O’Brien and Doyle

[Glad2BeAPie]

And we can see why Harrogate lent us Walker, only a month hopefully

[Notts78]

And we can see why Harrogate lent us Walker, only a month hopefully

Another player written off after a few minutes of football.

[optipez]

That midfield is the root of all our problems. Too old, too slow, can't press and doesn't create enough.
Reeves is sound but Doyle is like Aborah, Boucaud or Fotheringham, tidy player but doesn't affect the game , sits deep and although he can jog all day he can't get in the opposition's faces like a Bishop, Harding or Yates.
JOB is more positive but like Sam and Rodriguess only has an hour in him.
I'd sacrifice Doyle and O'Brien , we may turn over possession but would probably create more as we did last headlining Rose and Booty ( who assisted a lot before injury).

[nw6pie]

Another player written off after a few minutes of football.

To be fair, Walker’s got bags more experience than Elisha Sam, but he’s contributed precisely nothing in the last 135 minutes of football. This is a guy who’s played in the Championship and League 1, and Harrogate signed him in the summer. I think we had a right to expect a bit more from him - or at least for him to look mildly interested during the game.

The front three were all pretty flat last night, though. We’re clearly missing Wes Thomas (only played for 200 minutes this season so far), while NA doesn’t think Jimmy Knowles is worth a starting place. Just like in midfield, we really don’t appear to have many options at the moment.

[durhampie]

To be fair, Walker’s got bags more experience than Elisha Sam, but he’s contributed precisely nothing in the last 135 minutes of football. This is a guy who’s played in the Championship and League 1, and Harrogate signed him in the summer. I think we had a right to expect a bit more from him - or at least for him to look mildly interested during the game.

The front three were all pretty flat last night, though. We’re clearly missing Wes Thomas (only played for 200 minutes this season so far), while NA doesn’t think Jimmy Knowles is worth a starting place. Just like in midfield, we really don’t appear to have many options at the moment.

We do have options, but Ardley is too afraid to move away from his job guarantee cronies..

[irishpete]

Agreed with Pete , don't play both at once especially at home on our beautiful turf. It's beneficial to have one of them in the side but not both.

laddo, don't play them together at all home or away. As soon as a team see the line up they know exactly what to expect from us

[the_anticlough]

We do have options, but Ardley is too afraid to move away from his job guarantee cronies..

This thread deals with one of our main problems.

I think most can finally see that the influence of 'senior pros' is one of the reasons we lost league status...
And now it's certainly not helping us to get it back

I'd contrast Doyle/O'Brien with Rodrigues....the first two would have the personalities/English as first language/ experience of promoting their influence in squads / past 'glories' to talk about maybe / maybe matey relationships with Abbott and Ardley...

Rodrigues is a young guy with none of those things. Pretty easy to put young players like that in their place too by making a big deal of the odd missed defensive assignment or something.

But who has the potential to play the football to get us back to the football league?
I think football is run pretty amateurishly - all of those things I listed are allowed to get in the way.
I know there are plenty of problems with this comparison, but as a NBA follower there's no way that a clique of gnarly old veterans would be favoured over up and coming younger talent or straight up effectiveness and impact on the pitch, that everyone can see for themselves. The 34-40 year old vets would be made to hand the keys over

Anyway, this is a long way of saying what the hell Ardley, how can you not play Rodrigues is a home game you just might want to take 3pts from?

[nw6pie]

This thread deals with one of our main problems.

I think most can finally see that the influence of 'senior pros' is one of the reasons we lost league status...
And now it's certainly not helping us to get it back

I'd contrast Doyle/O'Brien with Rodrigues....the first two would have the personalities/English as first language/ experience of promoting their influence in squads / past 'glories' to talk about maybe / maybe matey relationships with Abbott and Ardley...

Rodrigues is a young guy with none of those things. Pretty easy to put young players like that in their place too by making a big deal of the odd missed defensive assignment or something.

But who has the potential to play the football to get us back to the football league?
I think football is run pretty amateurishly - all of those things I listed are allowed to get in the way.
I know there are plenty of problems with this comparison, but as a NBA follower there's no way that a clique of gnarly old veterans would be favoured over up and coming younger talent or straight up effectiveness and impact on the pitch, that everyone can see for themselves. The 34-40 year old vets would be made to hand the keys over

Anyway, this is a long way of saying what the hell Ardley, how can you not play Rodrigues is a home game you just might want to take 3pts from?

Interesting point about Ruben. If we're to have any hope of going up this season (most likely through the playoffs given our inconsistency so far), we've basically got to win all of our remaining home games and win one, draw one and lose one away (making sure we don't lose to our rivals).

I can see an argument in having a home side that includes Ruben in a 4-2-3-1, which plays to our strengths, and a more conservative 3-5-2 or 4-4-2 away from home that grinds out the points and benches the likes of Ruben and uses them as impact subs (like at Chesterfield).

Now all of the injury-hit players are starting to return, we're going to have to start using squad rotation (one thing Ardley did pretty well last season) to freshen things up. Now's the time for Ardley to let Wolfe show us what he can do and see if the answer to the midfield problem.

[ncfcog]

Don't think we are going to see Wolfe now as his initial loan is up on 3rd Jan.

[magpie_mania]

Wolfe is a bit of an enigma.

Is he injured? Recovering from Covid?

Or maybe there's something about his attitude in training etc that Ardley isn't happy with.

It is strange though to take him on loan and he's hardly made the bench, let alone the first team.