Highly frustrating performance today. Vale were there for the taking. They had just been tonked 3-0 at Accrington and were low on confidence (16 points from their last possible 60, I think), but we came out so risk adverse and unwilling to attack that we gave them confidence, leading to some of their fans saying that the second half was the best they played for some time.
I love that Manning has made us harder to beat and we have kept 2 clean sheets but that doesn’t have to come at the expense of zero attacking threat. The two things are not mutually exclusive. You can set up a team to be defensively solid and have a structure out of possession without losing all attacking impetus. For those that say what can he do with the players at his disposal, the answer is that the players don’t have to be instructed to pass the ball so slowly. When most of our attacks begin with 7-8 languorous passes along our back four, you let the other team get set up and get players behind the ball. The point of this passing is meant to move the opposition out of position but our passing is so slow that this cannot be our purpose. Unsurprisingly, after making several slow sideways passes, the horrific squad KR built cannot play through 10-11 opposition players to create chances, meaning our only hope of scoring goals are a) set pieces/penalties or b) very rare counter attacks that buck the above trend. Result: four games, two goals (one from open play). Think back to how many times one of our players tried to take on and beat an opponent today. Almost everyone on the pitch wearing yellow (away from home finally!) was far happier making a safe backwards or sideways 5 yard pass (Fleming being a notable exception as someone who appeared interested in dribbling and trying to take on a player as well as an outstanding defensive block at a corner).
I lost count of the number of times Sam Long had the ball with space in front of him and then either a) passed backwards inside to the centre back, or b) accelerated 5 yards forward into the space until he faced their wing back and then, instead of looking to play forwards, turned 180 degrees and played it back to our centre half or a deep lying midfielder. Ben Purkiss noticed the second “tactic” on commentary and appeared equally baffled by it.
Subs again were poor today to put it kindly - no Smyth or Smith when McGuane was a mistimed tackle away from a red and O’Donker was exhausted by 75 minutes. Tyler G must be wondering what he has to do to get minutes on the pitch when he sees the poor performances of Murphy and Yanic. Hard to say Murphy played badly today, as I think he must have touched the ball fewer than 15 times. Browne seemed allergic to passing to Murphy and I wonder if this has spread to his teammates. Browne is another incredibly infuriating player with his propensity to choose the wrong option in the final third, and give away daft fouls, but he’s the only one in the front 4 who is likely to create something out of nothing, so I don’t understand why he was taken off after an hour when I thought we should have been desperately trying to win the game.
The lack of urgency that we showed throughout today was also very strange. Every time the ball went out, we were happy to take our time getting the ball back into play, particularly Eastwood. It was clearly a tactic. For the last 4 minutes when we are playing against 10 men, there was no urgency to get the ball forward to win 3 points and instead we were content to continue knocking it between the back four. I was similarly unimpressed with the lack of ambition going forward after Moore went off injured in the final 15-20 minutes on Friday against Sheffield Wednesday - another team low on confidence who we could have troubled and fought hard for 3 points but again just seemed to settle for one.
Time will tell, and I really hope I’m wrong, but I have a horrible feeling that 4 successive draws in the last 4 games is not ultimately going to be enough. If today wasn’t the day to try to take off the handbrake to try to finally win a game, in which game is the handbrake finally going to come off??
Manning has done a lot of good in the past month, and while I fully embraced the tactics to get a point at Peterborough and disagreed with but could understand the hesitancy to attack the league leaders at home, I think it is legitimate to question why he seemed so content to play for a draw today against an extremely poor team. It was a very painful watch on ifollow so fair play to the 975 who travelled to watch that dire fare.
What to do for the next 2 home games? It’s tough but 4-2-3-1 with wingers isn’t working for us offensively. Playing with Murphy and Yanic right now is like playing with 10 men (or 9 when they are both on together). If you are going to play wingers, Browne has to play wide left, Joseph or Tyler G wide right but we have no one who can play as a no 10 so it’s either 4-3-3 (4-5-1 out of possession) or 3-5-2 and wing backs which only works on the right if Anderson is fit.
