THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

He's a good manager, but is he as great as we all were making him out to be?

When he came in, we were all so fed up of how rubbish the football had been under GA we were just delighted to have a manager who actually wanted his team to pass the ball around. Don't get me wrong, he's done a great job to turn us around and steer us up to 4th, but there are some big question marks over him.

He's very stubborn with his team selection and tactics, even if it's to the detriment of the team. Bate and Payne are both great players and have played well together in certain games where we dominate the ball, but there is absolutely no defensive presence in there. We have to have another plan for games like tonight where we need a bit more protection.

The failure to improve the defense despite the fact he was a Premier League defender is also a big worry.

Oh, and how could we forget the goalkeeper situation. Which could well have been what has killed our season (we'll never know of course).

Overall, he's got us into a position where we win the games we're expected to win, at home against mid-table and lower half teams, and struggle against anybody half decent. And we don't just struggle, we crumble.

Stop talking so much sense. We are meant to be having a meltdown right now.

We will inevitably lose a few players who are out of contract and maybe have to sell Max but I honestly think we'll go up in the auto places next season.
We've seen tonight that there are plenty of cheap players who can play the style of football we want and, if we'd had MW all season, we'd have likely gone up this season.

Alot of these players can fuck off. There is only 3 I would keep 4 at a push

Keeping MW is a no brainer.

Your whole post was good. This single point from it, for me, is the stone cold killer. How can he not have improved our defending?

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I don't need your ill-informed, half-baked, idiotic opinions. I have plenty of those myself.

No manager has improved our defence in years and it seems that they're almost contractually obliged to always play the same formation and style of play - for better or worse.

The defending has been abysmal in the last couple of months. So casual and weak. We binned off Tommy smith and Antony Stewart who aren’t footballers who can tap it about by any means, but who can head it , boot it and mark properly. Stewart dominated us for Wycombe in the play offs 2 years ago. Instead we end up with the failed back line that caved in last season - O’Hora, tucker, harvie and a half fit lewington. That defence was a joke last season and has been yet again. Tucker- I am done with this guy. He was hopeless in both boxes last night, he is like a schoolboy.

Maybe he wanted to but the budget or Sweeting wouldn't allow it. That said we have spent most of the season with a defender who never plays and a defensive midfielder in defence so maybe the rule of concede 2 is fine so long as we score 3. It's when we don't score you can see how glaringly bad most of our team are. Mind you saying that it was our midfield which was non existent last night and we brought how many of them in the Jan window. I had to check Payne was on the pitch and I only realise Wearne was there when he was subbed.

We seem to be scapegoating the defence, and even the keeper, but it’s the midfield that got outplayed last night.