RedRock

Yay!!!! Not sure I should’ve been feeling THAT edgy at 2-0 in the final minute mind. Brilliant going forward, give me kittens in defence… but that’s unbeaten in four with three victories. Good stuff.

Game management time Nige. Conway has run his race.

That’s an ok half. Need to switch a few things at h/t. Hano is losing his man defensive wise and on a booking so replace…and, Jesz, does our defence generally look static when they’re running at us. Seem to be running in treacle when facing our goal. Need to be more on our toes and at least apply some pressure running back even if you’ve lost the man.

Nope. Having been a past critic of our subs, I thought Pearson got it right last night. Infact, I think that was the best performance from our team, on and off the pitch, since the Man U match. I just hope we don’t have to wait for the next comparable performance for another 3/4 seasons. Hats off. I thought we were tremendous and had everything I look for in a successful team.

I think he’s been totally professional during his time with us. It can’t have been easy with changes in managers, played out of position, dropped, 5 minute sub cameos. Yes, he’s on big (obscene) wages - but we choose to offer them. Suspect he may well prove the exception to the Fammy/CoD type disappearing act in the last few months of contract run down too.

Calm, measured, accurate and well-timed after a victory. The number of blatant penalties we’ve been denied is beyond a joke. Having ref’d one match, I have every sympathy with the men in black it’s a very difficult job, but these missed penalty calls are just outrageous. There was no excuse for missing the one tonight he had a clear, unobstructed view. Pearson should be rewarded for speaking the truth, not be fined. However, think this could accelerate VARs introduction to the Championship which I’m not sure is a good thing.

It was a blatant penalty for me. I think we need to be more vocal/visual in appealing them though. Put the pressure on refs.

Think it was a marginal one. If it hadn’t been for the reaction just a yellow. Freeman should have gone for the push too.

Hero’s each and every one of them. Brilliant. Denied a blatant penalty AGAIN. Sending off was a bit iffy too.

Christ. This last 15 minutes is going to feel like 15 years.

This Presenter is more confident at half-time. Bodes well.

Good half City. Nice football. Now then. Clean sheet. …and that means not giving away silly free kicks near our box as they are totally dominant us in the air.

Told you! Brilliant goal.

Need to get Andi more involved here.

Decent start.

This Backwell chap looks decent when I’ve seen him play and gets a lot of mentions when I haven’t. Anyone got the background to his development and hopes for the future? Odd that he doesn’t start for the U-21s unless he’s returning from injury.

Yep. Implementation is key to success, but equally so is a sound plan. I’m still very much pro-Pearson. I get that the situation he came into on and off the field was a total mess. That’s why most of us have given him loads of time to sort things out and I will continue to support him even if we mess up tonight and vs Cardiff. There are limits to that support though… I’m not in the total blind faith camp. While I’m not expecting world- beating performances or anything like that, I am now looking for him and his own backroom to start delivering improved and consistent performances and results. I don’t think that’s unreasonable in the wider scheme of things. I don’t want to see the mentally and physically weak performances of past eras, a team that collapses every time some pressure is applied by the opposition. I think we have an ok squad of players sufficient to avoid getting involved in yet another relegation scrap. It’s for the management team now to ensure that through this squad of players we succeed in that mission.

Fine. As they say in peak business management ‘fail to plan, plan to fail’. You have a plan, you work towards these goals, clearly they aren’t instantly achievable. It’s obvious with FFP that we ain’t going to spend our way out of this division by out -competing parachute payment Clubs. I assume this was the LJ/MA plan… which ended as a random/chaos type approach with player dealings focusing almost entirely on to potential £profit, with little/no apparent reference to building a team or partnerships. I’m hoping that Pearson has a plan. A better plan than LJ/MAs and ‘peak football manager’ then. I also hope that he hasn’t conceded defeat to be a forever Championship/League 1 side.

Think there is a way. Build a TEAM, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Adopt a playing SYSTEM that is difficult to counter. Be the FITTEST team in the league. SMART in game management on/off the field. Ensure players know their ROLES. Create playing PARTNERSHIPS. We have consistent failed - since Cotts - to deliver any of the above. I was confident that Pearson understood what was required to create a successful team with limited resources.

Agree with the Martin reference, but still puzzled why Britton was allowed to go without having a similar-type replacement to slot in. Britton may not have had a long term future with the Club, but he was cheap, committed and the most comparable to Martin we had on the books. A 10-15 minute cameo at the end of games, if Pearson is totally wedded to a big guy upfront, could have taken the pressure off a flogged-to-death, and increasingly ineffective in the latter stages of matches, Martin. My real fear this Season though is that the OOC players will follow the Fammy/CoD path of disappearing from January onwards. Potentially, that’s the established spine of the team going awol. Pearson, seemingly critical of the Club having allowed this situation (erm ..all had 2 years plus left on contracts when he arrived so does he not share some responsibility?), is trying to build a new spine but I suspect if our OOCs employ the awol tactic, squad depth is going to be shallow beyond belief in the latter part of this season, given our inability to bring in new players due to FFP. We really need to get points on the board now as it ain’t going to get any easier! For the first time, in the post-match Wigan interview Pearson, I detected he felt we are very much up against it. Early days indeed, but we need this team engine to start running smoothly and cohesively very soon.

Yes, I don’t disagree. At present though, ‘I’m keeping the faith’ and believing he has the experience and capabilities to lead us from these troubled waters. I admit to occasional ‘wobbles’ though, but not to anywhere near the level of thinking we need a managerial change. Delivery time is approaching though. I know we’ve not been able to ‘player recruit’ our way out of the mess by marque signings. However, I think Pearson, now with his own coaching and back-up staff should be making a difference very soon to the ingrained mental and physical weaknesses of the playing side of the Club that have held us back for years.

Published service goals and objectives are commonplace in the public sector. May be it’s time for the ‘Gods gift to the Nation’ private sector to improve their own transparency standards? Maybe we start with our utterly useless, under-performing, pay-ourselves-what-we-want Water Companies. Football clubs could could then follow in the second tranche.

Understand the point…and may be there is some ‘blind faith’ in my view of Pearson. However, he needed to disassemble the squad and then rebuild with the added ‘bonus’ of massively cutting costs. ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ springs to mind also. Sometimes the rebuild takes time and then things just ‘click’ overnight. We have form getting managers to do this. I’ve not quite hit the depths of despair that SoD took me too when we were in the bottom three of League 1….yet.

My worry is someone comes in for Andi. Either that, or he gets injured or loses form. Can see a Cardiff or Swansea bid incoming and, frankly, that could seal our fate. That is where we are, dependent on one player for survival. A concern as I would have hoped by now we would have built something resembling a team. If we aren’t recruiting to a plan, just picking up ad hoc what are perceived to be cheap ‘bargains’ then we need to adapt/tweak our system(s) in a way that uses these players strengths. What seems to be happening is we are sticking to a pre-set system and hoping that the players can adapt to a different role. Not sure that approach is working. OK, give it more time as I respect Pearson as a manager (highly), but we’re some way behind where I thought we would be and don’t seem to be much nearer having a cohesive team or style of play than when he started. To be dependent on just one player to determine your season is one massive risk.

Football is a simple game. I look at players as ‘counters’ each with a unique set of characteristics. The Manager’s job is to select and arrange the ‘counters’ in a way that adds value, so the sum of the total is greater than that of the individual parts. We need to be set-up well before the match and then adapt during the match. We have enough ‘counters’ to be competitive. I’m pro-Pearson. However, he does baffle me sometimes with his selections/formations and in-game changes (or lack of them). I can only assume Martin is selected and kept on for full games for his defensive abilities (height) as he looks increasingly like a bit-part player up front. The absence of Wilson, Tanner seems odd, if we are wafer thin squad-wise why recruit players in positions that aren’t crucial to our game-plan? I’m still struggling despite the squad and coaching overhaul with the fact our fitness is still lacking, have an ‘iffy’ injury record, our structure and pattern of play is still unclear …plus our Achilles heal of both losing leads and conceding late still exists. Anyhows, I still trust Pearson to sort it out … but we need to see tangible and consistent progress soon.