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 .