Burchnall Ball wont ever get us promoted

[countygump]

They lost those (better) players because they didn't get promoted through the play off us like us last season. Maybe their owners aren't as ambitious as ours

Their owners are as equally ambitious as ours. We went from three first team strikers to one.

[laddo]

Their owners are as equally ambitious as ours. We went from three first team strikers to one.

Yes that's the barometer for ambition lol. Not how many of your better players you retain through the off season but the number of strikers.

Didn't one of their 'better players' become our club captain and top 3 best performing player of the season to date?

[jacobncfc]

It’s infuriating because it’s so close to being able to work, but we appear to be so dogmatic that we won’t change the style even for a little bit during games to allow Plan A to work.

Everyone has just realised that if you press us really high and mark everyone from the short goal kicks, we’ll baffling try to do them anyway. So teams like Torquay can play miles up the pitch and leave loads of space in behind knowing we won’t (and don’t have the pace to without Nemane and Sam) even try and quickly exploit it. So we end up under loads of pressure because Rawlinson and Lacey, for all of their qualities, are rarely picking a splitting pass into midfield through the middle of a high press.

Just go directly in behind their defence quickly a few times and the opposition will have to drop and give us the space we need to play the style we want. It really shouldn’t be rocket science, but it’s easier for opposition managers when we won’t adapt during games at all.

[PedroTheFisherman66]

They would have been above us if they didn't have such a bad start to the season, having lost a number of their better players..

As we did through injury

[nw6pie]

It’s infuriating because it’s so close to being able to work, but we appear to be so dogmatic that we won’t change the style even for a little bit during games to allow Plan A to work.

Everyone has just realised that if you press us really high and mark everyone from the short goal kicks, we’ll baffling try to do them anyway. So teams like Torquay can play miles up the pitch and leave loads of space in behind knowing we won’t (and don’t have the pace to without Nemane and Sam) even try and quickly exploit it. So we end up under loads of pressure because Rawlinson and Lacey, for all of their qualities, are rarely picking a splitting pass into midfield through the middle of a high press.

Just go directly in behind their defence quickly a few times and the opposition will have to drop and give us the space we need to play the style we want. It really shouldn’t be rocket science, but it’s easier for opposition managers when we won’t adapt during games at all.

I haven’t seen many games live this season, but the ones I saw felt like all of our football was pre-programmed with no room for variety or spontaneity. That was especially the case with everything emanating from our keeper. How hard is it to work on a few patterns in training where the keeper kicks it long too? I know IB says he likes it when the opposition press high because it creates space further up the pitch, but some of our players just can’t cope with it.

It was interesting watching the Man. City v Liverpool game yesterday to see how often City looked for a long ball out to the left wing. They’d clearly identified TAA as suspect defensively or that he was playing quite narrow and sought to exploit that. In other words, the best footballing team in the country had more options than just playing out from the back, thus making themselves harder to predict/play against.

[jackal2]

Playing tippy tappy football, thinking you are Man City in the National League just doesn't work. Torquay looked much better than us both defensively and offensively playing proper National League football.

We spend far too much time with the ball in our own half and don't have that ability to unlock defences that Man City do playing with that style. We need to be more direct and play in the oppositions half far more.

Difficult to argue with that, but I'm still hopeful that Burchnall himself will realise he needs to adopt a more flexible approach. If he does, then promotion can be achieved. If he doesn't, he'll go the same way as Keith Curle.

[SwalePie]

Get in! Presumably jonnyt1's post means we're going up?

(Welcome back too JT!)

[51Magpie]

I haven’t seen many games live this season, but the ones I saw felt like all of our football was pre-programmed with no room for variety or spontaneity. That was especially the case with everything emanating from our keeper. How hard is it to work on a few patterns in training where the keeper kicks it long too? I know IB says he likes it when the opposition press high because it creates space further up the pitch, but some of our players just can’t cope with it.

It was interesting watching the Man. City v Liverpool game yesterday to see how often City looked for a long ball out to the left wing. They’d clearly identified TAA as suspect defensively or that he was playing quite narrow and sought to exploit that. In other words, the best footballing team in the country had more options than just playing out from the back, thus making themselves harder to predict/play against.

Spot on, as was jacobncfc. Teams in the higher divisions seem to be given the freedom to mix it up occasionally but players in lower league clubs (we're not the only ones) whose managers decide they're going to play out from the back seem to be under threat of a firing squad if they ever play a long ball over the top.

[Notts78]

I would prefer IB to stay. We can’t keep chopping and changing managers and squads, especially when it’s obvious we are a gnats knacker from being more than competitive for automatic promotion.
However, I agree with the sentiments about how we play. The old footballing phrase of earning the right to play is one that couldn’t be more applicable to Notts.
The big issue for me is that the recruitment has been with one style of play only. Wootton is not a target man, so we can’t go long to him. We dont even have an alternative for him. Sam is still way to raw and not IMO capable of holding his own against big, horrible CB’s. All the central midfielders are the same. All pretty footballers but no real variety - with the exception of Ruben, if we want to count him.
As has already been mentioned we don’t have pace in forward areas so teams know they can press us high and still be compact.
I would keep the majority of the squad who are under contract. What is a must for me is to get more height and pace in the squad as well as a natural scorer. We are probably 3-4 players away from having a very good squad.

[laddo]

Plenty of good accurate considered stuff in this thread. Some chaff but plenty of wheat also.