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It's 4-5-1 again sadly, and I agree re: Harris and Bunting.

Crying out for a second striker this half.

2-0 now. :(

2-1.

Gutted.com !! You can't win them all and we knew this one would be hard, but it sounds as though we just didn't take our chances !! Onwards to Tuesday !!

By starting with 1 up front we just gave Yaxley the ascendancy from the off and once we were behind we were always struggling and at the mercy of the referee. Shame about Fazel's missed pen but fair play to him he got involved in the 2nd half and caused their defence to panic. Confue, Dolman, Turner & Merrill all had decent games I thought along with a few others, but as a team we just didn't get it right on the day.

I think we need to approach these games against the decent top 6-ish sides with more of an attacking threat at the very start. Make the opposition feel intimidated in the first 20 mins rather than go with a cautious 4-5-1 and try and feel our way into the game. Better to go out with a real intention & formation to get a lead, we can do the cautious stuff with just one striker if we're 2-0 up or something. Doing what we did to today we practically invited Yaxley to dictate the match.

Still, there's plenty of games left in the season yet...

paulg wrote:By starting with 1 up front we just gave Yaxley the ascendancy from the off and once we were behind we were always struggling and at the mercy of the referee. Shame about Fazel's missed pen but fair play to him he got involved in the 2nd half and caused their defence to panic. Confue, Dolman, Turner & Merrill all had decent games I thought along with a few others, but as a team we just didn't get it right on the day.

I think we need to approach these games against the decent top 6-ish sides with more of an attacking threat at the very start. Make the opposition feel intimidated in the first 20 mins rather than go with a cautious 4-5-1 and try and feel our way into the game. Better to go out with a real intention & formation to get a lead, we can do the cautious stuff with just one striker if we're 2-0 up or something. Doing what we did to today we practically invited Yaxley to dictate the match.

My thoughts exactly. Not really sure what the thinking was behind the formation. It caused us more problems than it caused Yaxley.

BartonRaz wrote:

paulg wrote:By starting with 1 up front we just gave Yaxley the ascendancy from the off and once we were behind we were always struggling and at the mercy of the referee. Shame about Fazel's missed pen but fair play to him he got involved in the 2nd half and caused their defence to panic. Confue, Dolman, Turner & Merrill all had decent games I thought along with a few others, but as a team we just didn't get it right on the day.

I think we need to approach these games against the decent top 6-ish sides with more of an attacking threat at the very start. Make the opposition feel intimidated in the first 20 mins rather than go with a cautious 4-5-1 and try and feel our way into the game. Better to go out with a real intention & formation to get a lead, we can do the cautious stuff with just one striker if we're 2-0 up or something. Doing what we did to today we practically invited Yaxley to dictate the match.

My thoughts exactly. Not really sure what the thinking was behind the formation. It caused us more problems than it caused Yaxley.

Totally agree with everything said. The management got it wrong I'm afraid. Fair enough giving Hendon respect with that formation but not Yaxley.

I'll agree with the three posts above. I think too much was said about the performance at the Hendon game - apart from the two good chances we were on the backfoot for most of that game, and similarly allowed ourselves to be put on the backfoot early in the game today. When we finally got going once we were 2-0 down we began to show our potential, but by then it was too late.

We played really well at Bedford with a front four of Koriya, Turner, Lorraine and Gearing - backed up by Confue and Harris in central midfield - and today was a chance to repeat that formation.

Where's Dunks?

Mr Chips Mate wrote:Where's Dunks?

On holiday I believe. Didn't Peaksie say recently he would miss 2 games?