Ex Player #36 Jay Matete

Steve Gilbert said:
I’d also add Les Robinson. We had 2 solid full backs who were solid at defending and allowed the wingers to do their thing.
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We also had Smith and Gray in centre midfield, with two stand out centre backs and a very good goalie, plus a winger in Massey who could defend.

The game has changed but I do think the teams that get promoted are more defensively solid than we are/have been.

Over 46 games being a disciplined, tough defensive unit pays off, people want pretty, attacking football but, even with us spunking a lot of money up the wall, I think it’s very hard for a club of our size to swashbuckle your way out of this level, we were more effective under Manning because we had discipline to a plan.

Given where the club is and how important promotion and success is going to be, then it might come down to a choice between pretty football that will always fail for us or a less attractive but more successful style that helps the club survive, we need to be recruiting players for the latter in the summer.
 
holdsteady said:
We also had Smith and Gray in centre midfield, with two stand out centre backs and a very good goalie, plus a winger in Massey who could defend.

The game has changed but I do think the teams that get promoted are more defensively solid than we are/have been.

Over 46 games being a disciplined, tough defensive unit pays off, people want pretty, attacking football but, even with us spunking a lot of money up the wall, I think it’s very hard for a club of our size to swashbuckle your way out of this level, we were more effective under Manning because we had discipline to a plan.

Given where the club is and how important promotion and success is going to be, then it might come down to a choice between pretty football that will always fail for us or a less attractive but more successful style that helps the club survive, we need to be recruiting players for the latter in the summer.
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We just need some bastards as well. The sort of person who would park in a parent and child space when it's only them in the car. That's the sort of person I want in centre midfield.
 
tonto said:
I just dont get whats happened to Oisin Smyth scores a worldie and plays really well and yet has barely featured since. What is the official or unofficial explanation?
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I think he got hung out to dry a bit when asked to play right back as we had no other options. It didn't go well and I'm not sure we've seen him since (did he also get a knock?).

He needs to be considered as an alternative in defensive midfield when we need a bit more physicality. That seems to be something we lack (the Matete/Gorrin conundrum), unless we tie someone like Brannagan into that role, which takes too much out of his game too.

The alternatives in that role seem to be McGuane and McEachran....so can't see we have anything to lose with Smyth, frankly!
 
tonto said:
I just dont get whats happened to Oisin Smyth scores a worldie and plays really well and yet has barely featured since. What is the official or unofficial explanation?
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We don’t seem to get explanations on players out of the side. Tyler Burey another. Best just assume their faces don’t fit.
 
I know it’s a moot point, because at this stage we aren’t going to commit to it, but I think an odd quirk of our season is that we have a squad that is (almost) tailor made for playing 343. Brown and Thorniley are two solid LCBs, Moore is the ideal slightly immobile but commanding middle CB, and Long and Smyth have looked best when playing RCB. Negru could fill in anywhere. Stevens and Leigh are best at WB imo and I think if you played Goodwin and Harris in a 2 they would make absolute hay, perhaps with RR in behind (or RR and BB in behind one of those two as a lone striker). Brannagan has enough presence to make up half of the remaining midfield 2. The problem I suppose is that a) we don’t have an obvious second CM (especially with Matete gone - MM and MacEachran aren’t busy enough to be effective in that system) and b) it kind of wastes a position where we have most depth (Goodrhan, Murphy, Dale, Mills earlier in the season), but I don’t think it would take that much recruitment in the summer to bolster what we already have to create a very effective squad with this formation in mind.

I’ve said it before and will keep banging this drum, but I really think at this level it’s such an effective formation. As someone said above, you’re not going to get out of this league playing swashbuckling, fluid football every week; you’re going to win games by, generally, grinding them out. 343 packs the middle, gets bodies forward naturally, and should be defensively solid, with 5 defenders and 2 sitting CMs. No surprise that some of our best performances and results this season (Stevenage away, second half at the Valley) came when using this. It’s not pretty, it’s not scintillating football, but I think it gets results at this level.

I’d like to see us commit to and recruit for this system in the summer.
 
Slightly controversial, but my comment on the Matete thread is going to be about Matete!!

Undoubtedly a good player at this level, we were pretty much all in agreement that he was a great signing on paper. Unfortunately he was never really fit and now he can hopefully get time to get his knee fixed and fully recover ahead of preseason.

However, if he is able to get a full preseason under his belt and prove his fitness then I'd like to think that we might be interested in taking him on loan again. He's a box to box player that would really complement Cam when on his game.
 
Scotchegg said:
Slightly controversial, but my comment on the Matete thread is going to be about Matete!!

Undoubtedly a good player at this level, we were pretty much all in agreement that he was a great signing on paper. Unfortunately he was never really fit and now he can hopefully get time to get his knee fixed and fully recover ahead of preseason.

However, if he is able to get a full preseason under his belt and prove his fitness then I'd like to think that we might be interested in taking him on loan again. He's a box to box player that would really complement Cam when on his game.
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Why did we take the guy when he’s clearly not fit? Such a waste.
 
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