Jamal has been hands down player of the season for me so far. Even when Beautyman was here. Spoke to Jamal after the game he was gutted we lost, you could see it in him. You have to allow the players a below par performance now and again. You would struggle finding many games this year where Jamal wasn't one of the contenders for man of the match.Jamal gives us loads of width when he plays left back and gets in a massive percentage of crosses when hes up against a full back. He also made a couple of sensational tackles on Saturday when he tracked back against a forward when we were exposed.
When we played possession football under Daisy (i am thinking in Conference South with Pughy playing the number 10 role and number 9 role in the same games), when we were at our best we were positive in the final 3rd and we played at a high tempo for 90 minutes with a lot of off the ball movement and rotation and getting wide men linking up with the central midfielders. Teams couldn't keep up with us we were relentless. Anyone who thought we were terrible on Saturday is being over critical and not seeing why it never worked until the last 20 mins.
Agree with Wingnut about Fagan possibly being overlooked at centre back and Corne playing in midfield is a plus for us more often than not as he keeps the ball. Barney has been out injured and you have to bring them back so they wont break down straight away. Joey Taylor did well for us at left back when Jefford was injured late last year and i hope he will be involved still as he looked promising. Take away his red card at Ebbsfleet which was a joke decision and hes incredibly unlucky not to be involved at the moment, hes very young and only played a few games but hes definitely one to keep hold of and bring through.
I think you will see us be a bit more positive on the ball over the next few games , but i don't see a lot wrong that cannot be fixed, we just seemed to be a bit slow with the ball and never used it well enough, just keeping it for the sake of it with not enough purpose until late and gave the ball away in possession on Saturday.
Vose and Vine are massive positives and we all know we probably need a striker who's direct and knows where the net is.
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Alexander O'Neal 1987 "I'm fed up cos all you wanna do is criticize "
A good summary, Tom. Spot on about tempo. My big concern is that expressed by Stafford - whether or not we have the time to adapt, effectively, to Jody's style before we start running out of time and looking more anxiously over our shoulder. A big, direct, striker would be a massive bonus but, generally, they cost money and I don't know whether we have got that kind of money still left in the pot.
I haven't seen anything in our next three home opponents to suggest we cannot beat them all if we turn up and get on the front foot. Gateshead away will be hard but we were in their faces at their place last season on a Tuesday night and they equalised through a penalty despite causing us lots of problems and i think you can get at them and stop them coming at you.
We had nearly two weeks off before Saturday, so the players would have needed a game, if everyone starts thinking they were crap vs Alfreton or people are getting a squeaky bum it could get to the players. We are good enough .
Crank up the noise levels at home and urge them to be positive and get behind them if it ain't happening. Thankfully theres some teams that are absolute toss below us still so we have a cushion.
Be positive, we don't need many results to pull clear again.
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Alexander O'Neal 1987 "I'm fed up cos all you wanna do is criticize "
Joey Taylor did well for us at left back when Jefford was injured late last year and i hope he will be involved still as he looked promising. Take away his red card at Ebbsfleet which was a joke decision and hes incredibly unlucky not to be involved at the moment, hes very young and only played a few games but hes definitely one to keep hold of and bring through.
Joey has gone out on loan to get some football at a higher level than the reserves play.
The problem we have is there is no time to feel sorry for ourselves we need points.
Positive we can be but we got beat at home to one of our relegation rivals so to say I am not optimistic of going to Gateshead and getting anything is an understatement.
Jody wants to implement this new style of play that starts from the back but I think in our position and at the time of the year we should concentrate on being 1) hard to beat and 2) fighting for points even if its ugly.
There is no glory in going down just because you try to play pleasing on the eye football.