THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

For the Vale game I listened on RS home commentators and to be honest both were fair and gave an honest view. We dominated in the first half and the Vale pair admitted that Crewe looked the league1 side.

At half time their manager obviously had spotted a glaring weakness in our team. A couple of posters and lots of supporters in my area of the stand have been going on about how obvious it is, and why has our management not put it right. Vale dominate for the whole of the second half.

Seems MK management couldn't see our glaring weakness today!! Come on the Alex.

In fact in the battle of the managers LB won hands down! After about 29 mins he moved Rio into midfield. This was the turning point. Up until that point they looked a slick passing unit but after LBs change it became clear that Alexander didn't know what to do next. Then Tracey came on and their narrow defence couldn't cope.
Then came the moment. The Alex had obviously worked on it- Tracey down the line pulled it back for a player who had stepped back to the edge. 3 times in 2 mins this happened- Long (?), then Tabiner and finally Thomas who scored. Why their defence/manager hadn't noticed this is perhaps relevant to the final outcome.

Rookie manager with zero experience of managing a football league team. He is actually improving week by week and I am happy with what he is doing and the way he is going about it.
Regarding today's match, we were second best in the first half and were deservedly behind against what looked a very good side. But the switch made in the first half almost brought us an (undeserved at the time) equaliser. Second half we were by far the better side and looked a threat every time we got on the ball. We are playing some really nice football at the moment having played the more "pragmatic stuff" last season.

The game was so poor in the first half that I contemplated going home at half time, only for the fact that I wanted to see if the new players were going to be introduced and to see if any radical changes were going to be made at half time. Credit LB for starting to make changes before half time, But lets be clear the team selection and formation at the outset was abysmal. I don't think we strung more than two passes together in there half, in fact I don't think we put together any passes in there half during the first 15 mins.We strung 5 across the defence with 3 in midfield in close proximity and were never going to pose any threat.
Then the real changes
The second half display was as good as anything I have seen for a long time, against a team that will surely be towards the top at the seasons end.

I wouldn't have described the first half as poor. MK looked very good and in truth a hell of a lot better than us.