Defensive Line-up today vs Forest - strange or genius?

[Tony F]

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I have to say I was pretty surprised to see no Frazer or Butterfield, nor Harding or Dickson - our supposedly "first and second choice full backs" on the pitch today. And of those, only Dicko made the bench. Now, I appreciate that Fox came to us as another LB (although we had seen more of him as a sub, coming on at LM) but Jack definitely came as a fourth midfielder. So what was either in Nige's mind or forcing his hand?

 

There is no doubt that Jack exploited well going forward and was often in front of Guly. However, Forest scored both their goals down their left, our right - and I believe on both occasions Jack was either beaten or out of position (ie not there to be beaten) so Jose had to cover across, which in turn made more space in the middle - exploited to effect (twice) by Derbyshire and his mates. When Kelvin had the ball in his hands, on many occasions both Fox and Cork had pushed up too far to be available to receive - and hence Kelvin had only Jose or Jos (sometimes Hammond/Morgan) to distribute to. This caused problems on a few occasions and almost cost us a really silly goal in the second half (poor back-pass from Jos because he received the ball under pressure from Kelvin).

 

Suffice to say I much prefer to see Jack in midfield and either Frazer or Danny (I'm equally happy with either) at RB - ie I'd prefer to see us playing an established RB in the RB slot.

 

Given the semi-chaos described above I think Jos did pretty well with Jose in the middle. Absolutely no worse than Seaborne and he had a handy left foot free kick on him too (from which Fonte just failed to score).

 

In the end, we won a very difficult game, so either it was a lucky let-off or a stroke of managerial genius.......thoughts?

Edited 10 September, 2011 by Tony F
removed repetition, repetition

[hypochondriac]

Changes were enforced due to injuries so it wasn't really a decision apart from not playing Martin.

[Saint Charlie]

Made sense with players available. We clearly didn't buy Fox to be on the bench.

[S-Clarke]

Players being played were forced changes.

 

Harding has jarred his knee, Richardson took a kick in the groin (i think) and Butters has had some sort of knock all season so far, same with big Rhadi.

 

I thought today showed our squad depth tbh. Alot of clubs wouldn't have been able to cope with the amount of changes we had to make today, yet we were still competitive against one of the best in the league.

[Saint_clark]

Changes were enforced due to injuries so it wasn't really a decision apart from not playing Martin.

 

Didn't know this at the time, but given that fact i'm much more impressed with how we coped.

[Tony F]

Can anyone be more specific re injuries?

 

I mean, are all three of Richardson, Butterfield and Harding injured - despite us having a 2 week layoff prior to this match?

 

EDIT

 

OK S-Clarke - thanks....

Edited 10 September, 2011 by Tony F
reason given while I was typing

[S-Clarke]

Can anyone be more specific re injuries?

 

I mean, are all three of Richardson, Butterfield and Harding injured - despite us having a 2 week layoff prior to this match?

 

Yep, harding only took a knock in training y/day unfortunatley, and Richardson had a tweak so was pulled on thursday.

[Tony F]

In that case I'll add my voice to the "we did pretty well, in the circumstances, didn't we?" side of the house.

 

Cheers guys

 

(ps - wish I'd known before the match cos it had me wondering the whole game!!!)

[Saint Garrett]

Anyone else think we kind of set up narrow on purpose? Multiple times we were extremely narrow and left them have the wings when we were defending? Not sure whether this was because Fox/Cork had bad games at full back and didn't do their jobs properly or whether it was a tactic to stay narrow and box the middle of the pitch?!

[VectisSaint]

I mean, are all three of Richardson, Butterfield and Harding injured - despite us having a 2 week layoff prior to this match?

Seems some people have some sort of mental block about the Swindon game. We have not had a 2 week lay-off. Richardson appeared to be quite badly injured in 1st half against Swindon, looked like he had dislocated his shoulder again, but miraculously carried on even though he was clearly "carrying" his shoulder. This may not have been the reason he didn't play today but it was only just over a week and half since last game. Butters has been injured all season apparently.

[Block 5]

Good OP.

I wasn't aware of the injuries either.

[Littlelat17]

Good OP.

I wasn't aware of the injuries either.

I dont think anyone was like you when the team came through, we all thought it was a strange one - but under Adkins, we do keep everything 'under wraps' guess to keep the opposition guessing. Good chance Forest would have done their homework and would have expected Harding and Richardson to start and worked on that basis, if they had heard before they got the teamsheet, they have more time to work or talk about their shape, tactics, what the fullbacks strengths/weaknesses were etc etc..

By keeping injuries out of the public domain, it does mean us fans are left to speculate, but as long as the team keeping producing then you can't argue with this stance.

[eharty9]

trust me mate dont worry about cork and fox pushing on too far to receive the ball! we always do that! by the full backs pushing on wide and upfield, this allowes the 2 center halves to push wide, creating pace in the middle for the 2 center midfielders to drop into and receive the ball and play !

[CHAPEL END CHARLIE]

A case of 'force majeure' it seems so not real criticism of the managers selection is valid, but frankly our back four & goalkeeper yesterday never looked liked a proper unit - indeed you could have driven several buses through the gaps were left on the field and still had space to spare. The full backs in particular were very disappointing, Jack Cork has the excuse that he's more of a midfield player these days, but as for performance Danny Fox put in (how much did we pay for him ?) I can only say that I've seldom seem a Saints Left Back caught so frequently out of position. A fine passer of a football for sure - but primarily they are supposed to be there to defend I thought.

 

Contrary to some views expressed on here during the summer, from what I saw yesterday Dan Harding's place in the team is not under serious threath at this time.