We play Perth again in the last round, hopefully we can get a big win there to make up for tonight. We looked like we were going to win easy before that red card.
What is of slight concern tonight is that obviously we can’t play the high energy press with ten men, but it’s not clear what our fallback plan is. It looked like just try to shut up shop for an hour but it wasn’t the most comfortable of approaches. Didn’t have much on the few occasions we broke either.
We revert to a 4-3-2 when down a man. It means they have to play around us. Perth had to put their faith in their two wide players, Susnjar and Rawlins, to provide most of the opportunities, and I’ll take those odds any day of the week.
I didn’t particularly like that we had nobody up top to hold the ball, though. Amanatidis should probably be kept in NPL1 for the rest of the year, make sure he is killing it at that level before he gets another chance in the ALM team. Whatever he was out there for, he didn’t provide it. I have no doubt whatsoever that Talay didn’t like what he saw and just hooked him at the end.
Also, the failure to bring on Fabio and Burgess suggests there’s a very high chance of them starting on Sunday. Surely.
This was the closest post to it imo, naive is the word we’re probably all looking for.
A little bit poor to be caught for starters, he’s then tried too hard to close if anything and Taggart has used all his experience… only @testament seems to have noted it (Alex King mustn’t have seen it on his 57 views either) but Taggart’s left arm was behind him with a fistful of JGR’s shirt, that’s what slowed them both down and drew the contact.
It was far enough out that Jake probably should’ve backed himself to just get alongside and shepherd him towards the corner flag, being too eager to apply pressure is what’s allowed Taggart to initiate the contact and then milk it like a pregnant tart on OnlyFans.
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There was 270 posts here.
Maybe 100 or so of them were talking about a VAR red card decision. Again.
We spend more time discussing the interpretation of a rule than Rugby fans. That’s a big, big, big issue.
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But an early red that changes game dynamics, particularly one from VAR, is always going to get discussed.
I actually like Rugby’s new Red rules where it’s a 20min penalty but the individual player must be replaced.
JGRs foul was clumsy. Caught off-guard, not looking at the ball and the slight check and arm to the face put him off balance.and momentum did the rest.
I don’t think hillbilly is having a go at us discussing it or saying it wasn’t an important decision, more so that VAR has become such a focal point which should never be the case if it’s functioning remotely as it should (which it clearly isn’t).
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Frustrating game. Poor old JGR really got wrecked by a very canny and experienced striker. Dissapointing but maybe it’s the price of playing youth like this.
Probably worse was the way we let a pretty shit Perth team absolutely monster us afterwards. Some great last ditch defence on show, but we had plenty of chances to see it coz Perth were queuing up.
That 4-3-2 did not work. They strolled straight through us and it was just too much work for Hollman and especially Caceres to do for that long.
Taking Kucharski off was a mistake, imo. We were ahead. Why we couldn’t just sub off Mak, collapse into a 4-4-1 and let Kucharski ping em on the break for a bit, I’m not sure.
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Because Mak is a better player than Kucharski and in far better form. If you give Mak a chance at the moment, he’s far more likely to nail it than Kucharski is.
It will keep Kucharski fresher for Sunday, though. We really should be starting both Fabio and Kucharski on Sunday, as they will be a lot fresher. Though given we should’ve already changed some of the starting line-up for the Perth game, I’m not holding my breath.
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One thing with JGR - he was never a CB before this season right? It sort of explains why he’s a bit more partial to the odd rugby tackle when under some pressure, a bit easier to get away with a yellow in midfield than at CB.
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Except we know from nearly two seasons here that Mak cant go the distance, which matters even more when you’re down to 10.
Neither can Kucharski, so you go with the better player.
A fit Rodwell sure would have been a useful sub last night…
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The point is you won’t.
We could defend for a thousand minutes and Mak toiling alone up front wouldn’t once get himself into a scoring opportunity.
And in fact we literally didn’t have a single shot between 29’ (just before the red) and 67’ (Amanatidis, two minutes after he replaced Mak).
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Perth are fucking shit. Very disappointed we conceded because they had sweet fuck all besides that over rated donkey Taggart shooting blanks.
Is it still really weird that Gomez is still our joint top goal scorer this season?
Why? Give them a two man advantage in midfield, for the opportunity to create a 2 v 2 or 3 on the right with a return of 0 shots?
It’s not worth it. It felt like we didn’t have the flexibility on the bench, the coaches got the subs all turned around and we ended up subing off a sub and making defensive double changes in the 90th minute when they’d already equalised.
Yeah, but he’s still the worst player EVER!!!1111!!!
We’ve also had a pretty good spread across the team this season.
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Looking at Goals per minute… step forward Mr J Rodwell… surely worth a new contract…
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Kucharskis minutes are low in this comparison but his goals/assists numbers (excluding penalties) are better than Mak and basically equal to Fabio.
Out of those three against 10 men I would prefer the legs & work rate of Kucharski over the other two. I’m sure they have their reasons as to why Mak or why not Fabio.
