Home Match Day Thread 23/02/2021 L1 OUFC v Portsmouth

Tonight, Lee was much better than Henry. Shodipo wasn’t as good as he has been but as I mentioned, he hasn’t been poor in 20 games like Henry has. I’m not convinced by Sykes. I’m not convinced by Winnall.

I disagree that Lee was any better then Henry, both were mostly ineffective.

I agree that Shodipo's form over the season does earn him a reprieve.
 
Kelly makes us a better side. Take Gorrin out the midfield then you also lose a lot. KR got that midfield horribly wrong tonight and cost us the game. Can’t think of Brannagan having a worse game for us the last 12 months.

Kelly Gorrin Brannagan has to be the starting midfield Saturday. Brannagan is a 8 or 10 for me. At fault for the goal playing as a 6 tonight & poor in general
 
i'm normal very reserved and like to see balance but we really were not with it tonight and allowed an out of form side to boss us on our own patch

Those constant niggling silly fouls were so frustrating and those backwards and side ways passing followed by a long daigonal ball towards a player already with 2 or 3 opponents near him equally so.
Portsmouth werent much better though. This is what we are at the moment; we’ll probably lose on Saturday but after that I trust Karl to rejig and motivate them to another good run.
 
I disagree that Lee was any better then Henry, both were mostly ineffective.

I agree that Shodipo's form over the season does earn him a reprieve.
Lee plays far more positively, he made more creative runs, made better passes and looked much more dangerous going forward than James Henry. Give me the choice of Lee or Henry in that advanced CM role and its Lee all day.
 
Lee plays far more positively, he made more creative runs, made better passes and looked much more dangerous going forward than James Henry. Give me the choice of Lee or Henry in that advanced CM role and its Lee all day.

I didn't see that. I did see Henry force a reasonable save, and also narrowly miss the target.

It's a bit of a pointless argument in any case - neither achieved an acceptable standard this evening.
 
Pompey are 4th so are in the play offs on 50 points and can’t see them dropping to many points, Hull on the other hand are on 51
With us having 3 games in hand, and if we win those 3 we would go above them but unlikely. So in all honesty I can see us struggling to get into the playoffs, we f we did then yippee but can’t see it.
i will counter that Baz

What did you see from Pompey to have you think they wont drop many points? (their previous 2 games just a blip but not for us?)

Based on our previous 12 games why would we not be likely to win those 3 games in hand on Hull who themselves have been very hiit and miss of late?

now you may be correct but not because of the reasoning you offer tonight.
 
I didn't see that. I did see Henry force a reasonable save, and also narrowly miss the target.

It's a bit of a pointless argument in any case - neither achieved an acceptable standard this evening.
Fair one. I agree
 
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We lost due to this continuation of tappy play out the back football . Every time we had the ball in our own area we allowed them to get back in the banks of four why are we not moving the ball forward quicker and use the pacey players we now have and were crying out for at the start of the season. Carry on playing like this mid table here we come. The last three games have been the same boring football where we are now creating few chances i thought we had got past this rubbish.
 
My take on tonight’s game - Portsmouth came with a game plan and executed it perfectly, they chased every ball and wanted it more, we looked a little leggy I thought, we could easily have equalised at the death but it wasn’t to be, we are still in this, onto the next game, plenty more football to play.........
 
i will counter that Baz

What did you see from Pompey to have you think they wont drop many points? (their previous 2 games just a blip but not for us?)

Based on our previous 12 games why would we not be likely to win those 3 games in hand on Hull who themselves have been very hiit and miss of late?

now you may be correct but not because of the reasoning you offer tonight.
And I will counter that we’ve been very poor
In the last 2 games and unless there is a major shift in tactics and shapes on the field then I sadly can’t see any improvements.
 
Really frustrating tonight.
Scrappy as hell, and whilst I can't really argue that Pompey didn't deserve to win (I thought they scrapped a little more effectively than we did for most of the 90, and created more opportunities until right at the death), they're not that good and on a good day, we should have beaten them.

Problem, for me, is consistency in the attacking half. I'd argue that Stevens, Long, Moore & Atkinson have all generally been terrific since Swindon, and Gorrin has mostly been up there with them until just the last couple of games.

But there's question marks over literally everyone further forward. Brannagan still hasn't got back to his best; Henry has been off his usual form most of the season; Sykes flatters to deceive; Shodipo & Barker look like classic wingers in that they run very hot & cold; Taylor has been bang off form for the past month; Winnall has been mostly ineffective; Lee has had some lovely touches but he hasn't been amazing; Kelly has been workmanlike at best. The only attacking player that's been consistently excellent for a decent chunk of time was McGuane, and now he's probably gone for the year.

If 3-4 of them could hit peak form at the same time, we could still make a run because there's a ton of potential quality there.

But if it doesn't happen soon, then we're going to continue to be flat track bullies in 2020-21. Beat the dross but not quite good enough against the top half leading to upper mid table mediocrity.......
 
Even with what the board allowed kr to invest in the team in the last window? They might see it slightly differently.

Maybe so. It depends what our budget is compared to others. I think we can hazard a guess at the big spenders.
 
Portsmouth werent much better though. This is what we are at the moment; we’ll probably lose on Saturday but after that I trust Karl to rejig and motivate them to another good run.
The way we performed they didn't need to be.

As i've said earlier in the thread they were coming here out of form and was ideal time to go for the jugular but instead we allowed them to dictate everything, in part due to our poor passing slow pedestrian approach and those silly fouls.

Reminded me of when Mr Wilder was in charge in similar circumstances and was on the radio pre match bigging up the name rather than where they were at the time form wise and we then proceeded to bore the fans to sleep.
 
It has become a really difficult one to work out, we have all got very excited with 9 wins in a row and us getting to the edges of the play offs. But it needs almost as good a run to stay there, and most importantly definitely not lose to your promotion rivals to stay in with a chance.

The reality is that 16 points from the first 16 games has hurt us and left us with too much to do. And having got to a position where we may actually create a miracle we have suddenly bottled it when the pressure of knowing it could actually be done became a reality. The free flowing football when not under pressure has stopped and the team is more anxious about not conceding a goal to lose a game rather than score 2 or 3 in the first 30 minutes and put the game to bed. And the managers tactics and team selections seem to be getting muddled in this mindset too. At the moment we have stopped passing the ball with the same accuracy, stopped getting forward quickly, stopped putting crosses in the box, stopped getting decent shots on goal, we suddenly look less fit than the opposition and have become fearful of what they can offer rather than imposing what we can do to them.

But even when we were winning every game the massive and unnatural contribution to goals coming from our full backs maybe was masking the fact that there was a lack of contribution from the rest of the team to really threaten a serious promotion challenge. And now the full backs' contribution has unsurprisingly dropped off no one else has really stepped up to take charge and make their own telling contribution, nothing from Brannagan, nothing from Kelly, nothing from Winnall, nothing from Sykes, nothing from Forde, very little from Henry, and a really bad patch from Taylor, a bad 15 minutes in a game for Agyei has seen him out of the team despite him contributing with goals and assists before that. But really we can only complain that we only got 16 points from our first 16 games, even if we had underachieved and only got 22 we would be comfortably in the play offs. The early and significant underachievement unfortunately has still outweighed the recent overachievement of this team and the effort of catching up seems to be weighing the team down now. We should still be surprised that we are in with a chance.
 
Where we lost our shape today was due to the Portsmouth front 3 attackers.....
They worked extremely hard hunting as a threesome not just in chasing us down but more so closing the space down making sure Brannagan never received the ball with time and space, if we did knock it wide their two midfielders smothered Longy and Josh meaning we knock the ball long aimlessly or pass the ball back into the centre backs.
Credit where credit is due, are Portsmouth a much better team than us, probably not, were Portsmouth more tactally aware, definitely......
If we abandoned the “play it out from the back” and Stevens kicked the ball into the portsmouth half especially the last 20 minutes of the first half we would have won that game because we would have bypassed the danger and put their defenders in a panic position.
Portsmouth did a fantastic job on us today and as much as we don’t like him, Curtis called the shots and probably won that game for them today with his enthusiasm, his organisation and walking a very tightrope stopping our attacks when called upon.
As hard it may be, sometimes we have to accept that we have just been outfoxed by a more astute team, and tonight was exactly that.
We must move on, learn from it and get back on a run of results and 4 points over the next two games is now the minimum we need to keep in touch of the pack above us....
 
Really frustrating tonight.
Scrappy as hell, and whilst I can't really argue that Pompey didn't deserve to win (I thought they scrapped a little more effectively than we did for most of the 90, and created more opportunities until right at the death), they're not that good and on a good day, we should have beaten them.

Problem, for me, is consistency in the attacking half. I'd argue that Stevens, Long, Moore & Atkinson have all generally been terrific since Swindon, and Gorrin has mostly been up there with them until just the last couple of games.

But there's question marks over literally everyone further forward. Brannagan still hasn't got back to his best; Henry has been off his usual form most of the season; Sykes flatters to deceive; Shodipo & Barker look like classic wingers in that they run very hot & cold; Taylor has been bang off form for the past month; Winnall has been mostly ineffective; Lee has had some lovely touches but he hasn't been amazing; Kelly has been workmanlike at best. The only attacking player that's been consistently excellent for a decent chunk of time was McGuane, and now he's probably gone for the year.

If 3-4 of them could hit peak form at the same time, we could still make a run because there's a ton of potential quality there.

But if it doesn't happen soon, then we're going to continue to be flat track bullies in 2020-21. Beat the dross but not quite good enough against the top half leading to upper mid table mediocrity.......

McGuane had come alive, and his loss is a bitter blow, but methinks the myth is becoming larger than the man!
 
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