Player Ratings - Morecambe at home

[Piglet_Phoenix]

The Gospel according to Curle this season has been it’s all about budget, if you can sign better quality forwards (a la Luton) you will beat teams who don’t have equal resources. So what’s his excuse today? Clearly we have a bigger budget than Morecambe, we’ve spent hundreds of thousands more on our squad, we have (on paper) better quality players – but we struggled to equal them today. Where then, does the responsibility for this lie? You can’t blame the crowd, the referee, the pitch, the wind, “bad luck” or anything else, the players were trying their hardest but the well of excuses is dry.

Our failure is in organisation, tactics, preparation, substitutions, direction from the technical area – and what we’ve spent our resources on – the failure of our club is solely and entirely the fault and responsibility of Keith Curle (and by extension, those who choose to keep him in a job). It’s time we all woke up to this fact.

As it was – total and complete tactical chaos. We’d won our last home game playing a genuine 4-4-2, so what on Earth was that b_llocks today? 4-3-3 with no wide players? Lambe in a free role? Jones on the left wing? Embarrassing nonsense from the manager. Why not keep Jones and Joyce in central midfield, keep Lambe on the left wing and play Devitt (for example) on the left? We’re playing Morecambe – where is the need to play three holding midfielders?

Bonham – 3 – Has he stopped whinging about the penalty yet? Really poor challenge to concede the penalty and was involved in some incredibly lax play with Hill which led to the equalizer. Was fortunate not to concede when caught out of position in the first half. Terrible news he’s likely to stay for the season, there are better keepers out there than this.

Brown – 4 – Ineffective and isolated, not as influential as when he’s playing behind a (genuine) midfield four.

Grainger – 2 – Lump it forward aimlessly Danny, that’ll work. He’d benefit if he spent more time concentrating on passing to blue shirts rather than crying to the referee. Back to his regular plodding awfulness.

Hill – 3 – Clearly can’t manage to play Tuesday / Saturday. Badly off the pace of the game. Some truly awful moments of defensive ineptitude and was responsible, through unforgivable slackness, of needlessly putting us under the pressure which ultimately led to the goal we conceded. He can’t organise and communicate when he’s blowing out of his ar+se because he’s an old man. If this had been his debut performance, signing him for the season would look like insanity. As it stands, it was an incredibly poor decision (predictably) to not rest him at Luton.

Liddle – 2 – Two marks for the two times he was actually involved in the game. While Hill was concentrating on not having a cardiac arrest he was less able to pull Liddle’s strings. In danger of reverting to the old Gary Liddle who we all know and love so very, very much.

Joyce – 6* – Put a shift in and was left having to work twice as hard as normal having Etuhu floating around numbly, getting in his way and prodding balls vaguely in his direction. It’s hard to get any fluency and tempo when you have someone with the equivalent mobility of Mr Blobby getting under your feet all day. I don’t commend this star man award, it merely means he wasn’t as terrible as many of his colleagues – and did keep attempting to drive us forward.

Etuhu – 3 – Splendid strike for his goal, however his all round game is a total disgrace. I almost wish he hadn’t scored as Curle’s hard-on for him will now be virtually unrestrainable. I don’t understand the logic of moving our best midfielder out to the left to accommodate this player? Jones and Joyce have a great understanding and decent partnership in central midfield – all Etuhu does is disrupt this. His passing is dubious to say the least, he’s weak in the tackle and slower than a Blue Whale, on ketamine, trying to get round an athletics track. Would you pick Steven Hawking as a slip-fielder or ask Helen Keller to play darts? You‘re asking people to pay to watch Etuhu in midfield – no wonder our crowds are low.

Jones – 6 – Clearly we needed to substitute Etuhu and actually play our strongest midfielders in the middle of the park. It’s not rocket science. Not Jones’ greatest game – but finding himself stuck on the left all day it’s not a surprise.

Lambe – 4 – Getting frustrated by the end of the game and I don’t blame him. Absolutely no support from the rest of the team he was asked to be our only creative player – and that’s too much to ask.

Hope – 2 – Busy - yes. Technical ability, decision making, positioning and meaningful impact – no.

Bennett – 2 – Owned by the Morecambe defence all afternoon. Needs to improve, just because you’ve scored a couple of goals doesn’t mean you’re suddenly a great player. Even Tony Fyfe scored a few every now and again.

Subs

Miller – 1 – Weak and pathetic. I’d argued he deserved a run in the team but now, I’m not sure. If he left the club in January I wouldn’t be bothered.

O’Sullivan – 1 – Is he a footballer? He’s certainly not the player from last season. If he has ability he needs to show it soon because so far when he’s come on as substitute he’s done nothing.

Devitt – 1 – Looked angry and over-caffeinated. We should try and get to him to resemble a footballer rather than a mad dog.

[Piglet_Phoenix]

Keep Lambe on the right* wing, obviously. My mistake, apologies.

Oh look, someone admitting a mistake and apologising for it, how novel.

[griff]

I'd argue that Millert and O'Sullivan looked sharp for a while when they came on, and at least were trying to run in the right direction, but they were eventually dragged down to the level of the others. Etuhu walks around for large portions of the game, and I'm not certain that he's match-fit. Hill made far too many basic errors and looked like panic was setting in at times. Up front we need two players who can play together as a unit, each knowing what the other is likely to do. We're nowhere near having that. Bennet's radar is broken and Hope is back on his heels far too often. One of our worst performances for a long while.