Away Match Day Thread 31/10/2023 L1: Lincoln City v OUFC

[Northstandboy]

COYY

 

[WRox]

Orient unbeaten in five

Respectable but not the toughest run - 5th, 13th, 20th, 21st, 24th. They’ve also drawn their last 3.

 

[SSU1965]

Fantastic photo

 

[behindthegoal]

I too think a striker is needed, but well pleased the goals are being shared around and not relying on one player.

 

[IsleofWightYellow]

Thanks for that, just been on there and found a lightweight run hoodie, been looking for something that took my fancy on that for a while as I'm quite picky when it comes to running clothing

 

[SteMerritt]

View attachment 16493

Now I'll be looking for that mug, got to have it.

 

[Sarge]

any update on Sam Long's injury situation as yet?

 

[Big Ron]

Haha! I realise I was one of the few to rate Hoban, but I thought he was decent. Found space, brought others in the game, held the ball up- but just couldn't score. Harris reminds me of him in that regard. Harris is a decent player, but he's never been a prolific goalscorer, and doesn't look like he ever will be. That's all I'm saying!!

Last night you described Harris as 'a bit crap', so which is it, 'crap' or 'decent'?

As I remember, Hoban was a very different player to Harris, the latter worked incredibly hard last night, running the channels, pressing and harrying the defenders, and generally stretching the backline. Granted, he's not scoring and we need to address that, but he's an effective, honest team player.

 

[RyanioBirdio]

Now I'll be looking for that mug, got to have it.

I already bought you this one for Christmas.

 

[unification]

Love a moody foggy shot!

Here's another!

 

[MarkG]

After our three game winless streak, it feels good to wake up in the morning with three points away at a reasonable mid-table team. Also reading the opposition reviews sounds like we deserved it, rather than getting lucky.

 

[werthersoriginal]

After our three game winless streak, it feels good to wake up in the morning with three points away at a reasonable mid-table team. Also reading the opposition reviews sounds like we deserved it, rather than getting lucky.

We did deserve it, it wasn't a great game but we were in control for most of it and made them look very bad - just as we made Wigan look quite good.

 

[Foley]

We did deserve it, it wasn't a great game but we were in control for most of it and made them look very bad - just as we made Wigan look quite good.

Interesting that Lincoln apparently battered Charlton last week.
Charlton were 3 up at Wigan last night and limped home 3 2.
Lincoln's recent form was pretty good, so it was a very good and important performance and result

 

[Northernyellow]

Last night you described Harris as 'a bit crap', so which is it, 'crap' or 'decent'?

As I remember, Hoban was a very different player to Harris, the latter worked incredibly hard last night, running the channels, pressing and harrying the defenders, and generally stretching the backline. Granted, he's not scoring and we need to address that, but he's an effective, honest team player.

Yup. He's being played as a goalscorer. And he's not!

 

[Northernyellow]

Yup. He's being played as a goalscorer. And he's not!

He's a decent player. But he's a bit crap at scoring goals!

 

[ttg17]

Yup. He's being played as a goalscorer. And he's not!

I know it won’t change your mind, but this is a bit reductive and not entirely accurate.

Out of possession, he did a superb job of leading the press last night, which was one of the reasons we were able to dominate as effectively as we did. The Lincoln centrehalfs didn’t get any time on the ball and regularly played poor passes / hoofed it long to Moore as a result.

With the ball, his runs in behind and the threat of his pace caused Lincoln to drop that bit deeper than they would perhaps have liked, which in turn created that bit of space between the midfield and defence that TG and RR were able to exploit so effectively. He also did well to play a couple of cutbacks which could and maybe should hve led to goals, the Mills one in the second half in particular being one that Stanley fluffed a little bit.

We could obviously do with him scoring a few more goals but I don’t know why you’re choosing last night’s performance in particular to hammer him, he by all accounts had a very good game and was a key reason in why we played as well as we did.

 

[Orkney Islands Yellow]

The EFL are trolling their keeper

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[Followtheox1]

Yup. He's being played as a goalscorer. And he's not!

Generally we are not a high chance creating team, the stats back that up. We have been clinical with the chances we have had. While Harris is not prolific, he hasn't actually had that many great chances. Partly his lack of chances in my view is because he is dragging defenders out wide and pressing across the back four, thus creating space for other attacking players to get chances but not being in the box himself. Presumably he is being asked to do that as it fits our way of playing and has been successful. However, its also partly because we don't create many chances for him. Mills was excellent last night but his and TGs final balls were not brilliant at times. Rodrigues tries to to thread balls through but sometimes they don't come off. While you can see with the chances he has had he needs to do some work on his finishing (yes you don't have to be a natural finisher to improve), if he continues to play like he did last night I have no doubt that other attacking players in the team will continue to benefit from his work.

He does need competition, I don't think anyone disagrees with that, but the key will be can he consistently work like he did last night. A slight negative in my view is that he often tries to win free kicks by holding his head etc when clearly no foul has taken place, rather than just getting on with the game.

 

[WRox]

Harris scored goals when we were playing four at the back and he had space to operate. He’s stopped scoring goals since we went to a back five.

He needs runners of him and he’s suffered while we’ve played an extra defender, and particularly since the loss of Brannagan.

What we need is horses for courses. There’ll be games where 5 at the back is the right play or a team is just a bit better defensively than Lincoln were last night, and we’ll need a different striker for those. Harris will still be the right man for plenty more games this season though regardless of the transfer window.

 

[RyanioBirdio]

Harris scored goals when we were playing four at the back and he had space to operate. He’s stopped scoring goals since we went to a back five.

He needs runners of him and he’s suffered while we’ve played an extra defender, and particularly since the loss of Brannagan.

Key difference yesterday was that we had mobile players like Mills and Goodrham in the attacking third who could get past players, be it through sheer pace (Mills) or agility and quick feet (Goodrham). They gave Rodrigues something to aim for as he could play passes into different areas and had more than just Harris ahead of him. Moving to a front four rather than a front three helped in this regard.

Harris was also more effective because his runs were often geared towards opening space for other players to run into, which hasn’t been happening lately as Rodrigues and Bodin are not strong runners. They’re technical players who need people with mobility around them to make the runs; they’re passers rather than receivers. When you play them together as a pair of 10s, rather than with Harris and a typical wide player to form a four, there’s nothing on. It’s a straight through ball to Harris down the middle or nothing, because neither of them is going to drive at the defence and break the line and the other has no pace.

You can play one of them with a Browne or an Edwards in a 3421 because those two will carry the ball past players and get beyond the striker, or you can play them both in a 4231 because there are two players at the top end to pass to rather than just Harris, but not together doing the same job. It makes the entire team too one-paced and when that happens the easy thing for people to do is slag the striker off.

 

[West Oxon U’s]

A murky Halloween at Sincil Bank