Away Match Day Thread 12/03/24 - L1: Bolton Wanderers v OUFC

Gave up at half time.
Sometimes you can see at 2-0 a bit of spirit and a fightback is "on the cards" , couldn`t see anything other than the inevitable battering.
Not seen such a spineless "anti manager" performance since Leyton Orient away under Mark Wright and I saw all 90 minutes of that.

We have beaten 4 of the bottom 6 under him, Charlton who went on a terrible run and are just outside the relegation scrap and mid table Wigan, those are his wins, as soon as we come up against some resistance we fold.

Older Shotts said:

We've been crap most of the season mate. Even when we were top 2 we weren't particularly good. And now we are clueless, toothless and rudderless and have been for months.
Last night was the straw ..

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We were excellent.

Canadian_Yellow said:

I appreciate football fans notoriously overrate their own players but I don’t understand the narrative that the majority of our players are top League 1 players. How many of them could play in the Championship? I’d say two - Cam and Tyler. You could name some others who could hold their own for the odd game: Leigh, Moore, Dale maybe, but everywhere you look, the team is filled with players who have consistently shown that they are not good enough. They are not physical enough. They are not robust enough. There are so few leaders in that dressing room. I can’t wait for the summer turnover. I don’t have a list to hand but I’m not sure there’s a single player who is out of contract this summer that I would be trying to re-sign.

Which brings us to who the manager will be who will be making those signings in the summer. It’s becoming harder and harder to defend Des, particularly when you look at other coaches who are new to League 1 like the Lincoln and Barnsley coaches, who seem to have got their teams playing.

I’ve said before - I watch football to be entertained. With the exception of the Portsmouth game, the performances are dull. It is boring. There is no way I would buy a season ticket to watch that next season. The fact that only 200 fans travelled on a Tuesday night in a 3rd v 7th game suggests some are already voting with their feet.

I’m at a loss to understand what the tactics were meant to be tonight. Answers on a postcard if you have any ideas. My only guess is that we set out to defend and to counter attack at pace, which, given we have kept one clean sheet in 3 months and we were playing a team who hit goal 100 of their season against us according to the commentary, is utter madness. I understand the urge to play two up front but who is going to get those two the ball and which position do you take out to put another up front? We got destroyed in central midfield with 3 v 3 in there so going to 2 v 3 wasn’t going to work. Similarly, I don’t think we are a team that is set up to play wingbacks. And to return to my first point, the horrible truth is that the players we have are not comfortable enough on the ball to play through a press. Long and Brown routinely cough the ball up. McGuane only passes backwards.

What intrigues me are two questions that I have not heard good answers to:

1. Tactically, what was Manning doing with this team that Des isn’t? The formation seems to be the same. The players are more or less the same. There are certain things that I can see as a coach and have picked up from listening to others but I’d love to hear the big tactical differences others see.

2. Same 11 players…How can we look so good against Portsmouth and so bad tonight, 11 days later? It can’t just be that Portsmouth “let us play” and Bolton didn’t…

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Agree with most of what you say re; players etc, but felt we could and should’ve gone 2 up top, and the player I would’ve replaced was Rodrigues.

We needed to pin Bolton back more, so by playing on the front foot with their defence having to worry (well sort of!) about Harris and Goodwin it may have created a bit more time for our slow/ponderous defenders to have a bit more time! on the ball, whereas, last night they pressed high and we all know we’re shite when teams do that to us.

In answer to you questions 1) I just think the players knew their roles better, when to hold and when to press, whereas, now there doesn’t appear to be a plan or if there is one the players are not all on the same sheet at the same time. Take their first goal for example, McGuane comes across when there was no need to, but then completely vacated to middle of the pitch leaving our 18 yard line area completely free, so one ball across the middle and they’ve opened us up in a dangerous position. Stevens then comes across, again when he didn’t need to as Moore was there, and again completely leaves his man in acres of space to pick his spot. We seriously got it wrong by not getting a proper CDM (Gorrin style) who always seemed in the right place at the right time to block/make tackles (proper tackles) and then gave the ball to the more creative players (Brannagan etc). So basically the difference is, Manning had analysed everything to the nth degree and drilled what he wanted into the players. Plus he had Hogg who knew what he wanted too to get that message across. I almost get the feeling that Des is battling this on his own.

Re; question 2) I personally haven’t been that impressed with Pompey, but they find a way of winning e.g. like when we played them down there, hence, why we looked better than we are. I also think that Mousinho might be similar in management/coaching terms to Manning, (maybe a little more expansive though), in that they (Pompey) stay in the game and find moments in a game to click, but overall they’re not that pleasing on the eye, neither was Manning’s team. Whereas, the 2 best teams I’ve seen this season so far are Bolton & Derby. They also play expansive football which is more entertaining, but goes wrong at times (mores times than Pompey at the moment!), hence Wanderers comments earlier in this thread, whereby, he says that Bolton were still creating, but it just wasn’t clicking into place, but it did last night!! We were all hoping that after the Pompey performance that we’d turned a corner, but it was so evident on Saturday against Cheltenham that we hadn’t. Ben Purkiss got it right on the Dub the other week (post Pompey game) when he said the real test would be the Cheltenham game in terms of whether we’d turned the corner performance wise as the Pompey game was a sort of one off e.g. playing the top of the league in front of 20k fans with nothing to lose/expectancy, basically a free hit, so who couldn’t get themselves up for a game like that!! I’ll also hazard a guess that apparently Port Vale are the worst Performing team in the league at the moment, but that will change Saturday when they play us!!

Like you said, we’ve got a lot of weak players who don’t perform on a consistent basis or are/have been injured (Browne, Murphy, Henry, Bodin, Matete, McGuane, Rodrigues, McEachran and even Goodwin to a lesser extent). Most of these players are players that we need to be playing in the front foot, but they’re just not reliable enough and takes up a high number of places in the squad. You could also add Edwards, Smyth, Thorniley and possible Negru to this list, but I do rate the latter. I would have him along side Moore. We played well/better when those 2 played together.

I questioned at the time whether the January transfer window had been good or not, but it appears to have been poor, what with Goodwin not being able to start games, Matete doesn’t look good/or fit enough, Edwards, not available, Bennett on the bench, Cummings not much different to Eastwood/not as good as Beadle.

This is the team I’d start with Saturday;

Cummings (but could easily be Eastwood)
Stevens, Moore, Negru (if fit), Bennett
Brannagan
Dale, McGuane (just), Leigh
Goodwin
Harris
4-1-3-1-1

Just think this team would be more robust.

Subs;
Eastwood, Brown, Murphy, Goodrham (if fit), Bodin, Rodrigues and Long

SirAndyOfCrosby said:

We were excellent.

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Yes, we certainly were at times.

Stevenage, and Lincoln supporters, among others, commented on how we were a class above. We rode our luck a bit at times too.

West Oxon U’s said:

Everybody linked to L1 - pundits, supporters, journalists, other managers and coaches knew that Sheehan makes Bolton tick and everything goes through him.
He needed to be properly marked. He wasn’t.

Everybody knew except Des Buckingham, seemingly.

We never had a plan, didn’t look properly prepared, were not organised, not compact, and were unmotivated. Tactically it was a disaster too.

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Yes always worrying when Des keeps saying that they'll concentrate on how 'we" want to play BUT not really the opposition and if we aren't allowed to then what! This buttoned up approach and comms style isn't working certainly with fans and maybe the players but we don't know as what we see and hear is so one dimensional. Recommend departure by mutual consent.

So in Buckingham words, they are back in training on Thursday. Unbelievable get the fuckers in today or are they to tired from travelling. 222 travelling fans are back at work today

FFS to add insult to injury my phone has just decided to flash up the BBC score updates from last night!

(It's currently 4:0 if anyone's interested)

joshua said:

So in Buckingham words, they are back in training on Thursday. Unbelievable get the fuckers in today or are they to tired from travelling. 222 travelling fans are back at work today

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What are you going to have them do today? If you go all old skool and have them working hard, chances are you'll have a load of soft tissue injuries to deal with on Saturday. The 222 heroes are probably back at work today, but they weren't putting their bodies through a hard workout - I'll ignore the debate about how hard they worked, but I'll say chasing shadows is harder work than dominating and moving the ball.

SirAndyOfCrosby said:

We were excellent.

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We weren’t

SteMerritt said:

What are you going to have them do today? If you go all old skool and have them working hard, chances are you'll have a load of soft tissue injuries to deal with on Saturday. The 222 heroes are probably back at work today, but they weren't putting their bodies through a hard workout - I'll ignore the debate about how hard they worked, but I'll say chasing shadows is harder work than dominating and moving the ball.

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Could get them in and make them watch the game and have a good old open/honest discussion.

SteMerritt said:

What are you going to have them do today? If you go all old skool and have them working hard, chances are you'll have a load of soft tissue injuries to deal with on Saturday. The 222 heroes are probably back at work today, but they weren't putting their bodies through a hard workout - I'll ignore the debate about how hard they worked, but I'll say chasing shadows is harder work than dominating and moving the ball.

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I would have them in, in a class room, they're acting like children after all. I'd actually as them to read this forum - it would be an reality check and perhaps they'd understand one or two things

uptheus said:

Could get them in and make them watch the game and have a good old open/honest discussion.

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Hopefully they would have done that on the coach on the way back.

Older Shotts said:

We've been crap most of the season mate. Even when we were top 2 we weren't particularly good. And now we are clueless, toothless and rudderless and have been for months.
Last night was the straw ..

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That’s just an unbelievable statement. We were absolutely there on merit - look at the results we got and how consistent we were. This, by the way, with much of the same squad but actually down on numbers and a number of them still finding their feet. Des was well backed in January but only one of the signings gets a game.

Try and separate champagne football from effective football. We were a bloody good team and would’ve been in the race come the end of the season. I can accept the mixed views on his departure and the style of play isn’t for everyone but if you can’t now see how good Manning was for Oxford United then what hope do we have?

Wherever you point the finger, this has been a disastrous appointment. I feel for him if players are hiding but that’s the ultimate bi-product of a lack of respect and belief which starts with the manager. It’s a cruel game. Des has been let down but is a shadow of the manager we had in Manning.

Matt W said:

I would have them in, in a class room, they're acting like children after all. I'd actually as them to read this forum - it would be an reality check and perhaps they'd understand one or two things

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Now having them read through the match thread would be a bloody good idea.

uptheus said:

Could get them in and make them watch the game and have a good old open/honest discussion.

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Yep sat on their arses chatting amongst themselves watching a horror show , they will love that,

If there is a postmortem at the training ground today, I do hope some home truths are aired, the whole team/tactics were s**t.
This team have looked poor for quite a while and yes, we’ve been up with the chasing pack, but it’s starting to look as if we’re running out of steam. Only a 100% commitment from the whole squad will get us into the playoffs. Getting there and winning it would be wonderful, but getting promotion would open up a real Pandora’s box.

joshua said:

Yep sat on their arses chatting amongst themselves watching a horror show , they will love that,

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It’s not to make them love it, it’s to allow an extra day to address the horrors of last night and have a real open air discussion. They certainly don’t deserve a free day.

Then use Thursday on the training pitches to get it right or at least try and get it right for Saturday.

SteMerritt said:

What are you going to have them do today? If you go all old skool and have them working hard, chances are you'll have a load of soft tissue injuries to deal with on Saturday. The 222 heroes are probably back at work today, but they weren't putting their bodies through a hard workout - I'll ignore the debate about how hard they worked, but I'll say chasing shadows is harder work than dominating and moving the ball.

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For Christ sake don’t put your name in the hat for the vacant managers job

SteMerritt said:

Now having them read through the match thread would be a bloody good idea.

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I'm not sure it is a good idea but might bring home a few realities... None of us are football experts with perhaps the exception of a few on here, but my god we're all passionate no matter how misguided some views are. I do feel sorry for Des after sleeping on it, for whatever reason it is just failing at the moment and the players don't seem to be able to turn it around on the pitch or worse still are unwilling