R&D v Mansfield

[SCARECROW]

"Solid performance with nothing up front. Sills, Howe and O'Connor could be one of the best front 3's in this league on paper, but didn't really have any service. We could do with a playmaker"[*][/color]

Strange situation this, in more of the 17 years i have followed the Diamonds than not, it is usually a striker we are short of.
Now we seem to have an abundance of them but no one to supply them since Tomlin went.

[TheIncognitoKid]

Apart from kicking the keeper did very well Johnston ran out of legs and looked dead on his feet .We got away with it today I know he scored but Sills does not bring enough we look far better 4-4-2

I wish he'd catch more instead of punching all of the time

He caught loads of their free kicks and long balls, taking lots of pressure of the defence. Made a great save against mills's volley and stood tall when their winger was through one on one.. What more do you want him to do??

Agreed. I thought he did well today and will be happy hearing he was man of the match. MOM for me was Alan Power, i thought he's come back into the team and put in his best performance, with some good passing and winning those little nicks in the midfield.

[Dukes]

Sorry to sound like a needle stuck in the groove, but playing 4-3-3 is counter productive. Yes we have 3 good forwards but without wide players the majority of our effort goes through the middle - which means play is blocked before the ball can get to the front.
We need to sacrifice one of the forwards to the bench, play 4-4-2 with wingers getting behind the oppositions defence and we'll score loads of goals. It also means our full backs can support our wingers and interchange with confidence, so the likes of Osano and Green/Charles and Robinson and Day can work the flanks and scare the living daylights out of defences. These are good players - use a system that exploits these skills.
What really annoys me is that JE knows this but persists in this wingless wonder approach which we were lucky to win with on Saturday.
It was no surprise to many of us that when 1-0 down against Darlington we switched from 4-3-3 to 4-4-2 and won the game.
It is so blatantly obvious...

[Bob's Bitch]

I wasn't so sure about the whole 4-3-3/4-4-2 thing before the last two games but since Darlo, when switching it round really worked, and yesterday I'm convinced that we really just need to stick to 4-4-2. Osano/Miller and Charles down the right would be immense as would Day and Robinson. Maybe the reason why JE's sticking with 4-3-3 is because he can't decide which striker to drop out of Howe, O'Connor and Sills? It would certainly be a headache but I'd have to go for Sills, despite the goal.

[Pigman]

Sills is set to become a goal machine, he got 1, came close to getting 2 and isn't even 100% match fit yet !! Got to start Sills and get pitch time under his belt, he is a goal scorer at this level, just a few more games and he'll be firing on all cylinders.

A good, hard fought, ground out result and if we're now 6th with those kind of performances then it shows the BSBP is wide open this year, a side that can put in a decent unbeaten run will push on - we're unbeaten in 4 now, just that last minute goal against Alty being the fly in the ointment and stopping us from showing 4 wins from 4 - I don't care about 4-4-2, 3-3-4, 5-5-0 - it looks like JE is getting the results needed at the moment ;) .

With two highly winnable games coming up too could see us firmly in the play off zone shortly - happy times eh? Win ugly and count the points, no-one will remember in May how those points were won !!