About the new right-back - it's a strange one. He seemed a bit off the pace in pre-season by all accounts and is now nowhere to be seen. If he's genuinely out of favour and not unfit, it's a bit damning of our recruitment.
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So we throw away two leads on Saturday and the defence looked terrible. Then tonight we play really crap according to Stallard and those who went. Some players are out of position and alot of the new signings not in the team. We were meant to build on last season but looks like that same old ****. I think you need to grow up because the support from the stands is good but I think you'll find LW himself said at the start of the season it's a two way street, they need to give the fans something to get excited about. So far the jury is out on this being an improvement on last season. Maybe the fans are sick of the same old **** year after year. After 3 seasons you'd have thought we just might have sorted at least being able to defend out but doesn't look like it. Of course though as usual it's all the fans fault who travel up to Gateshead in the pouring rain and watch that ****.
My main issue with last night was that the team selected shows that LW isn't using info about the squad that he should have.
It's all very well, giving a clean slate to players as an incoming coach, but that doesn't mean you should discount the collective, accumulated wisdom that's around the club. IB wasn't as brave as he talked, but he wouldn't have picked... Palmer+Francis+O'Brien in a 5-3-1-1 (tweak as you like) for a game like this, away to a Level 6 promotion club.
O'Brien - scored in just 1 game in 2020/21 and 1 game in 2021/22 right? And doesn't assist all that much
Palmer - only gets 1 or 2 goals per season throughout his career
Francis - purely a holding player, not really a factor in the final third.
(Vincent scored more goals than the rest combined in his limited appearances last year)
We know nothing is going to come from our full back/central defender on the left wing. With Langstaff and Rodrigues isolated and outnumbered, it's no surprise that our only goal came from work by Nemane on the right. So he picked enough to draw, but ffs there's enough to pick from in the squad to have bossed that game with a bit more courage in the team selection.
We got what we set up for. LW can speak about being unbeaten, and selecting like that, with lots of 0-0, 1-0, 1-1, 0-1 scores, will guarantee that he sees the season out. But for us to gather enough points to be a factor in the promotion race, would require a hell of a lot more courage.
On reflection it sounds like Gateshead are probably a better side than many thought, 2 decent results before.
It also sounds like they were well up for the battle and lets face it this is easily a game we could have lost as we have seen in the past.
What is consistent in this league is players and teams being inconsistent, Wrexham apparently awful, Halifax at the bottom and Barnet top.
I think it’s best to judge where we are after 10 games.
It's a disappointing points return from the opening 3 games, but it's just 3 games.
Agreed, but it is the manner in which we are dropping points. Our defensive problems haven't been resolved and furthermore we are continually losing out on first second balls.
I forget the amount of times we have been asking for a ball winning midfield player. This age old problem still hasn't been addressed and will be the reason why we are still in this league next season..