MATCHWATCH : Peterborough United (a)

[windermereROYAL]

Busy festive period, 2 back to back away games, relatively small squad, injuries...twitter kids are moaning about the performance.

Take a good point and move on. Sometimes it's about grinding out results and we have done that.

Corrected for you.

[MR. CYNICAL]

Busy festive period, 2 back to back away games, relatively small squad, injuries...and people are moaning about the performance.

Take a good point and move on. Sometimes it's about grinding out results and we have done that.

Think grinding out results are becoming the norm.

[MR. CYNICAL]

Busy festive period, 2 back to back away games, relatively small squad, injuries...twitter kids are moaning about the performance.

Take a good point and move on. Sometimes it's about grinding out results and we have done that.

Corrected for you.

You're correction is incorrect, I'm neither on Twitter or a kid, but I am moaning about the performance! Just think we have a dreadful squad and a manager who plays dreadful football.

[WestYorksRoyal]

Busy festive period, 2 back to back away games, relatively small squad, injuries...twitter kids are moaning about the performance.

Take a good point and move on. Sometimes it's about grinding out results and we have done that.

Corrected for you.

You're correction is incorrect, I'm neither on Twitter or a kid, but I am moaning about the performance! Just think we have a dreadful squad and a manager who plays dreadful football.

You don't become a good side overnight. It seems like too many have forgotten how much change this club went through over the summer. If we can all see we're better when we don't go long, I'm sure the professionals can too. But we're facing teams with a specific plan to force us to go long, and they're more advanced in their development than us.

So I would consider the demand that we start playing better football now a bit child like. In the meantime we're setting the foundations to become a good side. We're better organised, harder to beat and have shown flashes of the team we want to be when we have momentum.

[Hound]

I think LR has done very, very well to get the points we have under him

Someone dug up a quote from him about needing to play pub football when he first went in at Wigan and it’s been the same here. Looks like he’s decided with the players we have sitting deep and clearing it long and relying on Wing and our forwards to take the few chances we get. And to a large extent it’s worked

Next step is surely to get some players better suited to that style and then hopefully adapting to something more pleasing on the eye over the medium term

[Snowflake Royal]

The results are largely good. Brilliant considering some of the absolute trash we've been playing in place of football.

But we're on a run of games against bang average to shit sides. If we're getting backs to the wall points with shit performances against them... well good, beating your rivals is the most important thing... but we're doing it without actually opening up any sort of points gap or saftety net, and its hard to see how performances like that translate into any sort of points against anyone good.

It's ok being rubbish and fighting relegation if you show some sign of improvement and building that the future might be better. But this absolute shit slop just suggests we're going nowhere fast and we're not even playing football. Not only that but to have confidence in a relegation fight you need to see mental strength, and our mentality in that game was akin to wet bog roll.

[Hound]

But unfair on the quality of sides we’ve played - Luton best team out of top 6 and will probably end up there, Bradford top, Boro and Plymouth away games at two sides on 3 and 4 game winning runs….

Difficult games all of them. Burton on paper is a lot easier

[Hound]

Would also say on the points gap - we’re miles clear of PV, 7 points plus game in hand on Donny R, 5 points plus game is hand on Rotherham now

All a decent gap

Just an oddity this year that so little between the teams in 9th and 4th bottom - but even Plymouth we’re 3+game in hand, plus 11 GD clear which is still a fair bit

[MR. CYNICAL]

Corrected for you.

You're correction is incorrect, I'm neither on Twitter or a kid, but I am moaning about the performance! Just think we have a dreadful squad and a manager who plays dreadful football.

You don't become a good side overnight. It seems like too many have forgotten how much change this club went through over the summer. If we can all see we're better when we don't go long, I'm sure the professionals can too. But we're facing teams with a specific plan to force us to go long, and they're more advanced in their development than us.

So I would consider the demand that we start playing better football now a bit child like. In the meantime we're setting the foundations to become a good side. We're better organised, harder to beat and have shown flashes of the team we want to be when we have momentum.

Nearly half of the season is not overnight and it's already been noted on here that many league one teams have a largish turnaround of players every summer.
Trouble is, we've recruited badly on and off the pitch. It's not just this season, when was the last time we battered a side at home as Peterborough did to us in the second half last night? Ok, we didn't lose due to poor finishing, desperate defending and good goalkeeping, but the pressure they applied was relentless.

[Snowflake Royal]

Would also say on the points gap - we’re miles clear of PV, 7 points plus game in hand on Donny R, 5 points plus game is hand on Rotherham now

All a decent gap

Just an oddity this year that so little between the teams in 9th and 4th bottom - but even Plymouth we’re 3+game in hand, plus 11 GD clear which is still a fair bit

4th bottom is the one that matters though, not 24th, 23rd or 22nd.

Points on the board are better than a game in hand. Small GD differences quickly disappear with a couple of defeats versus a couple of wins for the other team, and don’t matter at all if they get more points.

[Snowflake Royal]

You're correction is incorrect, I'm neither on Twitter or a kid, but I am moaning about the performance! Just think we have a dreadful squad and a manager who plays dreadful football.

You don't become a good side overnight. It seems like too many have forgotten how much change this club went through over the summer. If we can all see we're better when we don't go long, I'm sure the professionals can too. But we're facing teams with a specific plan to force us to go long, and they're more advanced in their development than us.

So I would consider the demand that we start playing better football now a bit child like. In the meantime we're setting the foundations to become a good side. We're better organised, harder to beat and have shown flashes of the team we want to be when we have momentum.

Nearly half of the season is not overnight and it's already been noted on here that many league one teams have a largish turnaround of players every summer.
Trouble is, we've recruited badly on and off the pitch. It's not just this season, when was the last time we battered a side at home as Peterborough did to us in the second half last night? Ok, we didn't lose due to poor finishing, desperate defending and good goalkeeping, but the pressure they applied was relentless.

Arguably, I'd also say some of our recent performances have been as bad as Ive seen in years. That second half performance v Posh was the worst half of football I've seen in ages.

We're getting worse.

[South Coast Royal]

Corrected for you.

You're correction is incorrect, I'm neither on Twitter or a kid, but I am moaning about the performance! Just think we have a dreadful squad and a manager who plays dreadful football.

You don't become a good side overnight. It seems like too many have forgotten how much change this club went through over the summer. If we can all see we're better when we don't go long, I'm sure the professionals can too. But we're facing teams with a specific plan to force us to go long, and they're more advanced in their development than us.

So I would consider the demand that we start playing better football now a bit child like. In the meantime we're setting the foundations to become a good side. We're better organised, harder to beat and have shown flashes of the team we want to be when we have momentum.

You say about not becoming a good side overnight and that too many have forgotten how much change the club went through over the summer.
IIRC by the summer we had the stability of a new owner who even promised us an exciting transfer window.
Nearly every side in this division has a massive turnover of playing staff so we were no different, as posted by somebody earlier.

As for the "moaning" that you criticise others for, this is a topic about a specific game and not about the club or team in general and therefore comments may well be of a moaning nature especially when watching the dross last night.
It seemed like a non-league side trying to get a draw away from home in a cup game against a league side in the hope of a replay rather than a game between equals.

I guess we have to just wait for the pub football (that supposedly the manager felt that he had to play when taking over at Wigan) to be replaced by a more expansive game than hoofball and we need to wait and see what happens in the transfer window to find out if there will be a change in our style.

In the meantime, thanks go to Wing and Pereira (who I hope nobody comes in for as we are probably still a selling club) for being our outstanding performers this season and without whom we would probably be very near to Port Vale in the league table.

I agree with Ian that we really are a hard watch at the moment with so little to get excited about but, one day Rodney , we will get back to where we want to be and that is Championship football living in hope of a return to the Premier League and not keeping our fingers crossed that we don't get relegated to the 4th division.

[Hound]

Would also say on the points gap - we’re miles clear of PV, 7 points plus game in hand on Donny R, 5 points plus game is hand on Rotherham now

All a decent gap

Just an oddity this year that so little between the teams in 9th and 4th bottom - but even Plymouth we’re 3+game in hand, plus 11 GD clear which is still a fair bit

4th bottom is the one that matters though, not 24th, 23rd or 22nd.

Points on the board are better than a game in hand. Small GD differences quickly disappear with a couple of defeats versus a couple of wins for the other team, and don’t matter at all if they get more points.

Well yes but obvs it’s a lot better if there are teams cut further adrift. Less chance of any one of them overtaking you

[Hound]

I’d agree we’re always going to be a very hard watch with this current side though. Really don’t rate that front 4 at all. All have some attributes but as a foursome I think it’s really poor

Just gives us nothing to take the pressure off. None of them keep possession well in any situation - it’s all quickly get forward with a run, through ball etc

Think we need to change 2 or even 3 of that foursome going forward. Obvs we have some injuries at the moment which doesn’t help.

[Esteban]

We're a bang average League 1 team and squad. Richardson/Hunt/A N Other probably couldn't do much better. We need better players. Over to Mr Couhig and JJ.

[WestYorksRoyal]

Appreciate all squads at this level have turnover, but we have new owners, new CEO and new manager. The succession planning to recruit the right players was not there for us. Being blunt, Couhig and Jacobson got a lot wrong in the summer, and I also think Hunt shoulders a lot of blame for not giving a clear enough steer on the type of players he needed.

But asking new owners to get everything right first time is not a fair expectation. I'll judge them on how they react to mistakes in the summer, and there is unfortunately no quick fix. But they made the right call getting rid of Hunt, we're seeing slow improvements in performances and big improvement in results. The next opportunity to help fix the summer's mistakes is in January, so we'll see what happens then.

Also think some fans still haven't adapted to L1 when they moan about performances (come on, it's been >2 years). In a league of 24, at least 20 are shit every year. Richardson has 14 points from 8 games, and that's involved 2 of the top 6 plus teams lower down coming into a bit of form like Plymouth, Blackpool and Peterborough. We're not beating shit teams, we're beating teams representative of the division we're in.

[Extended-Phenotype]

The problem is, when you don’t have any real control on the ball up front (Doyle is too weak, Danny K’s end product is a coin flip, our left-side is in flux and as much as I like Marriott he doesn’t seem particularly impressive when it comes to holding the ball up or link up play), there just isn’t much room for the central midfielders to alternate coming forward and the team’s centre of gravity just sits between them in front of the back four.

We can’t even ooze this centre of gravity forward while in possession, as we hit it long too often, and to the people I mentioned above who can’t do enough with it. Yet we seem to also struggle playing out from the back, as our CBs aren’t very confident on the ball, our FBs are as wild as our wingers and Wing and Savage just seem to want to ping it long rather than carry the ball towards the opposition. So it’s not just a matter of bemoaning us playing long ball - we aren’t getting many positives from doing the opposite.

Beside pressing more (I have no idea why we stopped doing that against Peterborough, and actually our better spells in the game coincided with us actually remembering to press from the front), we really need anyone half-decent with ball control in attacking midfield. I just think they will be able to link up with Wing/Savage and bring them out from deep, hold onto the ball whether hit long to them or played out from the back to allow us to spread out more from deep, and just generally re-centre the team who these days don’t seem to have enough shape to leave our own half.

It’s tragic really. We thump a team 4-1 and you think: maybe everyone including the manager will realise that if we actually operate in the final third, chances will come and games will be won. But Leam Reset Richardson wipes his memory of the previous days and has us camping 11 men behind the ball and instructs every player to avoid even coming in contact with it. Hunt wasn’t great but it feels like we are retreating back into Paul Ince era football, terrified of the football, and accepting we aren’t good enough to compete with teams. Why Rob Couhig was so set on LR for manager I have no idea. Even when we win it comes across like an accident.

[Millsy]

Dissappointing to lose a lead always, but 1-1 draw away against a team who beat us at home is good.

We're doing alright.

Waiting for the the January window to see how we do with better depth.

[Sutekh]

The problem is, when you don’t have any real control on the ball up front (Doyle is too weak, Danny K’s end product is a coin flip, our left-side is in flux and as much as I like Marriott he doesn’t seem particularly impressive when it comes to holding the ball up or link up play), there just isn’t much room for the central midfielders to alternate coming forward and the team’s centre of gravity just sits between them in front of the back four.

We can’t even ooze this centre of gravity forward while in possession, as we hit it long too often, and to the people I mentioned above who can’t do enough with it. Yet we seem to also struggle playing out from the back, as our CBs aren’t very confident on the ball, our FBs are as wild as our wingers and Wing and Savage just seem to want to ping it long rather than carry the ball towards the opposition. So it’s not just a matter of bemoaning us playing long ball - we aren’t getting many positives from doing the opposite.

Beside pressing more (I have no idea why we stopped doing that against Peterborough, and actually our better spells in the game coincided with us actually remembering to press from the front), we really need anyone half-decent with ball control in attacking midfield. I just think they will be able to link up with Wing/Savage and bring them out from deep, hold onto the ball whether hit long to them or played out from the back to allow us to spread out more from deep, and just generally re-centre the team who these days don’t seem to have enough shape to leave our own half.

It’s tragic really. We thump a team 4-1 and you think: maybe everyone including the manager will realise that if we actually operate in the final third, chances will come and games will be won. But Leam Reset Richardson wipes his memory of the previous days and has us camping 11 men behind the ball and instructs every player to avoid even coming in contact with it. Hunt wasn’t great but it feels like we are retreating back into Paul Ince era football, terrified of the football, and accepting we aren’t good enough to compete with teams. Why Rob Couhig was so set on LR for manager I have no idea. Even when we win it comes across like an accident.

Your scouting and its and related decision making has to be better than spot on at this level with the budget Reading are allowed, as there’s a reason why your Doyle’s & Kyerewaa’s are playing in this division and not at least on a Premier League or Championship bench somewhere.

[Mid Sussex Royal]

I agree with all the comments above on style of football, and the game felt similar to Bolton A in terms of being outplayed.

What I would say though, and perhaps you need to be at the game to see it, is we are way way better out of possession than we were under Hunt and that is usually the first part of a new manager's brief; also good to see a training ground set piece producing a goal.

I'd also say Peterborough were amongst the best sides I've seen this season, certainly live, and credit to Luke Williams who has completely turned them around.