Away Match Day Thread 27/01/2024 L1: Bristol Rovers v OUFC

Who was your MOTM?

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Followtheox1 said:
He highlighted how Goodrham likes balls to his feet, playing inside and is more of a no 10. I actually agree, I said a while ago on here he is more of a no 10. We only really have one fit winger and that is Burey. Hopefully get a couple more through the door this week.
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So if that’s the case, why did we persist to knock it sideways and backwards a few times, then try and knock a long diagonal ball across, and expect Tyler to win an aerial battle against taller and stronger physical full backs.

Tactically doesn’t make sense, the poor lad is a midget, and is never going to win many aerial battles. The mind boggles!

Clueless Management/Coaching.
 
WuTang said:
The disappointment for me comes from the missed opportunity.

How many times have we had owners happy to provide money for 11k a week contracts, 6 figure transfer fees and £100m new stadium?

The money is there, it's an enormous and rare opportunity for Oxford United to seriously progress, I think Tim Williams and Grant Ferguson are wasting it. I would prefer that money to be invested into new people at that level of the club. If Grant Ferguson, the CHAIRMAN, has barely been in the country since arriving he needs to ask himself if he's the right man for that role, I don't think he is.

Tim Williams appears to be out of his depth, only communicates and shows his face when the fans put pressure on.

Ed Waldron has been excellent at picking the right profile of player so far but I'm concerned about the vital positions we are completely ignoring and not ensuring we have the right mix of players, we are one dimensional.

As for Des, all managers need a summer window to build their own squad but he's another that's starting to look out of his depth. I understand he didn't want to make major changes to a team already on a good run, but we haven't been on a good run for ages and he's stamped no authority or style since arriving. On the flip side, the injuries have been awful and he hasn't a proper squad to work with since arriving. Signing 2 injured players in January when we've been struggling with injuries is a p*ss take.

We appear to be wasting a big opportunity at the moment, the owners need to invest in experience at the top of the club to come in and ruffle the feathers and sort things out.
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The fact that our Chairman is always abroad is because our billionaire owners are just "playing " with us .Wake up everyone things are not right.
 
Leysboy said:
So if that’s the case, why did we persist to knock it sideways and backwards a few times, then try and knock a long diagonal ball across, and expect Tyler to win an aerial battle against taller and stronger physical full backs.

Tactically doesn’t make sense, the poor lad is a midget, and is never going to win many aerial battles. The mind boggles!

Clueless Management/Coaching.
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I'm lost, I'm not sure what my point has to do with yours! Apologies, I think you are relating to the ball to feet. I wasn't there today but on Tuesday noticed a lack of movement at times forcing us to go long. Not great really.
 
That we changed things at HT is good, and second half was clearly an improvement. But this has been a feature of Des term

As we know the Analyst is new in role (perhaps even not fully in role yet) so I'll guess we're lacking to set up correctly for teams, alongside the personnel issues.

Today's 5atb was a fail, not suiting any of the key attacking players. We had nothing.

We've gone from having an experienced L1 Manager, with an experienced L1 Assistant and Analyst, to the exact opposite, an inexperienced manager, no assistant to speak of and a lack of clarity about what kind of analyst we have.

This is all on the board for me. Lazy recruitment, allowing this situ to happen.

We could do with an influx of experience in both the playing and backroom staff. I suspect we'll get a loanee or two from a youth set up from Champs or Prem. So yeah....concerning.
 
Leysboy said:
So if that’s the case, why did we persist to knock it sideways and backwards a few times, then try and knock a long diagonal ball across, and expect Tyler to win an aerial battle against taller and stronger physical full backs.

Tactically doesn’t make sense, the poor lad is a midget, and is never going to win many aerial battles. The mind boggles!

Clueless Management/Coaching.
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Team packed with defenders and midfielders and a sole striker who can't strike and we let in three goals against a Sunday League side. Something is wrong big time.
 
Chippy said:
Makes you wonder what he considers Burey and Goodrhams best positions supposedly to be then, I thought they were wingers? We've had months to identify other wingers but not managed to sign one (if you exclude Burey) in nearly 4 weeks of the Jan window other than an injured Kyle.

Not sure I can be arsed to finish work early and try and get to the game on Tuesday, call me a defeatest but I’m fast losing patience and interest at the moment, I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling like this.
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Burey isn’t fit to play longer than 45 minutes currently.
 
WuTang said:
The disappointment for me comes from the missed opportunity.

How many times have we had owners happy to provide money for 11k a week contracts, 6 figure transfer fees and £100m new stadium?

The money is there, it's an enormous and rare opportunity for Oxford United to seriously progress, I think Tim Williams and Grant Ferguson are wasting it. I would prefer that money to be invested into new people at that level of the club. If Grant Ferguson, the CHAIRMAN, has barely been in the country since arriving he needs to ask himself if he's the right man for that role, I don't think he is.

Tim Williams appears to be out of his depth, only communicates and shows his face when the fans put pressure on.

Ed Waldron has been excellent at picking the right profile of player so far but I'm concerned about the vital positions we are completely ignoring and not ensuring we have the right mix of players, we are one dimensional.

As for Des, all managers need a summer window to build their own squad but he's another that's starting to look out of his depth. I understand he didn't want to make major changes to a team already on a good run, but we haven't been on a good run for ages and he's stamped no authority or style since arriving. On the flip side, the injuries have been awful and he hasn't a proper squad to work with since arriving. Signing 2 injured players in January when we've been struggling with injuries is a p*ss take.

We appear to be wasting a big opportunity at the moment, the owners need to invest in experience at the top of the club to come in and ruffle the feathers and sort things out.
Click to expand...

There have to be serious questions about our medical team.

This has been an ongoing issue for a while now.

It’s a conversation people don’t want to have.
 
I just felt that Bristol sat back in the 2nd half, especially the first 20-30mins of it and basically said to us ‘see if you can break us down/score 2 goals’. I don’t think it was necessarily us/change of shape that initially made us look better (not that it was hard to be better than that woeful first half). And for a 10min period after we’d scored there was a flicker of hope, but once they’d got that 3rd it was game over and they reverted to being back on top, may because our hope/spirit had been taken away.

Just a shame we didn’t do what Derby did at our place in getting a goal just before half time!
 
battman said:
Just got back and this was my first time seeing a Des side in action, and I have a few thoughts about the game.

Normally I defend Des and want to see him given time, but that first half was dreadful. Woeful. Pathetic. Playing three at the back in the way Des wants us to play just doesn’t work.

I know we’re short on wingers meaning our options are limited, but swapping in an extra centre-half and pushing our fullbacks up a bit is poor tactically - all we do is pass it round the back and then hoof it up for Harris or Goodrham to try and win aerially. If we wanted to play like that, at least start O’Donkor.

Playing an extra defender in lieu of an attacker also gives the players more of an excuse to pass backwards. The players want to keep the ball and build the attack, but with fewer forward options it makes that so much harder. I feel like most of the half went like this: Moore > Negru > Stevens > hooked up looking for a striker, possession lost.

The 3-4-3 also leaves too many square pegs in round holes, and is reminiscent of the end days of Robinson. No clue, no plan and no idea of even how we’re trying to play. That formation needs to go in my eyes.

The two goals we conceded were pathetic, and also both came not long after we had possession. One of them was a freekick to us, how the hell are we conceding a goal 20 seconds later?

Second half was much much better and is how we should be playing, with a 4-2-3-1 with attacking full-backs, actual wingers and Ruben in the number 10 role. Burey had a good impact with his pace and direct running, positioning can be improved as he was too close to Leigh at times, but that’s something to work on. Needs to start in the next game for me.

Should have had a penalty for a trip on Burey, and we did get one goal back - but you feel like because of the lack of attacking options we needed to score twice in that 20 minute spell to get something out of the game. After that we ran out of a bit of puff, and the third Rovers goal killed it really.

Moore was MOTM for me, Bran was solid too. Negru probably didn’t deserve to be taken off at HT, but Des got it wrong by bringing him in to start instead of Burey, and persisting with the three at the back.

I hope this game is a wake up call to the management - because performances like that simply aren’t good enough, and the tactics today were completely wrong in the first half. We should be starting games like we want to actually win them, like in the second half, rather than looking to pass teams to death without any bite.

Let’s get a couple more attackers in and regroup, with more of what we saw in the second half and much much less of what we saw in the first.
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Excellent summary. Only tiny quibble from me is that second half looked more like a 4-1-4-1 and all the better for it. Not how we'll want to play long term but a good balance in current circumstances.
 
Jster said:
Really? Bloody hell, can we not sign one single fully fit outfield player? Rovers sign Conteh and he plays 90 the next day for them. It's really not a good look for us.
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Yeap, it's not rocket science. I made this very point about Burey when he signed. It wasn't anti-Burey, it was trying to set expectation levels. I was aggressively (and widely) dismissed.

Burey hasn't started a game in this country since 2022. And the two games he has started anywhere since then (1 x Danish League, 1 x Danish Cup - f**k knows what sort of standard) have been 65 and 45 minutes respectively.

You only had to look at how much football he'd (not) been playing to see that he was never going to come in and hit the ground running.

Sign players that are used to playing regular football to a reasonable standard - that's all I (repeatedly) ask.
 
billyturleyscurlywurly said:
Robinson was an utter tit in his last season with us regarding his off field antics however he was still the weekly spokesman on all things regarding the football club because Grant & Tim sat in silence.

Let’s not forget that.

He also got zero support.
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And it said
Leysboy said:
So if that’s the case, why did we persist to knock it sideways and backwards a few times, then try and knock a long diagonal ball across, and expect Tyler to win an aerial battle against taller and stronger physical full backs.

Tactically doesn’t make sense, the poor lad is a midget, and is never going to win many aerial battles. The mind boggles!

Clueless Management/Coaching.
Click to expand...

Exactly! The answer was and is obvious. When ravaged by injuries and without the width your ideal style demands do everything in your power to not lose the midfield battle. From there it's all about percentages and moments of raw talent which we have a decent amount of. To set up like we did in the first half was just dumb and plenty on here called it as such before the game even began.
 
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