spoil the play in order to frustrate us. Prutton etc getting in faces.
Still think a couple of marquee signings could be the final piece of the Jigsaw in January. Maybe an enforcer somewhere in Defence/Midfield who gives as good as he gets when teams such as The Owls look to bully us out of possesion.
We're in Rome so had to content ourselves with Player. Seemed odd in that the commentators almost seemed to be talking about a different team for the second half. Started off by saying how brilliant we were and ended up saying we were naive, not physical enough, mid field went walkabout and Wednesday wanted to win it more than we did. We both felt a bit flattened by the end result but early days an' all that.
Watched on TV. We did ok, decent first half with some good football at times, final ball wasn't always there. Sheff Wed pressed us much better in the second half, though never really looked like scoring from open play. We have to improve but agree with BA and Henry that Sheff Wed deserve some credit - it wasn't all about us having a bad second half, they improved and made things harder for us.
Still not convinced we need a pacey striker as much as need a big strong target man. No point bringing in an Eccleston type that can't play alongside BWP. If we're going to bring in pace up front I'd much rather see an Anyinsah type, strong as well as quick and decent with the ball.
If Green starts and Waggy is on the bench he offers pace and energy from the bench. If we're forced to hoof it more often, like last night, we have no physical striker that can also challenge in the air. Euell doesn't really offer anything different to Hayes. Benson is more back up for BWP.
I don't see the need for Cort and Hughes on the bench. With Green out perhaps we should have had Evina on the bench. He could come on at LM and offer something different to Jackson.
Decent result but we know we can play better, looking forward to Saturday.
I've no time to read through the thread, but I thought that CP was a bit too conservative. SW had two strikers on the bench - Ryan and Morrison, we had Euell, an attacking midfielder as the sole attacking threat among the reserves. I can understand being conservative away from home, but the Valley must be our fortress.
On another point we lumped too many high balls into their penay box all of which were comfortably won by their CBs and in particular the 6f7 one, no surprise to win that we failed to win a single header.
I've no time to read through the thread, but I thought that CP was a bit too conservative. SW had two strikers on the bench - Ryan and Morrison, we had Euell, an attacking midfielder as the sole attacking threat among the reserves. I can understand being conservative away from home, but the Valley must be our fortress.
On another point we lumped too many high balls into their penay box all of which were comfortably won by their CBs and in particular the 6f7 one, no surprise to win that we failed to win a single header.
agreed, Powell has got to learn on his feet and learn fast. By comparison, whatever may be said about him, Megson has been around a long time and learnt the basics of management from his dad. The most crucial thing that Powell needs to impart to the players is confidence, which seemed lacking last night. Whoever said that 'we have nothing to fear but fear itself' was right on the button.
if hamer is still as nervous as that in 25-50-75-100 games time i'll be happy to string him up from a lamp post but early days yet and someone mentioned it after another game why doesn't he ever throw the ball out , don't think he delivered one over arm throw last night
didn't think anyone played particularly well for us but BWP is by far our most important player and i think whenever anyone goes near him i hold my breath , if he gets badly injured we can forget the auotmatics imo
as it stands 10% autos 85 % play offs 5% let's not go there
sheff wed are a solid team and i can see us and the other sheffield mob being the main ones battling for the autos
We looked a good side in the first half but Wednesday, physical bunch that they are, certainly made it difficult for us after we failed to ram home our advantage. Be that as it may, our back four did well and it was only really a poor attempt at a near post clearance by Johnnie Jackson that let them back in it. I haven't seen it again and hope I'm not being too harsh (especially as he's done well for us ), but I think Alan Gilzean would have been happy with that. Harsh to point the finger at Hamer.
My main concern is that the energy levels of our midfield seem to dip alarmingly in the latter stages of certain games ( Scunny being a case in point, although they passed it much better than Wednesday ). I was hoping that Powell might give Pritchard a go late on to try and inject a bit of life into us. One man who is supposed to have a good engine is Mikel Alonso, although I'm beginning to wonder if we'll ever see him. The silence is also odd from the club (mystery injury ? Unresolved issues in Spain ? Who knows ).
Overall, though, things are much improved and with some tweaking and improvement here and there, we should be capable of staying up there. A pity about Green's illness last night. His quality could have made a difference.
A goalie cant throw the ball out when the other team are pressing high up the pitch and there is no one to throw it to! A bloke in front of me was going red in the face demanding Hamer threw the ball in the second half but everyone in our half was marked!
Comments
first half we were playing some nice stuff and shoudl have been atleast 2 clear, second half we started hitting and hoping, sdpace in midfield disappeared, was cryin out for a change in the middle with pritchard coming on.
on that showing wednesday won't be challenging for auto's, looked hard to beat but didnt create a chance in the entire game really how they managed to get a point without having a shot, infact reminded me of us last few years, all huff and no puff
Paul Benson
We already have one of those - he's called Paul Hayes !
What we need is a nippy/pacy striker that Slater alluded to over a month ago. 15 mins to go, last thing that opposotion defenders want who are getting tired & leggy (and on a yellow) is someone running at them.
Passed them off the pitch in the first half and kept the
ball brilliantly and most importantly - on the ground! We seemed to completely
abandon this game for the second 45 and resorted to playing like Sheffield Wednesday by constantly pumping aimless long balls
into their box.
We panicked after they scored when there was no need to and someone from
management needed to calm them down and tell them to compose themselves. We
should have got Stephens on the ball more and tried to get balls into Jackson
and Wagstaff running in behind the defence.
Michael Morrison, Hollands
and BWP had good games.
Wednesday won't do much this season and were only interested in kicking us off the pitch and playing route one football . Clinton Morrison as MOM is a joke. How was Prutton not sent off?
Are some of our fans that thick to realise it can fire up a lazy bloody 3rd choice striker and give him a shot of energy.
Wait till the FT whistle!
If one game told us who will be challenging and who won't there would be little point in playing the others. At the moment we have played 6 and got 14 points - Average 2 points a game and you will get promoted so we need to keep this up. Wednesday apparently had a few injuries so can excuse their approach (which was to spoil the game). The biggest thing we nee dto address is how we cope against the other teams who will try to spoil the game. Going to be more of an issue at the Valley I think -maybe the extra quality Green could have added would have made a difference - could be we need to take more of our chances- Wednesday had one chance and scored one goal - teh fact that tehy only had one chance reflects well on the defence but the fact they scored from it reflects badly.
Looking at it again, JJs flick was unlucky but Hamer needs to take some of the blame. Still, these things happen, just I don't want to see too many teams have only one chance against us and score one goal like last night. This isn't the premier league it is league one - teams should need 5 or 6 opportunities. Maybe Wednesday were just lucky
Their goal showed just how much work needs to be done on set pieces, however I did spot that they were sending a man to run behind Hamer as the ball was about to be delivered to pull him off balance.
My Grandson asked the question " what is the point of taking Hayes of, if you are going to send Euell on to do exactly what Hayes was doing" ? If we are going to concentrate upon sending long punts down the channels for BWP, then we need a 20 goal man in the middle to take advantage, preferably the taller the better. It seems a shame to appear critical when lying unbeaten in third place, but it's when you are winning that you need to demand better, here's hoping.
Maybe time to make a couple of changes to freshen up and keep the players on their toes. Not big changes just here and there.
Maybe think twice before people do it again.
As we saw last night.
Not sure there's much I can add to what's been said already except that maybe Megson's not being given enough credit for making he change to his formation so early. Rarely see a tactical sub made so early in a game and clearly he could see that playing 1 up top was allowing us to the time and space to build from the back and capitalise on the movement of our midfield.
Soon as he matched up and therefore pushed up we started dropping deeper and deeper leaving us with the long punt as the outlet of choice. CP could/should have countered this but the options on the bench didn't really help in this respect.
Combined with a couple of players not being quite on their game last night a bit dissapointing we couldn't cary on like the first 25 minutes but overall not unhappy with the draw when last year it would probably have been a loss.
Keep the faith guys...
We have to look it as 1 point gained, we lost 1-0 at the Valley last season
Or goad the quiet Sheff Wed fans to make some noise and better supprot their team. Yes I was thinking that was pretty thick too.
As for Megson's early sub - I can't understand why you have to wait till half time if you can see something isn't working - fair play to him on that. I think it wasn't just the change in Wednesday but also possibly that we stopped looking for a second to a degree - Our defence were coping well and Wednesday were battling defensively and in the middle but not offering anything going forwards and the players may have felt hold what we have. Then when they get a goal out of the blue it can be difficult to get back into the mode you were before. I'd like to see us try to win games 3-0 - we wont always do it of course but that should be the mentality as if we play a bit safer it could be taking away a lot of our advantage.
We were very rugged and rough and didnt create any chances, so in a way I am happy with the point. For us, we have got so many injuries and we definitely havent seen our strongest team line up. The likes of JJ, COGBA, Bennett and Weaver are potentially match winners and match savers for us. Also I think you played long ball more then we did in that game! Cause apparently Megson is just a 'hoofball' merchant. But anyway, I know both our teams can play better and we have both shown we can play better, I know you are unbeaten at this stage which must give you real confidence. I would be surprised if we arent both up their come May.
Best of luck Addicks.
Hamish
We're in Rome so had to content ourselves with Player. Seemed odd in that the commentators almost seemed to be talking about a different team for the second half. Started off by saying how brilliant we were and ended up saying we were naive, not physical enough, mid field went walkabout and Wednesday wanted to win it more than we did. We both felt a bit flattened by the end result but early days an' all that.
I've no time to read through the thread, but I thought that CP was a bit too conservative. SW had two strikers on the bench - Ryan and Morrison, we had Euell, an attacking midfielder as the sole attacking threat among the reserves. I can understand being conservative away from home, but the Valley must be our fortress.
On another point we lumped too many high balls into their penay box all of which were comfortably won by their CBs and in particular the 6f7 one, no surprise to win that we failed to win a single header.
dull as dishwater and a typical megson away team
if hamer is still as nervous as that in 25-50-75-100 games time i'll be happy to string him up from a lamp post but early days yet and someone mentioned it after another game why doesn't he ever throw the ball out , don't think he delivered one over arm throw last night
didn't think anyone played particularly well for us but BWP is by far our most important player and i think whenever anyone goes near him i hold my breath , if he gets badly injured we can forget the auotmatics imo
as it stands 10% autos 85 % play offs 5% let's not go there
sheff wed are a solid team and i can see us and the other sheffield mob being the main ones battling for the autos