Port Said Red

is the pitch on a slope or a strong wind blowing or something?

Title winning teams don't get tonked by the likes of Colchester. MK Dons showing us how to do it again today. They don't mess about 'managing games' - they go for the jugular and kill games off.

yes they do, there are always surprise results every season. 

Was never in doubt!

 

16 games to go.....Starting to believe....Automatic would be great, but Champions would be fantastic!!!!

 

COME ON!!!!

Any season when you beat Peterborough 5-0 over two games is a good season, any time you beat a Ferguson Jr side  5-0 over two games is a better one, now lets finish the job and make it a great one!

After both games against them, I am left wondering how the Ferguson Jr remains in a job. They played like a side trying to keep the score down from the minute we scored, I will be amazed if MK don't tear them a new one on Saturday. They seem to revel in making a point of trying to thrash teams, which to my mind is wasted effort.

As for us, it's all about game management and energy conservation, for such a young side we show so much maturity, we didn't need to get into third gear even, so we didn't, we won it at a canter and looked as fresh at the end as the beginning.

I am so glad, we didn't rest Joe, (as per my suggestion on another thread), compared to Saturday he was an absolute revelation. I thought Pack was excellent for 70 minutes, but needs to get out of the habit of turning towards the defence as he did in the last 20. i would have no qualms with him starting Saturday though. I expect another comfortable win there too.

Now then, now then.........

Really? every time? I am quite a fan of repetitive humour, but the key word in that sentence is humour.......

My company has a main office in Peterborough and I have need to visit it on a regular basis and despite that I am still not sure where it is! Local people don't appear to be too clear on where it is either. It's not far enough south to be outer London, not far enough North or West to be incorporated into East Midlands, not far enough East to be East Anglia and apparently not all of it is in Cambridgeshire, somewhere off the A1 seems to be the best anyone can come up with . I basically drive sort of North and East until appears, Brigadoon like, out of the mist. Once I get there I wonder how quickly I can leave again.

3-1 City..........

I think they will attack and bring an open game, we like open spaces and we can defend....... could be a good match.

That's probably what the referee will say in his own defence. But would you be saying the same if it was a Luke Freeman shot that hit Jordan Spence's arm?

Yes. probably, I am not as blinkered as some and I understand that a referee cannot see everything in a split second rather than over and over again on "vine" or whatever.

Think this Vine says it all about that Ayling handball......referee needs re-assessing as a Select group official to be honest..

 

https://vine.co/v/OUmMpgvFleD

Why because he doesn't have x-ray vision? Think about it, look at the angle Ayling is at and where the referee would be standing, he would have seen Ayling go full length but have no idea what part of his body it hit.

Vital not to lose. Bloody wish I was going mind. Won't be much in it and I'm hoping we edge it. COYR.

More a case of vital that MK win from their perspective, I believe we still are holding the nap hand no matter what the result. A 2-2 draw would be a good day out.

I believe yesterday results may work against us, West ham will be a far more wary outfit now and they are not really the "precious" types of the Premier league, they are more of a side built on work ethic.

I'd like to see JET get on the score sheet, judging by Saturdays game he is benefitting from a run of games. I remember a few people saying that he would have his part to play come December/January, they were right, now we need to see a real impact from him.

I saw a quote from their chairman saying about us, "the big brother is in town" Big brother? SInce when?

I would be concerned that in trying to shore up the defence we sacrifice our ability to attack, I've seen that happen before. I don't agree that additional defenders are necessarily the answer, although Fielding doesn't match my personal taste when it comes to goalkeepers. I am not criticising his form, but I don't think a player of his size will ever be the kind of dominating goalkeeper that the modern game demands.

However, I think there is one thing we have that cannot be underestimated and that is the current team/squad spirit, and Frank seems to fit well into that.

I believe that as long as we continue to play in the style that SC has been keen to use we will always concede goals, most of the sides in this division have the ability to score goals, and because of where we are currently situated, I think every team sees us a team they need to raise their game against.

Talking of negativity.

 

I CAN remember the season under Osman. He scored quite a good goal at home, and got roundly booed by the whole ground.

 

Football? Fickle??

 

 

 

TFR

I also remember when we were winning games in previous periods where people moaned it wasn't entertaining enough. You can't say that games that have a minimum of four goals in them are boring surely?

I've never once made any claims that we should walk every team in this league, that is your interpretation of what I wrote. What I said was our defence needs to improve, we're conceeding a lot of goals and it's resulting in us getting draws when a win was on the cards.

 

Would you be happy to throw away a historic start to a season because we started off with low expectations?! The most successful managers never do great and say "good enough", they strive to improve. I'm not complaining about our record, it's a great record but I am worried that this whole unbeaten streak is being used as a comfort blanket for some of our fans because they're afraid to admit we're not the dominate team we're being made out to be.

 

Success doesn't come from maintaining what you have, it comes from constantly trying to improve on it.

 

No but I dislike your intrepretation of realism. You say the goals will dry up and our defence will then let us down. I am  more optimistic that our proven strikeforce will continue to score goals and that our comparatively young defence will learn from their errors and how to improve as individuals and a group. I don't see that a change in personnel or formation is needed to achieve this. 

This is the problem with these forums, realism and negativity are far too often mixed up! I've been taking a bit of flack here and there when I "complain" and by "complain" I actually mean have my own opinion that isn't all happy clapping.

 

As it stands we're now able to drop to second should Preston win both games in hand which is pretty shocking when you consider we're unbeaten this season but it does prove my point when I say that the draws are going to cost us.

I said in another thread how the last 3 seasons the automatic promotion teams did not draw more than 11 games (Wolves 10, Brentford 10, Doncaster Rovers 9, Bournemouth 11, Charlton 11, Sheffield Wednesday 9) whilst we're already at 6. Now I know people will say "yes but we haven't lost!" but the truth is we could have lost 2 games and won 2 more instead of drawing 4 and been 4 points better off. 

The fact is winning games is what gets you promoted and whilst we've won the most in the league Preston, Peterborough and Sheffield United are all on 8 and Sheffield United have a game in hand with Preston having 2.

So when I say our defence is not good enough I don't feel I am not justified, we've conceded 12 goals in our last 7 games, that cannot continue if we wish to get promotion because there will come a point where the goals dry up for a period and if we're still conceding at that rate we'll not be worrying about draws but instead about losses!

 

 

The most successful managers in modern football all have one thing in common, they always have a solid defence and whilst ours is not bad it is nowhere near good enough. Our attack is fantastic, even when we look like we can't get goals we seem to but unless the defence is sorted out there will come a point where our attack cannot bail us out. As the season goes on teams will find us out, we'll get more injuries and teams will get more confident playing against us so we need to be able to stand up to teams in a collected manner without panicking.

 

Now I know at this point this you may say "this is complaining" but it's not, it's worry. It is like the deer in the headlights moment, you see it coming but you worry you won't be able to stop it, the difference is it's glaringly obvious we need to improve in our defending and we do have time to do something about it. If we don't strengthen in the January window I can see us dropping out of automatic promotion, going into the play off and getting beat because we can't soak up the pressure when it's really on us.

I'd love to be proven wrong and I know I'm going to get some stick for "being negative" but personally I think there is a difference between being negative and not wanting to see your team throw away something great!

Oh my god, we might drop to second?  What on earth will we do? 

The start of this season this forum was full of people who said they would be pretty happy if we were top ten after the way things have gone in recent years. Now we have to win every week to keep everyone happy. I think there has been a need to use our substitutions better but that has improved in recent games. As I said in another thread, there are two teams in every game and to expect us to walk over every team in this league is not realistic, despite your claims.

Apparently relegation form??????

Yep, Little should be dropped, Joe Bryan (assist today) should be dropped, Ayling should be moved out of defence, Cotterill out if he can't see that we will be lucky to stay up this season playing like this. 

Great, idiot on the radio now wants change everything, talk about some people never being satisfied. 

1-7 Gas 

 

They let Dorchester score?? OMG

I don't think so, we're still living on borrowed time because the second we stop scoring we'll start losing. I'm happy we're getting results but I will always stand by my statement that the defence needs to improve.

Or alternatively we can get our defending back the way it was before. You really are mister half empty aren't you, just seem to be waiting for it all to go wrong.

Assist for Bobby Reid to make it 3-0 Argyle

BANG!!!

That's our unbeaten run ended

great positivity there, thats what we like

uh oh