Bolton 2-1 Burton

Really not sure about tonight. I don’t buy into this “not having beaten them before” history having any effect, so hopefully the players will just go out and prove they’re the better team, whatever one Evatt puts out. Surely Dapo has to start on the left but needs Iredale behind him. I’d also consider leaving MJ out and sitting Thomason in the defensive role instead as Williams slows the game down too much and we need to keep the tempo up to break them down as we did at Accy in the second half. The dilemma is of course up front because no partnership has so far delivered. I assume it will be Dion and Kachunga with Kacha making a difference when he came on last Saturday but personally I’d be giving Sadlier a chance to see what he can do. I’m not confident we’ll do the business because we can’t be sure the players will “turn up” but if we can’t win games like this we won’t stay near the top for long so despite that I’ll try to be positive and go 2-0 to Wanderers.

Football management is easy.

The starting 11 should be the team that played the second half at the weekend and actually scored some real life goals.

However, this is Evans so I fully expect a return to a 10-0-0 formation with Dapo at centre-half.

I want to say 0-0, but surely we can beat these whatever team the manager picks so I'll go for 1-0 to Bolton.

It should be a comfortable home win, but with EVANS and our non-firing strikers it could be anything.

The problem at the moment is that nobody can be confident both what team will play and also whether we’ll beat even the bottom teams. When Bruce, Toddy and Big Sams teams turned out against these sides you genuinely went expecting to win. We didn’t win every time obviously because there are always slip ups but they were occasional and you always felt like you’d win. Under IE whoever we’re playing you never feel totally confident we won’t slip up and that’s how I feel about tonight. I think it really stems from not having regular scoring strikers. Under all those managers named we had proven scorers who regularly delivered. Other than Dapo, who to be fair isn’t actually a striker, we have nobody you’d back to score. Whether that’s Evatt’s system or their lack of quality, or a bit of both I don’t know but I do know that if you don’t score goals you don’t win games. Let’s see what happens tonight though because maybe with the right mix things may turn round quickly?

Easy win.  Looking forward to it

lots of debate on twitter about the formation, hoping its 433 and not back to a back 3. Missing this game as well, i really am a shit fan these days.

A win would be super tonight!

2 late wins in a row, coming from behind.   Phew!

Great to win but how crap are we against one of the poorest defences in this league. How many corners did we have again and caused not one uneasy moment for their defence, in fact most of the time we didn’t even get past the first defender. We have to stop this lethargic approach play and start getting the ball forward more quickly. You can call it route one but we have the players in Sadlier, Bod and Baka to do it plus all the skills in midfield with Sheehan, Morley, Lee and Dempsey to support it. Cracking come back but that performance really asks questions now about the likes of Kachunga and Charles, neither of whom can hit a barn door and pose no threat even to a poor defence. Just play it simple Ian and cut out trying to be clever.

Lee and Sheehan showed their quality tonight. Absolutely class from them. Sadlier too. And Baka and Bod both coming on to score. Really changed the game after the subs happened.

That's why you should never leave early. Burton got what they deserved wasting time from the off, it's killing the game. They got a throw on the left wing and waited for the right wing back to trot across the pitch it needs stopping the fans are being ripped off.

I nearly left before that goal but it was edge of your seat stuff so I had to see what happened. The goal was coming but also looked like it wasn't going to go in! Had plenty of chances at the end when we finally started going for it.

That was absolutely dire for 80 minutes and it looked like we were back to our worst - slow build up, poor control and passing, overelaborate near their goal, poor final ball and giving possession away at crucial stages etc all of which resulted in zero shots on target.
Burton's time-wasting and game plan made it the most disjointed stop/start game I can remember seeing and we weren't good enough to get any fluency going - a horrible watch.
At half time I said to the missus that it was shaping up to be one of those games where we huff and puff and they sneak a goal to hang on to - which inevitably they did.
One long punt, badly defended and a good finish from Baka changed everything- especially the momentum as our numerous strikers set about grabbing a winner and f*** me they eventually did it.
How Burton could complain about the length of extra time is beyond me.
Deserved win, but we need an attacking threat from the off and the style of play needs simplifying - we ain't City and we need to sort out the basics.

wessy wrote:That's why you should never leave early. Burton got what they deserved wasting time from the off, it's killing the game. They got a throw on the left wing and waited for the right wing back to trot across the pitch it needs stopping the fans are being ripped off.

What a horrible team Burton were. They were time wasting from minute 1. The law makers have to really tackle this head on. It's killing the game. When that unbelievable winner went in on 97mins and our lads were celebrating like mad I was chuffed to bits. Beautiful Poetic justice.

Time wasting is an interesting point. How do you realistically legislate for it? And is it unfair to say that take who is it to their advantage should have it taken away from them just because we don't like it?

The only way to make it fair is to have a time limit for every break in play, 10 seconds for a throw in. 15 seconds for a goal kick and so on... But what do you do when the ball goes a long way away, when does the timer start?