⚽Match Thread vs. AFC Wimbledon 25.11.23 [EFL L2]

[KPie]

Today summed up what is obvious to most the fanbase and probably Luke Williams. Cameron Brindley and Rawlinson aren't good enough to be starting defenders.

We can get away with 1 of them in the 3 and thats it, we will probably sign a cb in January and i imagine chicksen and makari will get into the side in coming weeks.

Bostock is coming back from injury and didnt look like he'd recovered from last week fully. And jim for all his running and shouting isn't able to perform for 98 minutes at his age.

Losing palmer is going to cost us this season.

Its not all negative though, we got back to 2/2 and could of shut up shop for the draw but we went on to try to win it and easily could have.

Special mention for the referee who let Wimbledon make niggly fouls and blatent pull backs all game and only booked players for the 5th offence. It really stopped us generating any overloads as they just yanked nemane back and didnt get booked.

Williams comments from the fan forum stand out to me again, 2 pens for them, 20 fouls for them with 2 yellows, 6 fouls by us with 1 card. I'm surprised he didn't mention it in his post match.

[irishpete]

And a pleasant evening to you too!

I'll repeat it - I thought Slocombe played well today.

I've been a big critic of Slocombe, but he has played well since coming back. Made some important saves today. Nothing has changed with changing goalies. the goals still flow in, i wonder why?

[the_anticlough]

Did anyone else notice that we scored from a corner into the box?

Yeah but it was played short first, so it'll go down as another goal from a short corner

[Proactive not Reactive]

To be fair it should have been addressed pre-season as a lot of us have been saying it’s been blindingly obvious it was our Achilles heel, as much as some people think ‘Recruitment’ is beyond question with the club , IMO it’s been very poor at times with the decisions being made.

The owners are trying to run the club like a proper business outside of football and said at the Forum that they hope to be profitable next season which isn’t how the majority of football clubs are run(and has cost the demise of some clubs including almost us)
It seems from the outside that we have spent the budget as follows above average for the attacking players and probably below average for the defensive players(although we did make offers for new defenders) and to help us get the attacking players also operate with a small squad which served us well last season unfortunately we have been very unlucky with long term injuries and perhaps a bit naive with the leagues transfer windows
The transfer panel will learn from this and imo we will sign at least one defender in January and maybe as many as 3/4 players
There are lots of ways to spend a budget and I don’t think they have done bad by signing up exceptional players and balancing it with average players ..although to get to the next level we now need better average or above average players

[Proactive not Reactive]

Today summed up what is obvious to most the fanbase and probably Luke Williams. Cameron Brindley and Rawlinson aren't good enough to be starting defenders.

We can get away with 1 of them in the 3 and thats it, we will probably sign a cb in January and i imagine chicksen and makari will get into the side in coming weeks.

Bostock is coming back from injury and didnt look like he'd recovered from last week fully. And jim for all his running and shouting isn't able to perform for 98 minutes at his age.

Losing palmer is going to cost us this season.

Its not all negative though, we got back to 2/2 and could of shut up shop for the draw but we went on to try to win it and easily could have.

Special mention for the referee who let Wimbledon make niggly fouls and blatent pull backs all game and only booked players for the 5th offence. It really stopped us generating any overloads as they just yanked nemane back and didnt get booked.

Williams comments from the fan forum stand out to me again, 2 pens for them, 20 fouls for them with 2 yellows, 6 fouls by us with 1 card. I'm surprised he didn't mention it in his post match.

Yep comments above not far off and especially about the officials again.
The left full back was very lucky to stay on the pitch should have been booked early on for pulling Nemane back and was booked eventually just before half time then committed two more professional fouls in the first 15-20 mins of the 2nd half.
Little also committed quite a lot of niggly fouls but nothing was done
Was Slocombe fouled for their 3rd goal(if Alison was for Liverpool at lunchtime then definitely)
We certainly don’t seem to get the rub of the green with officials ..hopefully it will even out during the season

[1955pie]

He did explain this the other night it isn’t as simple as that as there is a budget so maybe we couldn’t afford to do that.

We are missing 3 key players for the season and that takes a toll on resting players and keeping squad fresh that cannot be factored in as you just don’t expect that to happen.

My opinion is most players are good enough for league 2 as the table shows but some aren’t top end players but you can carry them if you have outstanding other players.

We just have to hang in there until Jan and see where we are hopefully still in the top 7.

The club knew that 2 of the “missing 3 key players” were out for the season before the transfer window closed. And all they did was to get 2 young loanees in - as if that would compensate for the loss of Bajrami and Scott.
That in my view was a failure on the recruitment front.
And of course CR and KC were going to accept new 2 year contracts - who else was going to give them such a good deal in League 2?
As for the goalkeeper debate - some people think that Aiden Stone is not good enough. If that is the case then we need another goalkeeper because Sam Slocombe isn’t either.

[Proactive not Reactive]

Yeah I completely agree with that. It's a bit of a fallacy that we concede a lot of goals because we defend high and pass it out. Some of them come from that, but most of them are from brainfarts and not doing the basics of defending properly.

Drillerpie I think what you and I consider the basics of defending has changed in modern football - my sports teacher would have chucked me out of the team if I passed across my own penalty area once in a game let alone 20 plus passes.
Players aren’t encouraged to tackle anymore they are taught to shadow players into blind alleys,we have England full backs who can’t tackle.
Also the authorities are trying to stamp out tackling a 50/50 will probably get a yellow card now.
If not under instructions CR would have smashed the 1st goal down the field and there wouldn’t have been a penalty
The defenders would probably prefer to play as a back 4 and a least a yard deeper so a ball over the top doesn’t beat them and probably prefer the keeper to kick long every time but the coach and owners prefer this possession based football.
Within the next 5 years the majority of lower league teams will play this way as more and more younger players come through as this is the style they are taught to play.
What you have described above is basically the Premier League now and Notts are already on that bandwagon and we will see lots more brain farts although hopefully less as we get better players and daft as it sounds it might be easier to recruit these type of defenders if we were in say the Championship

[Glad2BeAPie]

Stop the basic wayward passes they make to a player in front of them. Get Cameron to stop his one trick pony trick of falling over, it's embarrassing every game. Even commentators have picked up on it. Stop backing off players, when they are attacking. There has been times when players run at Notts &, 2 or 3 Notts players just either run along side or back off. Get your foot i & tackle. It ain't rocket science. It's basics taught as a kid. these are professionals training every day

They train on keeping possession tackling is alien to them or seems like it

[legs77]

The club knew that 2 of the “missing 3 key players” were out for the season before the transfer window closed. And all they did was to get 2 young loanees in - as if that would compensate for the loss of Bajrami and Scott.
That in my view was a failure on the recruitment front.
And of course CR and KC were going to accept new 2 year contracts - who else was going to give them such a good deal in League 2?
As for the goalkeeper debate - some people think that Aiden Stone is not good enough. If that is the case then we need another goalkeeper because Sam Slocombe isn’t either.

What was said at the forum they pretty much said they have spent the budget so maybe Mccari and Tipton was all we could afford.

Spending more money is not a smart business move some have short memories it was only 5 years ago we could have gone bust by spending what we don’t have.

Scott got injured towards the end of the window so even if we had the money it is going to be mighty hard to get a club to sell a player of his ability that late in the window.

We have a mid table budget that was said by Sky and pretty much confirmed the other night you can only buy what you can afford.

[TSANHO]

1. That’s a rubbish drive down there.

2. Nice little stadium, liked the fans being so close to the pitch. Good away following.

3. Dire defending from Bostock giving the (clear) penalty away and then the ball away for their second.

4. Dire defending from the team as a whole. Every early ball which had us running towards our own goal caused massive problems. Basic defending problems.

5. Good performance from Slocombe.

6. Thought we were going to win at 2-2 but always felt we could concede again. Fantastic save by their keeper to keep it level.

7. Could do with Jake Reeves back to cover Matty.

8. Some strange selections and substitutions from LW.

9. Still in playoffs but feeling pretty down.

10. Better drive home.

If these players aren’t capable of playing a back three at this level then it should be changed to something more conventional.