Do we need to talk about Rico?

He got a lot of stick after yesterday and to be honest the whole team underperformed but as Captain he gets the brunt of all the criticism.

I still think he is a decent defender but he is not a good ball playing CB. He looked very ponderous with the ball at his feet yesterday and didn't know what to do. Is it Evatts fault as he insists on this style of play and expects the back 3 to keep the ball and build from the back. Is he fully fit and was he rushed back too soon?

Not sure what happens next season as i can't see him being bought by another club and he will still be here next season. If Evatt stays then i just can't see him changing his style of play and we will be in the same boat next season.

Do we stick with him and hope he gets back to his best? We need to get rid of Jones for one and put Toal at RCB and hopefully Johnston will be back at LCB which will be a much better balance.

He will leave. So will Charles and Sheehan. 

Loans and freebies will make up the brunt of the team next year because we have owners who had to put buckets out to the fans to pay the wages this year.

Hipster_Nebula wrote:He will leave. So will Charles and Sheehan. 

Loans and freebies will make up the brunt of the team next year because we have owners who had to put buckets out to the fans to pay the wages this year.

Who's going to buy him though? On current form he's been poor. I can see Sheehan going and hope we can keep Charles.

Can’t really blame Charles for yesterday when the wankers can’t deliver the ball to him.

Imo Santos is a good ball playing centre back who can bring the ball out of defence.

He also quick and big.

His weaknesses are that he can't head a ball as he should and that he hasn't got the eye for the killer through pass.

We play with Sheehan deep to take the ball off him and pass it up the field.

Opposition teams know this and mark Sheehan out of the game, the result being Santos is left with the ball at his feet and he is unable to see the pass to move the ball on, so we come to a stop and give the opponents time enough to defend whatever we do.

I don't know how Evatt cannot see this and plan for other options - maybe something as simple as for Santos to knock it over the top towards the corner flags for our wingbacks to run on to, turn their players and get around the back hopefully.

Surely even that is better than Santos stood on the ball, doing nothing much with it and losing whatever momentum we had.

I think Santos strengths outweigh his weaknesses but Evatt or one of the coaches need to come up with options for him when Sheehan is being marked out of the game.

Another thing for me is that Santos is not an on-field captain, I much prefer a fiery character like Thomason or Dempsey to galvanise and cajole the team and individuals when they need it and where necessary take the game by the scruff of the neck and lead by example to the others.

It's a bit of a random thought but I wonder if Sharon's mantra of 'always do the right thing' has somehow got on to the pitch - what I mean is that you do have to be 'dirty' and 'nasty' to win - the other teams are, and you need to fight fire with fire, I myself was one of those who 'got my retaliation in first', to set the tone to the opposition of what to expect if they came within my range with (and often at times without) the ball.

We do always seem to roll over rather than fight when teams do it to us - and Oxford wanted it far more than we did yesterday - why didn't Evatt see it and do something about it quickly - Maghoma was injured in the first minute and we had Dempsey who is a fighter on the bench but nothing was done until the substitution late in the second half?

Let's face it though, nothing is going to change - Evatt seems to see Jones and Santos as his children, they are the first two names on the team sheet whether they are injured out of form or not up to it any longer (as I suspect Jones no longer is).

It's equally clear that Evatt's game plan will not change either - it's been obvious for several seasons that Evatt's teams can be 'bullied' or 'harried' or whatever you like to call it and simply can't breakdown teams that simply set up to waste time and park the bus - but still he persists (and is seemingly happy with) Santos, day dreaming as what to do, with his foot on the ball, watching the opposition having ample time to re-set their defence, whilst he dawdles.

It frustrates me in that we are not a bad team with bad players with a bad manager - we blew automatic promotion and played crap at Wembley but really we should have gone up either way with the team, players and Evatt - so that isn't our weakness - what is our Achilles heel is that we stick so rigidly with a playing style and have no plan B to deal with teams that know how to stop us playing our one and only plan A.

Unless money is an issue for next season, I can see much being the same - broadly the same players, playing the same and with the same manager having the same 'no plan B' mentality and suffering the same results because of

So to sum up, stick with Santos, change the captaincy, plan for teams trying to 'bully'/'harry' us and play players on form and not because they are the managers favourites.

Easy!

We do have a plan b and used it at Barnsley. Don’t know why people keep saying there isn’t one. 

Maybe it’s not enacted frequently enough sure.

Hipster_Nebula wrote:We do have a plan b and used it at Barnsley. Don’t know why people keep saying there isn’t one. 

Maybe it’s not enacted frequently enough sure.

Used it once then back in the cupboard till god knows when!

Norpig wrote:
Used it once then back in the cupboard till god knows when!

So there is a plan B and Evatt knows what it is. 

Yet I keep reading on forums he doesn’t have a plan B. 

We did go long frequently yesterday but the balls were kicked into touch. 

Evatt can’t do much about that apart from sub everyone.

But a plan B needs to be used regularly and worked in to training. Using it once doesn't work. There have been loads of games this year when he could have changed it but he is too stubborn to admit his plan A doesn't always work.

I’ve never been to training but I’d be surprised if they didn’t work on things other than santos and toal kicking it to each other.

Hipster_Nebula wrote:I’ve never been to training but I’d be surprised if they didn’t work on things other than santos and toal kicking it to each other.

Didn't look like it after watching that shit show yesterday.

I think played the right way Rico is an asset but a footballer he is not and using him as a play maker is just insane, especially when unfit as he is at the moment. Sadly I don’t see Evatt changing anything other than personnel while the system and everything else stays the same. I’d thank Ian for the really commendable job he’s done since coming here but I do think after yesterday it’s time to part ways. We still have a good squad but I’m sure a better coach would get more out of them.

Hipster_Nebula wrote:I’ve never been to training but I’d be surprised if they didn’t work on things other than santos and toal kicking it to each other.

Well if they did, then it stayed at the training ground because we've had the issue of not being able to break teams down who set up to defended for at least three seasons of which Santos has been left standing with his foot on the ball not knowing what to do with it.

Surely if there had been training for such scenarios he would know how to move the ball on - and he clearly doesn't.

Evatt plays to a formula that has worked well for him so far but there are flaws in it that other teams exploit.

It's not rocket science.

I'm stating the obvious here.

We used to go to Arsenal under Big Sam and routinely they would struggle to break us down.

Hipster_Nebula wrote:We used to go to Arsenal under Big Sam and routinely they would struggle to break us down.

True.

But you never saw Adams, Bould or Keown, stood for ten minutes with their foot on the ball wondering what to do with it - and that's the bit we are talking about.

Isn't it?

Santos is a ball winner but not a ball user. I think he'd be at his best in a 5 man defence where his only job is to stop the opposition while the other defenders were tasked with making passes etcetera. 

But frankly I think right now none of that matters. While Ian Evatt remains manager I do not believe we can get promoted, not unless we get lucky as we did in L2 and get automatic promotion because other teams slipped up worse than we did.

I don't want to sound too harsh but for my money Evatt is never going to be more than L2 material as a manager and he's now presided over two "Epic Fail" ends to the season on the trot. It's not really about the players anymore, Evatt is the problem and replacing him is the only viable solution in my opinion.

Nice to see you back on here LPP 

I think that the midfield and WBs have to take a lot of responsibility for Santos being made to look daft.
Everybody knew they’d block the short ball to Sheehan so it was up to the others to make runs to give him alternative passes to midfield, but the work rates and the willingness to try something “off script” were generally poor.

Add to that the appalling delivery whenever they did get a chance to bring the strikers into play and it stinks of over scripting I.e. too much “ detail” and not enough initiative. House of cards - take out one from the bottom and the lot goes.

wanderlust wrote:I think that the midfield and WBs have to take a lot of responsibility for Santos being made to look daft.
Everybody knew they’d block the short ball to Sheehan so it was up to the others to make runs to give him alternative passes to midfield, but the work rates and the willingness to try something “off script” were generally poor.

Add to that the appalling delivery whenever they did get a chance to bring the strikers into play and it stinks of over scripting I.e. too much “ detail” and not enough initiative. House of cards - take out one from the bottom and the lot goes.

Evatt is the manager of the team.

If he had anything about him he would have called for change of tactics that you would have hoped he had drilled the team in for the blindingly obvious event that Sheehan would be heavily marked out of the game.

And Santos is the captain of the team.

If he had anything about him he would have called for change of tactics that you would have hoped Evatt had drilled the team in for the blindingly obvious event that Sheehan would be heavily marked out of the game.

It would seem to me nothing at all to do with the midfield and WBs being at fault and everything to do with Evatt being unable (unwilling) to prepare his team how to play to any other match day strategy than his 'one size fits all' / 'no plan B', philosophy/mantra.

It wasn't a question of a lack of "willingness to try something off script" - there was nothing planned whatsoever to go off-script to.

Professional football is all about playing as a TEAM and not a set of individuals, they are DRILLED to know (almost without looking) where their team mates will be at anyone time in any given situation (George Graham apparently tied the famed Arsenal defence together, spaced out on a long rope, in order to get them drilled into running out of defence at the same time to each other and hence the famous "one nil win for Arsenal' score line was born).

With Tony Adams installed as club skipper by Graham in 1986, and the hugely experienced David O’Leary still as effective as ever in central defence, Graham moulded a blue-collar defensive unit through relentless and remorseless drilling exercises.  It remains a moot point as to whether Graham ever did use a piece of rope in training sessions to ensure the players operated as a unit – but the message was clear – Arsenal were a team built from the back. Their offside trap was a hugely effective system which squeezed the life out of the opposition. The Bould-Adams-Dixon-Winterburn quartet first played regularly together during the 1988/89 campaign – which ended with the decisive victory at Anfield – and remarkably it was still in place when Arsene Wenger took over in 1996.

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Or if you want a current example of 'individuals' not being drilled into the system look how well United played with Casemiro and Evans in central defence the other week...

As a defensive unit, United put in one of the worst performances of the season with Casemiro and Evans becoming their 14th centre back partnership used this campaign.

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'Underperforming' Man Utd 'one of worst-coached teams in league'

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You simply CAN'T have professional footballers individually playing their own game - you either all transition together to another 'script' you've been DRILLED in, or you stick together in the one you are in hoping that some tactical tweak or other from the manager or leader on the pitch (I don't see Santos as a leader) will fix it.


It's blindingly obvious that you simply don't have any intrinsic understand of the game.

You apparently watch a great deal of football, no doubt listen to the analysis too but still have no feel, concept or understanding as to what is actually happening out there.

The actual game is going on with eleven players involved on each side, in constant motion, moving to close down, or drag defenders away and defences out of shape, making dummy runs, covering space, anticipating threats and trying to exploit opportunities and much, much more, nearly all of which is off camera that you don't see - most people simply follow the ball, even many who are actually at the games themselves

You've clearly never played a competitive game of football or you wouldn't spout the inane rubbish that you do.

It's a bit like me watching Master Chef on telly and believing I can tell Mary Berry or Pru Leith (or probably even you as a restaurant owner) how they should be cooking and baking.

Yes I can see it on the TV but I haven't the real time experience and intrinsic understanding of what they do and why, that they (and maybe you) do.

So I don't show my pig-ignorance by talking self-opinionated bollocks.

Seems our former Captain is unhappy with his lot at the moment. Twitter is full of posts about him not going over to the fans and going straight down the tunnel for the third game running.

His Missus has waded in now as well which probably wasn't the best idea but she made a good point about why would he when he keeps getting abused online. 

It wouldn't surprise me if he asks for a move in January.