THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

Kemp can play as a winger too, he did for Hartlepool

Did he? All the line ups I saw was him as a 10 personally, though I wasn’t checking every week.

Even so, Hunter can also play up top so for the formation we play, Hunter fits in better.

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Cuboid of bum fluff

Just watched Graham Alexander's post-match interview. Gotta say I'm starting to like the guy. Comes across as impressive. Really demonstrates his experience in interviews and makes Manning and Jacko look like junior coaches. Seems to use a lot of his experiences as a player to understand his players too.

I can see why he'd divide opinion or ruffle feathers, but I can't help but feel he really knows what he's doing. Very honest too with his answers.

Not too sure about the questions though. They seemed a little scared of him.

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Disclaimer: All my comments are my opinions unless stated otherwise. I'm just a fan following my club.

Obvious from the interview we are after a lump up front who can hold the ball upwhich is something we are surely lacking.
Leko is the only one who is semi decent at it but he is also lightweight sometimes.

The most telling point of GA's interview was when he said, "There are a lot of competitors out there for players and the type of players we are trying to get, are coveted by others and coveted by their current clubs."

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Disclaimer: All my comments are my opinions unless stated otherwise. I'm just a fan following my club.

Haha. He is a different breed though to previous managers.

He is quite happy to push back against stuff he thinks is BS including stuff about "how great the stadium is" with "never seen a floodlight score a goal". That was in response to an easy question as well where the easy answer is "yeah home supporters are great, great playing facilities, amazing experience to play in a big stadium every week".

As long as the manager is concentrating on improving the team and not blowing smoke up the fanbase/chairman's arse then I think there are reasons for optimism.

It helps that he has seen the same deficiencies as the rest of us. The early transfer business tried to address the terrible age/experience imbalance in last year's squad by signing players who were in mid-career near their peak. He has started to address the fitness concerns in pre season. And now we have 3-4 more spots in the squad to bolster, and need to do that in the next week or two. Everyone here agrees we need more faces and the only disagreements are about who and exactly where.

I like Toby Lock but last October when he was on the podcast I asked a question saying "I'm worried about relegation, do you think there are four worse teams than us?" and he didn't think we would be relegated. I could see the writing was on the wall in October, and sometimes the club and the staff get an easy ride in relation to the questions asked.

Thought Smith and Robson have very good games.

Robson was brilliant in the first half especially. Broke up play really well.

Yup. I picked up on that too. Really telling comment.
Although I come back to a post or two last night: there seemed to be no plan of attack (indeed or defence unless you count 'hit it anywhere') in the second half which was ghastly.

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Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment

I get the feeling that he isn't too fond of Mr Ashmead!