Away Match Day Thread 01/01/24: L1 - Charlton Athletic v OUFC

Who was the MOTM?

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We defended well today back 4 was brilliant they didn’t have many chances
 
McXal said:
Thanks for sharing. Sad to see MApp getting the treatment - albeit on current results it’s hard not to understand where the Charlton fans are coming from.

We know from his time here he’s not a great starter and needs a bit of time to embed his style, identity and ethos - and a few windows to get the right personnel to implement it.

Maybe he’s the kind of manager who needs the protection of a ‘long term project’ vision as there’s some short term pain whilst he puts the pieces together. Wonder whether CAFC’s ownership will give him that (and probably why he supposedly was interested in coming back to us when we recruited Manning).
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Unless Appleton can turn things around there I think that'll be his last job as a manager.
 
Theox07 said:
We defended well today back 4 was brilliant they didn’t have many chances
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We didn't play a back 4 today.

He's been excellent recently but Brown nearly cost us a couple of times in the first half with some shocking mistakes, first gifting them the ball on the edge of our box then later stepping in it and falling over allowing them a free run, thankfully Campbell s**t when a simple pass was on. On the other hand he also made a very good block to stop a goal.bound header. Apart from those couple of bits and the goal early on I didn't feel under much pressure.
 
What an enjoyable performance.

I was fearing the worse after a sloppy first 5 mins, but we grew into the game and then dominated the 2nd half.

Des got a lot right today, starting formation and substitutions. With the lack of wingers available 3-5-2 made sense. Stevens looked a more natural wing back than Bennett.

We’re so used to seeing Cam Bran and Marcus McGuane bossing it, I wonder what opposing fans think of those 2. They really are a class act.

It was great to see Harris get a well deserved goal, a proper strikers goal!!

As for Smyth, who saw that performance and goal coming!! Successive managers have not regularly picked him, he’s had an unremarkable loan at Solihull awhile ago, is it the fact that he’s seen as a bit of a utility player that holds him back. Although he was decent at centre back today, I think he could be a useful holding midfielder back up player.

Another enjoyable trip to the Valley!
 
Brilliant performance today & although we had a shaky first 5 minutes I thought we were excellent. To play a back 3 at such short notice with a holding midfielder on the right side showed real character.One thing I will say though is that Smyth will get the vote on here for MOTM & rightly so but to me Fin Stevens was outstanding today,he received the POTM on 3 platforms today (Fotmob/Livescore/Whoscored),his overall game was sublime,the stick he gets on here is baffling & on today’s performance you can see why a Championship team are interested in taking him on loan.
 
ttg17 said:
What a banging start to the new year. Had a good feeling about today and we didn’t disappoint.

I LOVE 3 at the back and wingbacks at this level. Warne’s sides always do it and I think it just works so well. You get to pack the middle of the park and control games without sacrificing width, and I love the positions wingbacks can take up between the lines. It worked for us under KR, it worked for us under Manning and today was the best performance of the DB era by a distance for me.

I also think that with our squad, jt just makes sense and gets the most out of our players (even allowing for our absences). Stevens is a wingback, not a fullback. He benefits from a reduction in defensive responsibility and more license to get forward. Similarly Bennett and Leigh on the left (although both are admittedly better defensively). Moore was quietly class again as the ball-winning central defender. Harris gets closer to the two CAMs and is more effective, made up for him to get his goal, looked extremely well taken. And Brannagan always has a wide option to ping jt around and stretch the oppo (he had an absolute blunder today imo, despite the attentions of the excellent Dobson). Smyth I am coming to below. It all just seems to work. I’d like to see us commit to this formation going forward, because I think, while it can be a little flat and slow, it gives us control and will see us win games.

Smyth was an absolute revelation. That’s not hyperbole. He seems taylor made for a RCB role in a 3. He was pretty defensively solid today, he’s a unit of a guy so has the physicality, he’s athletic enough and good enough on the ball to bring it out from the back (and conversely I don’t think is quite good enough on the ball to play CM), which gives us such an edge to our possession, and boy can he pick a pass. The goal was just the icing on the cake, and I absolutely loved his celebration. Clearly meant the world to him. If it’s Des who’s spotted that and put him in there fair ducking play because that is a genuinely brilliant piece of selection.

He’s had a tough ride so far and I’ve not been overly impressed, but Des absolutely nailed that today. I always think the sign of a good manager is when they can mix up their preferred style when the situation demands, and he pulled a rabbit out of the hat today. I loved how all the subs were coherent - I literally guessed each one before it happened - and weren’t made for the sake of it. Brannagan dropping deeper for Bodin to come in ahead of him allowed Bran to absolutely run the game second half. I know Charlton aren’t great right now and we still needed a thunderbastard to win it, but it was the most impressive performance I’ve seen from us in a long long while.

Charlton were absolute dog. I think our controlled passing absolutely killed them and the gaps that opened up second half must have been from pure exhaustion. We ran them ragged. Reminded me of us on Friday. You could also see that they’re clearly a side built around Alfie May. Get the ball out to the dangerous wingers, get balls in the box and give him half chances to stick away. There was a real conspicuous lack of cutting edge up top, so we perhaps played them at the right time. But still, hugely unimpressive (with the exception of Dobson in the middle, who I thought was superb. Singlehandedly playing Brannagan and MacGuane at times, he’s a class player).

I know I’m gushing and I’m probably a bit overexcited but I really was impressed by that today. A really tough festive period but one we’ve emerged from without too much collateral damage, now alls said and done. Free hit next weekend and a cup game in the week where we can rest some key players, and hopefully we can hit our next league game refreshed and with a couple of reinforcements.
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Great post and I agree the 5-3-2 setup favours the available players.
I liked the way the defensive line was noticeably higher and therefore meant we could put pressure on them without utilising a lot of extra energy as the gaps were closed and could turnover the ball quicker which was opposite to the Derby second half, where they had so much time to look up and get a cross in again and again. It’s a great sign Buckingham learnt from that quickly. Also, once we put Brannagan back to a deeper role he was way more effective as he kept losing it possession in CAM.

I think Buckingham and his team will just need to coach Mcguane to get his head up when he receives the ball. His ‘go to’ thought his to take the ball back or sidewards. He’s such a good player that if he improved his awareness of what was happening in forward positions he could get us on the attack quicker.
 
ttg17 said:
I also think that with our squad, jt just makes sense and gets the most out of our players (even allowing for our absences).
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Interesting thoughts @ttg17.

I agree with the positives you listed. My reservation with the 3-5-2 has been the amount of our playing budget committed to the wings in Murphy, Browne, Edwards, Mills and Goodrham. Whilst they're not available, the formation today looked like a good call, but I've generally been a fan of all the wingers when they've played this season. An awful lot of our goals come from these players cutting in and looking to shoot - Tyler on Boxing Day, and Mills getting fouled for the free kick on Friday as two very recent examples.

We might be at the stage where we simply give up on hoping that Browne or Murphy are able to play enough - but I'd say that we would lose the use of Ty or Mills in their most effective positions and that does stop it being "all gain, no loss". I'm not a fan of the Karl Robinson tactic of shoving any winger in at wing back (and there wouldn't be much of an opening, at least on the left, anyway) and I have it in my head that TG can get crowded out when playing in the middle.

On the other hand, we might soon have the chance to move some of the budget about if e.g. Edwards is returning to Ipswich. If we were to sign a couple of the names being thrown about for potential strikers, then it might well be a price worth paying - and it could still give us flexibility to change things up when needed.
 
McXal said:
Thanks for sharing. Sad to see MApp getting the treatment - albeit on current results it’s hard not to understand where the Charlton fans are coming from.

We know from his time here he’s not a great starter and needs a bit of time to embed his style, identity and ethos - and a few windows to get the right personnel to implement it.

Maybe he’s the kind of manager who needs the protection of a ‘long term project’ vision as there’s some short term pain whilst he puts the pieces together. Wonder whether CAFC’s ownership will give him that (and probably why he supposedly was interested in coming back to us when we recruited Manning).
Click to expand...

Tbf, the squad was a bit rubbish to begin with so they must be expecting miracles with it to suddenly be good. They have some good players but also plenty of utter dross. If they get their wish, the next manager will follow the same pattern unless January turns over most of that squad.

Edit: Just had a quick look on one of their forums and some are calling for a boycott until he is sacked as MApp is the 'cheap option' so they can 'invest' in a good manager. :ROFLMAO:

Until the new manager loses a few games and then they'll be a 'cheap option' and the same people will be demanding a boycott.
 
Last edited:
Joey said:
We didn't play a back 4 today.

He's been excellent recently but Brown nearly cost us a couple of times in the first half with some shocking mistakes, first gifting them the ball on the edge of our box then later stepping in it and falling over allowing them a free run, thankfully Campbell s**t when a simple pass was on. On the other hand he also made a very good block to stop a goal.bound header. Apart from those couple of bits and the goal early on I didn't feel under much pressure.
Click to expand...

We also gifted them the chance when Smyth played it straight to their player early in the second half. We probably had more unforced errors today than we had against Derby but none proved costly.

But we did look much more confident at the back in general, and our passing across the defence was more measured, and it certainly helped having McEachran, McGuane and Brannagan to play the ball into.
 
A good result today, and not what I expected after the first 15mins.

The one thing that benefitted us was Charlton's lack of high-press. Derby pressed pretty much all match, and the likes of McGuane struggled with the pressure and lack of space. Rarely could Beadle pass out from the back.

Charlton's midfield failed to do this and allowed Cam, McGuane, Reuben, control play more and suited our style of play.

To be promotion contenders we will need to find a way to play against a press. Perhaps a stronger more experienced no.9 will allow us to be a little more direct when needs be.
 
RgYellows said:
Interesting thoughts @ttg17.

I agree with the positives you listed. My reservation with the 3-5-2 has been the amount of our playing budget committed to the wings in Murphy, Browne, Edwards, Mills and Goodrham. Whilst they're not available, the formation today looked like a good call, but I've generally been a fan of all the wingers when they've played this season. An awful lot of our goals come from these players cutting in and looking to shoot - Tyler on Boxing Day, and Mills getting fouled for the free kick on Friday as two very recent examples.

We might be at the stage where we simply give up on hoping that Browne or Murphy are able to play enough - but I'd say that we would lose the use of Ty or Mills in their most effective positions and that does stop it being "all gain, no loss". I'm not a fan of the Karl Robinson tactic of shoving any winger in at wing back (and there wouldn't be much of an opening, at least on the left, anyway) and I have it in my head that TG can get crowded out when playing in the middle.

On the other hand, we might soon have the chance to move some of the budget about if e.g. Edwards is returning to Ipswich. If we were to sign a couple of the names being thrown about for potential strikers, then it might well be a price worth paying - and it could still give us flexibility to change things up when needed.
Click to expand...
To be fair you can still play wingers with three at the back in a 3-4-3:

GK
RCB CB LCB
RWB CM CM LWB
RW CF LW
​
I think we might have done that this season under Manning actually?

The problem is that it doesn’t really leave room for Rodrigues.
 
Great way to kick off the year, and gets people off Des' back. If we can get the support staff sorted, and just one or two improvements this month (which is really as much as you can expect in a Jan window) then we can hang on and challenge for those playoffs.
 
Rodriguez gets stroppy to often with the ref ,over plays at times but goodness what a skillful classy player .I hope we can keep him ,he is such an important player for us .Let's hope with a skilful striker, Rodriguez creates a chance a game with his skill ,we can still be with a top 6 chance .That was great to watch today and a couple of free hits to come ,players back and players in it could still get exciting.
 
lots of our threat came through Rodrigues. the wingbacks hugging the touchline gave him extra space . also Fin Stevens ability to control a football is just astonishing.
 
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