I have to agree, Woods and Barnes are firing blanks at the moment and have been doing all season when they've played.
We was playing a Club who was 2 league's below us and therefor we created many more chances than we usually do because of that, but the finishing from Wood and Barnes was poor, and not for the first time.
Even the seemingly slow Sean Dyche told his forwards at half time that he had to put a bit of pressure on them.
But it did'nt happen.
Mumbongo came on for his first first team game and showed Wood how to trap and hold up play and lay the ball off and also had a good turn of speed, Vydra showed his trickery and many dimensional sides of his game instead of falling down looking for free kicks all the time and having long shots at goal like Barnes usually does.
O.K. it was still a team 2 Divisions lower than us when the 2 new forwards came on but we looked a better attacking side without the favouites Wood and Barnes.
I have to agree, Woods and Barnes are firing blanks at the moment and have been doing all season when they've played.
Could not agree more with you Alto, Wood and Barnes have been shocking of late but have managed to keep their places in the starting eleven.
I realise that we only see what happens during the games, while the manager sees what is happening on a daily basis. It could be that Wood and Barnes perform well in training or it could be that players like Matej Vydra are not what Sean Dyche considers suitable for his system.
I would suggest that our manager needs to be more pragmatic in both his team selection, tactics and substitutions. Today playing against lower division opposition he still chose two out of form strikers rather than give our younger player a try. It was very obvious that we needed to change things if we wanted to stay in the FA cup but it was left until late in the game before the manager made any changes.
It would be interesting to hear what Alan Pace thought of this display, he must now realise what a big challenge we face to remain in the premier league. In this transfer window we need to bring in some reinforcements up front and if that mean that Wood and Barnes were to leave I don’t’ think they would be missed if we invested
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Dyche said: “I thought the performance was decent.....I could understand that if we'd fielded a second string - then later on in the game we throw on a few of the big guns to end it - but from the little i've seen and heard - it seems the opposite - the regulars were the pox...and was the tenderfoots that saved our blushes.
do Pace et al have deep pockets !?!
Good players do not become bad players overnight, but if they are fit Jay Rod and Vydra should start for me on Tuesday night.
Barnes and Wood need to get on the training ground and get back to basics and quick.
They may be taking their selection for granted, dropping them should remove that illusion.
You'd think VC, that as he's been working on this takeover for a while now, he must have been following the performances closely for a while as well, so yesterday would have told him nothing that he, and we, didn't already know. That if he wants the club to remain in the PL, we need to bring in some better players, and soon.
Agree with you in part Sinkov, he may have seen our performances against premier League side before yesterday when we were playing a league 1 side who are struggling in that league he must now be sure we need to improve the first eleven and mainly bring in someone who can score goals. We created enough chances in the first half to put that game to bed but Wood & Barnes were as usual unable to finish off those chances, yet I would not be surprised to see them as our front two on Tuesday. For some reason our manager cannot see just how poor these two are at present.