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Substitutions - why so late?


Dr Balls

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3 hours ago, Alessandro said:

As I think has been said in another thread, last week he changed things too early...this week too late. There are plenty of times LJ has or hasn't changed it up and it's worked and likewise there have been times he has or hasn't changed it up and it doesn't work. There have been occasions, IMO, of both proactive and reactive subs, sometimes working, sometimes not. You could argue the half time change up was a proactive one that didn't work out, still proactive.

Whether LJ is a 'top' manager or not is obviously up for debate, but the fact we are here debating this, after a home win, 3 games in a week, 5/6 key players out, unbeaten in 10, 6th in the table and 2 off the top shows how much progress we've made. Expectations forever rising.  

Specifically on yesterday's game. I think it's easy to overlook the mitigating circumstances of a long week. Some of those players looked very tired in the second half. LJ admitted himself in the post match presser the team seemed happy to sit back and defend the lead. Despite and all the comments from some on here, the possession stats still shaded in our favour and in the second half they only got in behind us once IIRC and apart from a goal mouth scramble from a corner were limited to long shots. So defensively we were generally very confident and did the job. The problem was the inability to retain the ball for any period of time, and I felt our options on the bench were fairly limited to solve that, hence no doubt the late subs. Palmer was the obvious one to bring the ball forward and he did, but is that at a defensive cost? It will only take one untracked runner to give the opposition an equalising goal. Semenyo i'm afraid just had a poor turn. Formations were tweaked but if the players are not fulfilling the game plan, not much you can do on the sidelines, especially if the sub options are limited. 

Agree with most of this. Just thought they had a few good chances that could have cost us. The 1v1 Bentley saved. The goalmouth scramble. Puscas had a tap in from 5-6 yards out. Boye was a longer range effort but took another good save from Bentley and another 2 that flashed across our box. Think a team higher on confidence maybe leaves with 3 points. Think with our home performances lacking it was a good game to keep the pressure on for 60-70 min then see where you are. 

But yea you are right it does show progress us talking about this after a win. Though I do think it is time we expect a bit more. Especially, for me, when you look at clubs like Preston or Charlton. Charlton may not last but not a big budget, lost a few players and generally go at teams. Preston spend some but usually less than 2m on any player and usually from lower leagues. They are flying and top scorers in the league. We can keep saying we are young and we lose players but there are other young sides who sell or just refuse it. Plenty of time left in the season but I’d really like to be a legitimate playoff contender because even though we have been close the past couple seasons, you get the feel no one thinks we will actually do it. 

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Game of two halves.  You earn the right to mop up some pressure if you go and take the lead.  Yeah, it was nervy, but it wasn’t 45 minutes of panic stations.  I wouldn’t say they were peppering our goal but they did fashion a few good chances in the second half.  On the break we were a bit wasteful too (COD, Massengo, Palmer).  It always feels worse when we are the team defending. It was more frustrating that we couldn’t get hold of the ball....and then keep it.

We’d had two tough away games, Reading the extra day between fixtures.  Fine margins and all that.

We deserved to hang-on....3 points from 3 games would’ve felt unfair.  5 points from 3 games seemed right.

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