Romared Match Thoughts Barnsley v Mansfield Town

[animallittle3]

Seasons Greetings to everyone and I hope you are enjoying the festivities and had a great day yesterday .

So the plan today is to drive over to Headingley and take in the annual boxing day clash between the Leeds Rhinos and Wakefield Trinity with an 11.30 am KO , it's the first pre season friendly but does have a bit of an edge as we play for the Wetherby Whaler Trophy and some early bragging rights and then straight afterwards head for Oakwell to catch this afternoons game against Mansfield Town .

It's my first visit to Oakwell this season so I'm hoping for a decent display and hopefully 3 points , a Trinity victory and some silverware along with a Barnsley win would represent a pretty good boxing day I reckon .

What could possibly go wrong ?

[Shadrack the Red]

Not sure what to expect today after last weeks debacle at Exeter , I was ultra confident which is rare for me and of course it turned out to be a truly awful performance so today I am back to my cautious approach, I am hoping for a win but with my confidence drained any result would not surprise me, after considerable thought I am leaning towards a share of the points , we will see.

[perkytyke]

2-0 up then Cleary handballs in the area! How many times are we going to gift teams goals? It's bordering on the ridiculous now!
2-2 through poor defending, Mansfield should have had another penalty as well.
There is no cohesion between the defence or the defence and Cooper, the indecisiveness between defence and Cooper could have cost as another 2 goals as well.

[perkytyke]

Just gone 3-2 down! I've said it a lot before, but how the hell is Keogh keeping his job as the defensive coach? We conceed goals for fun and there is no organisation!

[perkytyke]

Ridiculous!

[NerfHerder]

Hope everyone has had a nice Christmas and not letting football ruin it!

Strange game today as going 2-0 up, I was sat there thinking “these look awful in defence, this could be another 5-0 win like the Luton game” and then suddenly the game turned on its head. I will have to watch the highlights back to see the penalty but from the West Stand, I thought it looked a bit harsh and the ref couldn’t blow for it quick enough if he tried.

I feel like I have said it loads now but I am totally sick of our “defensive unit”. Sick of seeing us gift stupid goals away and giving opposition attackers yards of space in the box. I feel like we always have to work hard for our goals with pieces of quality play but then absolutely gift wrap goals away easily. We need 2 centre backs coming in to the starting 11 in January but I won’t hold my breath.

I also made the classic mistake of including us in my accumulator and it cost me £80.

Not feeling very confident for the next home game on Monday so let’s hope we turn up and change the feelings.

[Shadrack the Red]

Just gone 3-2 down! I've said it a lot before, but how the hell is Keogh keeping his job as the defensive coach? We conceed goals for fun and there is no organisation!

We have been shocking at the back since Wembley and we have had numerous coaches come and gone since then, when you had Cadden, Thomas, Anderson, Kitchen and Williams as your defence and let them all go and replace them with non league and players of limited ability then it doesn"t matter who is coaching them as they are simply not up to it and not good enough, I have read one or two laying the blame on Keogh when the blame should be firmly laid on the amatuers running the club , Keogh was highly rated at Blackpool but the old saying of silk purse and cows ears comes to mind , its the players for me , they are simply not up to it.

[animallittle3]

Absolutely bewildered by that , I just don't know what to say , at 2 nil up I'm thinking we are on for 4 or 5 , we looked likely to score every time we crossed the halfway line .

The Mansfield penalty changed everything and you could see how brittle we are once Mansfield got back in the game , Connell went to shyte , shocking second half performance , he was abysmal .

The thing is when you are as suspect as we are then why the hell do we put more pressure on ourselves by pyssing around at the back , I could hardly believe what I was witnessing and it just invited Mansfield on to us even more .

Worrying aspect for me is that neither Exeter last week or Mansfield today were that good and yet they have stuck 3 goals past us without doing anything that special .

What I will say is that Hourihane has chosen a very interesting hill to die on because this pyssing around at the back could lose him his job and he needs to ditch this nonsense quick sticks because the natives are getting restless going by the comments around me .

A further concern is that if a team is mentally weak then a relegation fight is probably the last thing you need , get dragged down in to that dogfight and I'm far from certain we'll have what it takes to survive.

I'll end on a positive and say I enjoyed watching Cleary , Kelly and DKD today , all 3 were outstanding and should be playing higher , it's unlikely to be with us .

[animallittle3]

We have been shocking at the back since Wembley and we have had numerous coaches come and gone since then, when you had Cadden, Thomas, Anderson, Kitchen and Williams as your defence and let them all go and replace them with non league and players of limited ability then it doesn"t matter who is coaching them as they are simply not up to it and not good enough, I have read one or two laying the blame on Keogh when the blame should be firmly laid on the amatuers running the club , Keogh was highly rated at Blackpool but the old saying of silk purse and cows ears comes to mind , its the players for me , they are simply not up to it.

They are responsible in my opinion Shad for the pyssing around at the back , that comes from Keogh and Hourihane , I'm not suggesting we hoof it down the field because that won't work either with the way we set up offensively but none the less some common sense has to be attatched to this .

The approach has to be making sure we become difficult to beat and we are the polar opposite of that , it's imperative we start becoming more defensively minded even at the cost of becoming not that great to watch , there's enough talent up top to nick a goal or two but expecting them to score four goals every week just to beat Exeter or Mansfield is a ludicrous way of playing and doomed to fail .

I'm firmly behind Hourihane but I can't defend this forever , losing games to better teams is one thing but irresponsibility , naivety and not learning is quite another , it's got a shelf life .

[Shadrack the Red]

They are responsible in my opinion Shad for the pyssing around at the back , that comes from Keogh and Hourihane , I'm not suggesting we hoof it down the field because that won't work either with the way we set up offensively but none the less some common sense has to be attatched to this .

The approach has to be making sure we become difficult to beat and we are the polar opposite of that , it's imperative we start becoming more defensively minded even at the cost of becoming not that great to watch , there's enough talent up top to nick a goal or two but expecting them to score four goals every week just to beat Exeter or Mansfield is a ludicrous way of playing and doomed to fail .

I'm firmly behind Hourihane but I can't defend this forever , losing games to better teams is one thing but irresponsibility , naivety and not learning is quite another , it's got a shelf life .

I agree with you about playing about at the back it really winds me up but I will make my point again, we have not replaced the quality we had when we played at Wembley , our defence has been shocking since , if Bobby Moore was alive and coaching this lot he would get nowhere , they are lower league/none league recruits who are not up to it and when you consider Lopata, Cotter and Okeefe were also in this group it shows you how bad the recruitment has been in the defensive dept .

[perkytyke]

4 points above the relegation zone now! A couple more defeats and I can see Hourihane being shown the door! I desperately want him to turn it around but the way it's going i personally can't see him doing it.
This tippy tappy rubbish at the back is killing us, you could hear the fans frustration at the end, in the last couple of minutes of injury time we had the ball 2 or 3 times, JUST LUMP IT INTO THE AREA! Anything could happen, but NO let's pass it around at the back!! You could see the ref waiting for the last play to end, but even he thought sod it, if they are gonna do that I'll blow the whistle!

[animallittle3]

I agree with you about playing about at the back it really winds me up but I will make my point again, we have not replaced the quality we had when we played at Wembley , our defence has been shocking since , if Bobby Moore was alive and coaching this lot he would get nowhere , they are lower league/none league recruits who are not up to it and when you consider Lopata, Cotter and Okeefe were also in this group it shows you how bad the recruitment has been in the defensive dept .

It's classic style over substance Shad and it's inviting criticism of Hourihane and it's going to get difficult to defend .

My major concern is that Hourihane as a young HC and finding his feet hasn't actually got any ideas of his own , he's simply rehashing the game at PL level with this nonsense at the back and I noticed this afternoon he had Bland moving in to midfield from his right back role and this inverted full back nonsense , perfectly fine if you are Pep with the players he has at his disposal but not so good if you have a young kid trying to find his way at league one level .

What goes on in the PL is irrelevant at this level and when you haven't a pot to pyss in it's imperative you play to the strengths you do possess and work from there , something Val did in the covid season .

Don't get me wrong Hourihane needs time to develop but he's got to help himself too and today I came away thinking that there are things he needs to move away from and sharpish too .

[animallittle3]

4 points above the relegation zone now! A couple more defeats and I can see Hourihane being shown the door! I desperately want him to turn it around but the way it's going i personally can't see him doing it.
This tippy tappy rubbish at the back is killing us, you could hear the fans frustration at the end, in the last couple of minutes of injury time we had the ball 2 or 3 times, JUST LUMP IT INTO THE AREA! Anything could happen, but NO let's pass it around at the back!! You could see the ref waiting for the last play to end, but even he thought sod it, if they are gonna do that I'll blow the whistle!

What we are Perky is a heavyweight boxer with huge punching power that can knock out any boxer on the planet , problem is we've got a glass chin and when we get hit ourselves we hit the canvas .

If teams let us play like Luton did we will probably destroy everybody in the league given the talent we have going forward but that's not how it works , opposition teams know if they stick in games and put pressure on us we will crumble which is exactly what happened today .

Too many players aren't made of the right stuff similar to those embarrassing us out in Australia at the moment , great players when they are smashing bowlers all over the park but not so good when they have to dig in and show resilience .

[perkytyke]

What we are Perky is a heavyweight boxer with huge punching power that can knock out any boxer on the planet , problem is we've got a glass chin and when we get hit ourselves we hit the canvas .

If teams let us play like Luton did we will probably destroy everybody in the league given the talent we have going forward but that's not how it works , opposition teams know if they stick in games and put pressure on us we will crumble which is exactly what happened today .

Too many players aren't made of the right stuff similar to those embarrassing us out in Australia at the moment , great players when they are smashing bowlers all over the park but not so good when they have to dig in and show resilience .

Totally agree with that animal, Conor is walking a fine line ATM, playing a young lad learning his trade as an inverted R/B is not on, why did he not play Watson there and put Bland in Midfield?
Yoganathan should be nowhere near this team, watch his last few games, he doesn?t know what he?s doing, players he?s marking just waltz by and he?s trotting off in the opposite direction! There was a Mansfield break away today and rather than go to the runner he ran away to cover a different player!
Shepherd is really starting to show he?s not good enough at this level, soft in the tackle 90% of the time, but he gets dragged out of position constantly!
Connell captain my ar5e! His head drops as soon as we concede, he was atrocious again 2nd half, but he blames everyone else all the time, we got a free kick 2nd half and the players were signaling to him and he?s saying NO?.points somewhere else, then sticks in a kick that was laughable!
If we lose the next 2 games the fans are gonna turn properly on Hourihane, it?s starting now! We will get nothing against Lincoln because Skubala knows how to upset us and get into our players, but lose to Vale who are bottom of the league and they will sack him, I?m sure of it.

[Shadrack the Red]

Totally agree with that animal, Conor is walking a fine line ATM, playing a young lad learning his trade as an inverted R/B is not on, why did he not play Watson there and put Bland in Midfield?
Yoganathan should be nowhere near this team, watch his last few games, he doesn?t know what he?s doing, players he?s marking just waltz by and he?s trotting off in the opposite direction! There was a Mansfield break away today and rather than go to the runner he ran away to cover a different player!
Shepherd is really starting to show he?s not good enough at this level, soft in the tackle 90% of the time, but he gets dragged out of position constantly!
Connell captain my ar5e! His head drops as soon as we concede, he was atrocious again 2nd half, but he blames everyone else all the time, we got a free kick 2nd half and the players were signaling to him and he?s saying NO?.points somewhere else, then sticks in a kick that was laughable!
If we lose the next 2 games the fans are gonna turn properly on Hourihane, it?s starting now! We will get nothing against Lincoln because Skubala knows how to upset us and get into our players, but lose to Vale who are bottom of the league and they will sack him, I?m sure of it.

I agree with everything you have said but what worries me is if this happens then once again the blame gets deflected from where the root problem festers, we pay out more brass on a rince and repeat sack and replace model, money what needs to be invested in the team, this model has been in operation since these clowns took the reigns and we are going down a gradual slope and we all know that does note bode to ending well.