League Two Rovers v Carlisle

[Sparky]

I forgot also that Carlisle were missing eleven players. I’m sure not all were first teamers but they must have a better squad than us

 

[bigmart]

Not nocking Burton but he looked today like a kid thrown into an adults game

 

[Ian]

Not nocking Burton but he looked today like a kid thrown into an adults game

Yeah, I kinda feel sorry for him though. He gets chucked into that kind of game but what has he been given previously? A couple of cameos from the bench. It's a terrible situation really.

 

[Outoftowner]

I think it is the depth of the squad that is the issue, which is almost certainly due to finances.

Ffs the team is not bad - but Mellons tactics are - I believe that clueless idiot should carry the can for this rubbish !

 

[Rockford's Love Child]

Ffs the team is not bad - but Mellons tactics are - I believe that clueless idiot should carry the can for this rubbish !

Lol.

 

[bigmart]

Ffs the team is not bad - but Mellons tactics are - I believe that clueless idiot should carry the can for this rubbish !

You have not got a clue

 

[Outoftowner]

You have not got a clue

And you recon you do ?

 

[Boz]

Disappointing that when so many of our "adult" players turned in performances that were well below par, some feel it's fine to have a dig at youngster Jake Burton. who was by no means the worst player on the park in his twenty or so minutes.

I don't understand and would like to hear from Micky about the decision to ditch playing the ball out and on the deck in favour of pushing up and long-ball strategy. It may have worked to an extent v Rochdale with the wind and possibly stature of their defensive players, but it was ineffective v Carlisle. Plus Doohan's kicking and distribution is not good enough for that kind of game.

Of the starting xi, only O:Connor, Dacres-Cogley and Morris were around their usual level today. While I don't have the inclination or energy to do critiques of the rest, I will mention two. What has happened to Chris Merrie, looked like a nervous wreck today? He struggled to keep hold of the ball, collisions with own players. There was one glimpse of what he's good at; the lob into space for Nevitt to run onto, but something seems to have gone wrong. Kane Hemmings v Rochdale got into the right places even if he didn't convert the chances, but today unlike Nevitt, I don't think he had a goal chance worthy of the name.

It will be interesting to see how we fare against a resurgent Stockport next Tuesday. Time to shuffle the pack...

 

[Rockford's Love Child]

Nobody is singling out Burton. They are emphasising that our reliance on him demonstrates we don't have enough attacking options.

As it happens, he has barely any less Football League experience than youngsters like Bristow and McAlear, who I don't recall you giving an easy ride to due to inexperience.

 

[ONIGP]

I don't understand the long ball vs. play out from the back at all. At the start of the season we played everything out from the back and now we seem to be kicking everything long. Surely you play it out from the back when you can, which suits the skills of our team, but kick it long when there is no option to do that. It feels like there is no common sense, flexibility or freedom of thought being applied on the pitch. It seems so obvious that I feel I must be missing something!

 

[Rockford's Love Child]

It seems that when we play a 442 the instruction is to kick the ball long, although in the recent winning run we mixed things up much more. It is only in the last couple of games that we have gone very direct.

We did revert to playing out from the back on occasions midway through the first half, when we switched to a back five.

 

[bring back the cowshed!]

I wonder if we will be switching back to a back five soon to exploit our wing-backs more. Something needs to change. I wonder if Micky is waiting for Davies and Lewis to return to fitness.

 

[Rockford's Love Child]

I don't think we will revert to a back five, but there will probably be some tactical tweaks on Tuesday night.

 

[Ian]

There has to be a bit more guile from the players too. At 6'9" tall, the goalkeeper wasn't going to miss much in the air so quite why we kept putting high balls into the box, I'll never know.

 

[Goody Two Shoes]

There has to be a bit more guile from the players too. At 6'9" tall, the goalkeeper wasn't going to miss much in the air so quite why we kept putting high balls into the box, I'll never know.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
It’s a very low percentage of headers we won in an attacking sense, which adds to the frustration. Putting balls in to dangerous areas doesn’t just mean lumping the same hit and hope balls into the box. To be fair to the likes of Cogley and Bristow, we need to be challenging more aggressively when the balls do go into the box and also picking up far more of the second balls (we were poor on both counts yesterday). That’s what set Carlisle apart from us, their ruthless determination to win balls all over the park. Don’t forget they also had another well-worked goal, where they made us look all over the place, thankfully ruled out for offside.

 

[Rockford's Love Child]

One positive from yesterday was a decent gate of 6,705, with attendances picking up again in recent weeks. It will be another good crowd on Tuesday night.

 

[Sparky]

The first goal in any game is always important but on Tuesday it’ll be massive. Stockport have won 4 in their last 5 and are full of confidence. After yesterday Micky will have a job getting our heads back up. If they score first it’ll be very difficult.

 

[Boz]

Nobody is singling out Burton. They are emphasising that our reliance on him demonstrates we don't have enough attacking options.

As it happens, he has barely any less Football League experience than youngsters like Bristow and McAlear, who I don't recall you giving an easy ride to due to inexperience.

We're hardly reliant on Burton though, as Ian pointed out he's been confined to a few cameos and just a couple of starts in his Rovers career. It equally could have been said that Kane Hemmings played as though he was older than Peter Clarke and didn't have a goal attempt worthy of the name in 95 minutes on the park, which is more of a reflection of why things went wrong in an attacking sense yesterday. I don't think Burton will be the answer to our goal drought, but he offers something different to the regular pair and we need to give him enough match time to show if he can develop. As an aside, Paul Lewis seems to be another to add to that list of players whose value improves while sat in the stand.

I don't recall laying into either Bristow or McAlear. They are both development players and will have weaker areas in their game, which the coaching staff need to get them working on. I thought that the full-backs were our best players at Harrogate and that McAlear ought to have been introduced in recent games, don't understand why he's fallen so out of the picture.

Have seen the match highlights and teams seem to be getting wise to our difficulty with defending balls down the left flank. Something else for the coaches to work on...

 

[Rockford's Love Child]

We're hardly reliant on Burton though, as Ian pointed out he's been confined to a few cameos and just a couple of starts in his Rovers career. It equally could have been said that Kane Hemmings played as though he was older than Peter Clarke and didn't have a goal attempt worthy of the name in 95 minutes on the park, which is more of a reflection of why things went wrong in an attacking sense yesterday. I don't think Burton will be the answer to our goal drought, but he offers something different to the regular pair and we need to give him enough match time to show if he can develop. As an aside, Paul Lewis seems to be another to add to that list of players whose value improves while sat in the stand.

I don't recall laying into either Bristow or McAlear. They are both development players and will have weaker areas in their game, which the coaching staff need to get them working on. I thought that the full-backs were our best players at Harrogate and that McAlear ought to have been introduced in recent games, don't understand why he's fallen so out of the picture.

Have seen the match highlights and teams seem to be getting wise to our difficulty with defending balls down the left flank. Something else for the coaches to work on...

We are completely reliant on Burton as back up to the strikers at the present time, which is the point I was making. Glatzel and Mumbongo are both out long term with no return date in sight, and Lewis is not a striker even if he was fit. My point is that the striker situation is not sustainable in the medium term.

You seem to suggest that, whatever his limitations, Lewis offers less to the side than Burton, which I would politely suggest is wrong. Lewis can do a job in a number of positions and contributes goals on a fairly regular basis, whether played in midfield or behind a striker.

We should not be giving match time to Burton if he is not good enough, which based on the several full games I have seen him play, I don't believe he is. They are at similar ages and stages of development, and you can judge for yourself who is the better of Burton and Bristow. Bristow had played effectively no first team football before he arrived in the summer, whereas Burton has been around the first team squad for several seasons now.

 

[Boz]

We are completely reliant on Burton as back up to the strikers at the present time, which is the point I was making. Glatzel and Mumbongo are both out long term with no return date in sight, and Lewis is not a striker even if he was fit. My point is that the striker situation is not sustainable in the medium term.

You seem to believe that, whatever his limitations, Lewis offers less to the side than Burton, which I would politely suggest is wrong. Lewis can do a job in a number of positions and contributes goals on a fairly regular basis, whether played in midfield or behind a striker.

We should not be giving match time to Burton if he is not good enough, which based on the several full games I have seen him play, I don't believe he is. They are at similar ages and stages of development, and you can judge for yourself who is the better of Burton and Bristow. Bristow had played effectively no first team football before he arrived in the summer, whereas Burton has been around the first team squad for several seasons now.

Along with most supporters, I agree it was ill-judged to recruit another injury-prone striker in Mumbongo when we were already getting a high-risk loanee in Glatzel. This has left us short of attacking options with Jolley already injured. We're not totally bereft of choice though, Morris or Hawkes could be deployed in the no 10 slot and youngsters Jake Burton and Sam Taylor were deemed worthy of contracts.

I've made no assessment of the relative strengths of Burton and Lewis. One's a youngster and the other an experienced pro, so anyone would accept that Lewis has more to offer at this stage, were he available. However, his performances in the times he has been deployed in a more forward role both this season and under Hill have been patchy, not all reaching the heights of Sutton away. My original comment which references Paul Lewis only still stands.

Bristow/Burton comparisons are difficult. Both are around the same age. Ethan played 6 times in the Championship last season, so he had a spell of games and he signed his first contract at Reading in 2019. He has been almost ever-present in the team this season. Jake signed his first deal in 2020 and has only played a handful of games for Rovers. Undoubtedly Bristow is a decent prospect, as you would expect from his pedigree, although there is still work to do. We would differ in that I don't Burton has been given enough opportunity to show whether he is capable of doing a job for us or not, whereas you think he isn't.