I left the ground formerly known as Fortress Whaddon eight days ago with a bit more spring in my step, optimistic after we should have beaten Oxford, and definitely deserved a draw.
Yes, we gave one stupid goal away, but all over the pitch there were decent performances - the front two both scored, James Wilson had a decent debut at the back, the midfield looked solid and worked hard.
So, after a testing week off the field, I travelled to Plainmoor in good heart, thinking the corner had been turned and that things were going to start on an upward curve.
To be fair, the vast majority of what I saw for the opening 46 and a half minutes did nothing to shake that optimism - we should have been 4-1 up by that point. Should have, but weren't.
Byron Harrison and Terry Gornell were giving the centre-halves the run-around; they were scared stiff of Jermaine McGlashan and I lost count of how many times he was fouled; David Noble was probing and passing through their back four.
But that nagging feeling would not go away. That nagging feeling that just around the corner was another howler, another calamity just waiting to happen.
Matt Richards had set the tone with, well, I am still trying to work out what on earth he was trying to do inside the first two minutes.
Was it a pass back to Scott Brown? Having seen it twice through my fingers on the Football League Show, that is my best bet. There are countless other options he could have taken, but he chose that one.
It just sums it up. A vastly-experienced player who should know better in a situation like that, making a poor decision. And such is the way of things at the moment, every poor decision is being punished.
But we responded well. Byron headed us level, making a good decision to play to the whistle while Torquay wanted an offside flag. Five goals now for him, one of the few positives we can glean so far.
Gornell had a goalbound shot superbly blocked, Elliott's header was brilliantly saved, Lowe's effort from the rebound hit the bar, then Byron diverted a shot wide after Noble's brilliant pass sent McGlashan to the byline.
It surely had to come. They were wobbling, like a boxer on the ropes.
Half-time was coming, and at 1-1 but on top, I thought 'ok, we can regroup, come out and carry on where we left off, three points, thanks very much'.
Then it happened.
The last seconds of the half, an innocuous cross, Karl Hawley not closed down, after we had countless chances to relieve the pressure, but again, made the wrong decisions.
In came the cross, Callum Ball stuck a leg out, it span off Steve Elliott and, almost in slow motion, ended up in the net. I couldn't believe it.
But still there was hope, given the way we had played for the 44 minutes between the two Torquay goals. Not for long though.
Within a minute of the re-start, Hawley was somehow allowed to twist and turn past three so-called challenges to fire into the net past an unsighted Brown. It was unbelievable.
From being in a position of superiority despite being level, to 3-1 down and out of the game in the blink of an eye. A microcosm of the season so far - good in patches, let down by goals conceded in patches. See also Bury and Plymouth.
After that knock-out blow, we never hit the heights of the first half. Gornell got a goal back, but we never looked like making it 3-3 and getting something out of the game.
Yates' substitutions didn't work. Ashley Vincent never got into the game after replacing Richards, whose display was the poorest we have seen from him so far.
I don't disagree with the change. Vincent did - finally - balance the midfield on the left had side, but we never gave him or McGlashan enough sight of the ball for them to have any effect on the scoreline.
McGlashan, especially, was a peripheral figure after the break - not his fault but baffling after had caused so many first-half headaches. Some credit to Torquay I guess for stopping the supply.
Cureton for Gornell was fair enough - Gornell had worked hard, but equally you have wonder why, at that stage, there was not the thought of going 3-4-3 maybe - with possibly Jombati or Lowe going off, and putting Elliott, Wilson and either of the full-backs as a back three. May as well go for it.
The Taylor for Noble change is the one which seems to be the most contentious for the Yates dissenters. Defensive midfielder for an attacking one.
I can see the point - Sam Deering was on the bench, and could have been an alternative there.
But we didn't do enough from 3-1 down, whoever was on the pitch.
I will exonerate the front two, who scored again, but are being asked to climb Everest blindfolded every week by the ineptitude of some of those around them.
I also excuse Scott Brown. He has seen 27 goals go past him in 11 games (10, as none went in at Accrington) as has, in my view, been blameless for all of them. I cannot make a case for any of them, the closest maybe being Dave Kitson's last week - did he give Elliott a shout to leave the ball?
Yesterday, Jermaine McGlashan also escapes blame. But the rest of them need to look in the mirror and have a good, long think about their performances.
They are well paid, they carry the hopes and dreams of the fans, who pay good money. The manager has put his trust in them, the chairman has invested in them. All of them are being let down.
They are not kids. Not inexperienced players being asked to step up to a new level. Many of them have won promotion before, won trophies, played at a higher level. It's time for them to show it.
The back four yesterday - Keith Lowe (200+ games), James Wilson (50+ games), Steve Elliott (500+ games), Sido Jombati (100+_ games). All experienced players.
We all deserve better from all of these players.
So what of the manager? The Yates out cries were there again as soon as the first goal went in, and they were louder by the end. I disagree with them (for now...) but I can understand them.
This is his team. He has built it, he chose the players, he brought them all in.
After four years, he cannot talk about what he inherited. It is down to him to motivate them, to organise them and to turn the results around. If he can't do that, then at some point the change will come. It will be inevitable, but I feel that day is still a fair distance away.
Along the way, he has made ruthless decisions, two of which still haunt him in the eyes of some fans, especially with our goals against tally - the departures of Alan Bennett and Billy Jones.
Bennett was a fabulous leader for us in the Wembley season, but in the second season we leaked a lot of goals - remember Bradford, Chesterfield, Rotherham, those games up North where threes and fours were going in all too often, just as they are now.
The decision to allow Benno to go to Wimbledon and the arrival of Michael Hector to replace him nearly paid dividends, but is now being used as a stick to beat the manager with - more so as Wimbledon sit third in the table going into next week's game here.
The same goes for the Jones decision - even more so as he scored after two minutes in a Newport shirt and they kept a clean sheet at Exeter yesterday.
Only time will tell if this was a wise decision or not. At the moment, I have to say it isn't, but it may pan out differently in the long run.
One of his set-pieces yesterday could have made a difference, as since he has gone that same threat has not been there.
Defensively, it is a bit naïve to say that with him at left-back we would not be conceding so many goals, as CBB or Sido have not been directly culpable for all 27 of them.
The defensive injuries have not helped the manager. We have used six centre-halves so far in 11 games - Elliott, Lowe, Wilson, Brown, Inniss and Taylor. We desperately need some stability back there.
But we cannot use that as an excuse. As a team, we have not been good enough. It cannot just be thrown on to the back four.
The midfield, like the back four, has not been settled, and has not had the right balance and solid feel to it at any point this season.
McGlashan has been the bright spot. I have been critical of him in the past and come in for a lot of flak as a result, but this season I think he has been much more hit than miss.
A lot of the time, he has found himself on the left hand side, and he has been effective there. yesterday, he and Sido linked well in both attack and defence.
We have tried a number of combinations centrally, and none of them seem to have worked, all having flaws which have only served to put more pressure on our low-in-confidence defenders.
Yesterday, after it worked against Oxford, we had Noble and Richards. Both like to pass the ball, but neither is exactly razor-sharp in the tackle. It left Russ Penn on the right-hand side, largely out of the game.
Richards had a stinker and deservedly went off, so we had Penn and Noble after that, and it was Penn's pass which set up Gornell's goal. I have to say I think this is probably the best pair if we are playing 4-4-2.
The manager has to bite the bullet and leave one of them out. Against Pompey it was Penn, but now it seems he wants to keep them all happy by shoe-horning them into the side, leaving one out of his best position.
In my view, Penn and Noble is the way to go - one tackler, one playmaker.
Having done that, he has to balance it up. If he doesn't want to start Kotwica, then he needs to start Vincent. He bought him back to the club, many fans are sceptical, some feeling it was a panic move after the Ashley Grimes move failed. Until we see him start, nothing will change that perception.
After last season's woes, it is a strange irony that the area with fewest problems is up front.
Perhaps hurt by the flak he got after the poor way he used the likes of Harrad, Benson, Duffy, Goulding and Harrison at points last season, the manager has gone for a less is more policy.
Three forwards, play two - and it is paying off. For the second successive game, Harrison and Gornell both scored, linked up very well and were a danger all game. Cureton has to wait, but not a bad guy to have up your sleeve.
The fear I have is that in the need to stiffen things up at the back, we lose some of that threat up front. We have scored 19 goals this season, six more than at the same stage last year.
I don't want us to go back to one isolated forward up front, having to forage alone on hopeful balls around his midriff. None of the three forwards we have can play that game.
They are just about the only confident players we have in the squad right now, and we have to feed off that.
After the game, the manager talked about 'wheeling and dealing'. I cannot see what he can possibly do.
The board have backed him superbly, on and off the field, with loan signings on the majority of occasions he has requested them, and the arrival of Dave Kevan to spruce up the coaching team.
They have given him the tools, he can have no complaints about that, now it is down to him to use them in the right way.
I cannot see he has much scope for change. We cannot keep going on paying off players almost on a whim to try to bring someone else in. He has to stick by these players and get them performing as we know they can, and as they have done for other clubs.
After the run of games at the start of the season, ending with Oxford game, which were all (bar the one we won at Accrington) against teams I fancied to be in the top half, things - I thought - would get a bit easier.
I expected us to win yesterday, but the result has left me with a sobering reality (about time, I hear some of you cry...).
Next up is AFC Wimbledon. They are third, we are 21st - and I cannot be alone in thinking those positions would be the other way around, given recent history. After that, we have two tough away games at Scunthorpe and Dagenham. It doesn't get any easier.
These may be hollow words, but I hope fans stick with it. It's easy to follow a club when they are winning, but times like this are the true test.
We have to trust the manager and the players to turn it round, and get it right. But that trust will not last forever.
The time for talking is over. It's time to deliver.
Sunday, 22 September 2013
Wednesday, 11 September 2013
Playing up against Pompey
Our season starts here...!
This seems to be our new catchphrase. It has to be, as it seems to be all we are hearing at the moment.
After each game recently it has been trotted out, seemingly in the hope that it will miraculously spark us into life.
Not working so far - although Saturday's result coupled with the stickability and resolve we showed in the second half suggested better days might not be far away. He said, hopefully...
There are still problems, and my pre-match attentions were taken up by the chairman Paul Baker's notes in the programme - a not-too-thinly-veiled attack on the attitudes and effort levels of some of the players.
He came to see us on the radio gantry before the game, and I congratulated him on his words. I thought they were spot on - he is a fan like the rest of us after all, and we all know that some of the team have short-changed us this season, and Paul deserves credit for coming out and saying it.
But I sense it was not only aimed at those who cross the white line, and was also a little message to the management team - a shot across the bows if you like.
Something along the lines of "you have bought these players in, and they are not performing. It is up to you to sort them out..."
Quite justifiably, he feels he and his board are not getting anywhere near full value for the money they have laid out this summer, and before.
Two players were singled out in that piece as an example to follow - Steve Elliott and Russ Penn. As things panned out, Elliott did not exactly distinguish himself with the two Pompey goals, while Penn found himself dropped before coming on like a man possessed for the last hour.
Oh the irony...
Without Russ on the field, we were distinctly second-best for the first 20-25 minutes.
Patrick Agyemang bullied our centre-halves - not the first time that has happened against a centre-forward with some presence and power (see also Marvin Morgan and Jessy Reindorf).
What I would give for someone like that in OUR forward line, roasting opposition centre-backs, rather than the other way round.
He burst through for the opener after a Keystone Cops comedy collision between Elliott and Ryan Inniss, then somehow missed an absolute sitter which would have been 2-0 after 12 minutes.
We were chasing shadows. Sharp movement, incisive runners and crisp passing were slicing us to pieces, and we were second best all over the field.
They look a decent side, and you think it won't be long before they move up the table. Will we be joining them?
As the half wore on, we gradually got to grips with it, then we suffered yet another defensive injury. Inniss this time, and it meant another re-shuffle - Sido to right-back, Keith Lowe to centre-half, Matt Richards to left-back, Russ alongside David Noble.
Russ won a 30-70 challenge with his first touch, and finally that woke up the CTFC contingent, then we grabbed an equaliser - all down to the determination of Jermaine McGlashan.
Terry Gornell put him in, and as John Sullivan came out and brushed his ankles, he could have gone down, but no, he wanted that goal, and he finished it well.
While overall we might not have deserved to go in at 1-1, we would have taken it, but out came the self-destructing revolver once again, and this was one of the most spectacularly comical goals we have conceded so far.
Some title that, considering some of the X-rated stuff that has gone before, but the way Jed Wallace skipped past Elliott and Penn, then walked along the by-line and placed the ball across the six-yard box, where Johnny Ertl was leaning on the far post having a crafty fag (ok, maybe not the last bit, but he had enough time for one) waiting to tap in, was, frankly, an utter joke at this level.
It is no wonder, with goals like that going in, that our defence is the worst in the division. Even injuries, disruption and constant changes, frequently during games, cannot excuse it.
The time for excuses has passed. These are experienced players (bar Inniss) and it is high time it was sorted out and people started doing their jobs properly.
With our re-shuffled side, the second half was better. Not without its alarms, but better.
The defence did look more solid, and dealt better with Agyemang and the wide threats of Wallace, Ricky Holmes and Andy Barcham.
Noble's cool head and good passing got us out of trouble a couple of times, but as time was running out, we didn't threaten Sullivan's goal much.
Mark Yates tried a couple of new systems, taking off Steve Gillespie for Zack Kotwica and moving Sam Deering in off the wing, where again he struggled (not surprising as he is out of position) into the 'hole'.
Like others, I would question taking a forward off for a winger at 2-1 down, but Gillespie was very ineffective. Yes, there was a combination of no service and the wrong type of service, but nevertheless he was ineffective.
That particular experiment lasted all of nine minutes, then it was 4-4-2 again with Byron Harrison replacing Deering and going up alongside Gornell.
Agyemang gradually ran out of puff, and Guy Whittingham did us a favour with one of the longest drawn-out triple substitutions in footballing history.
Thankfully, the Pompey trio coming on were nowhere near as effective as the three coming off (and it is this strength in depth or the lack of it which may keep them out of the top three), and the ludicrous amount of time it took to get them on the field eventually won us a point.
The fact that we did that was, for the second time in the game, solely down to the determination of McGlashan.
He is someone I have been critical of in the past for end-product (and he admitted to me afterwards he doesn't score enough goals) - but this time he deserves all the accolades coming to him.
Elliott dinked the ball through, and Danny East had a simple clearance, but Jermaine put on the afterburners and snaked a leg round East to steer the ball in.
Like his first goal, he wanted to get there. No chickening out, but the sort of determination, will-to-win, commitment and application the chairman was lamenting the lack of... Certainly a message there for some of his team-mates.
We could have nicked it but for the offside flag, yet even the most blinkered CTFC observer (me included) would have agreed that would have been a complete travesty - even nicking a point was maybe a bit fortuitous, but we'll take it, thanks very much.
Regarding Russ Penn, I wondered if being taken off at half-time against Plymouth mean he had a slight knock, and with only six on the bench on Saturday he was asked to do a job while not 100 per cent.
Not so. The manager confirmed he was dropped by virtue of his form so far. If it was a rocket for him, it worked, and maybe it was also a message to everyone else - no-one is guaranteed a place in my team, not even my skipper...
His dropping means, aside from Scott Brown, that Sam Deering is the only outfield player to have started all nine League and Cup games - the majority on the wing and out of position.
I have nothing against Deering, in fact I am a big fan and was delighted when he signed, but he is no wide man. I know it, the vast majority of CTFC fans know it. I hope Mark Yates knows it, yet he keeps playing him there, it seems because he has no alternative.
But he does. He can change the system to one which suits all the players within it, instead of adopting a formation which immediately handicaps one or more of them, putting more pressure on everyone else.
We had success in the past with consistency of selection and consistency of system. At the moment, we have neither - and yes, I know some of that is down to injuries, but not all of it.
Still the side has no natural balance. Nine games in, we seem to be searching for that magic formula and we wonder how long it will take to find it... if at all.
I do not believe the never-ending rumours that there are problems in the dressing room. I believe the players are pulling in the same direction, and are still playing for the manager.
As I said last time, I feel a lot of these rumours and theories will always blow up when results are not going well.
I saw another cracker this week about the way our subs were warming up at half-time, compared to what Portsmouths were doing. Our subs have always done the same thing at half-time whether we are 2-0 up or 2-0 down. It's another straw-clutching exercise which would not be aired in happier circumstances.
So what can be done? We are not going to bring in more players as that ship has sailed, so this is what we have to work with, so therefore maybe the manager needs some help?
This suggestion is not a slight on him, or Neil Howarth or anyone else in the backroom team, but maybe the need is there some fresh ideas - a new pair of eyes to take a different perspective, even just on a part-time basis.
I note also the recent absence of Jason Murphy. He seems to have either taken a back seat or left the set-up completely.
There has been no announcement from the club, but Ian Hutton, a fitness trainer regularly used by the squad and the manager of our Ladies team, has been doing the bulk of the pre-match and post-match fitness work - so I wonder if there is scope for a new coach to come in and just cast an eye over things, and give some different input.
I sense a few more twists in this troubled start to the season, and things don't get any easier with Oxford in town on Saturday.
After years of underachievement, they have made a flying start, and will come in confident mood, so if our season does indeed start here, it would be very welcome!
This seems to be our new catchphrase. It has to be, as it seems to be all we are hearing at the moment.
After each game recently it has been trotted out, seemingly in the hope that it will miraculously spark us into life.
Not working so far - although Saturday's result coupled with the stickability and resolve we showed in the second half suggested better days might not be far away. He said, hopefully...
There are still problems, and my pre-match attentions were taken up by the chairman Paul Baker's notes in the programme - a not-too-thinly-veiled attack on the attitudes and effort levels of some of the players.
He came to see us on the radio gantry before the game, and I congratulated him on his words. I thought they were spot on - he is a fan like the rest of us after all, and we all know that some of the team have short-changed us this season, and Paul deserves credit for coming out and saying it.
But I sense it was not only aimed at those who cross the white line, and was also a little message to the management team - a shot across the bows if you like.
Something along the lines of "you have bought these players in, and they are not performing. It is up to you to sort them out..."
Quite justifiably, he feels he and his board are not getting anywhere near full value for the money they have laid out this summer, and before.
Two players were singled out in that piece as an example to follow - Steve Elliott and Russ Penn. As things panned out, Elliott did not exactly distinguish himself with the two Pompey goals, while Penn found himself dropped before coming on like a man possessed for the last hour.
Oh the irony...
Without Russ on the field, we were distinctly second-best for the first 20-25 minutes.
Patrick Agyemang bullied our centre-halves - not the first time that has happened against a centre-forward with some presence and power (see also Marvin Morgan and Jessy Reindorf).
What I would give for someone like that in OUR forward line, roasting opposition centre-backs, rather than the other way round.
He burst through for the opener after a Keystone Cops comedy collision between Elliott and Ryan Inniss, then somehow missed an absolute sitter which would have been 2-0 after 12 minutes.
We were chasing shadows. Sharp movement, incisive runners and crisp passing were slicing us to pieces, and we were second best all over the field.
They look a decent side, and you think it won't be long before they move up the table. Will we be joining them?
As the half wore on, we gradually got to grips with it, then we suffered yet another defensive injury. Inniss this time, and it meant another re-shuffle - Sido to right-back, Keith Lowe to centre-half, Matt Richards to left-back, Russ alongside David Noble.
Russ won a 30-70 challenge with his first touch, and finally that woke up the CTFC contingent, then we grabbed an equaliser - all down to the determination of Jermaine McGlashan.
Terry Gornell put him in, and as John Sullivan came out and brushed his ankles, he could have gone down, but no, he wanted that goal, and he finished it well.
While overall we might not have deserved to go in at 1-1, we would have taken it, but out came the self-destructing revolver once again, and this was one of the most spectacularly comical goals we have conceded so far.
Some title that, considering some of the X-rated stuff that has gone before, but the way Jed Wallace skipped past Elliott and Penn, then walked along the by-line and placed the ball across the six-yard box, where Johnny Ertl was leaning on the far post having a crafty fag (ok, maybe not the last bit, but he had enough time for one) waiting to tap in, was, frankly, an utter joke at this level.
It is no wonder, with goals like that going in, that our defence is the worst in the division. Even injuries, disruption and constant changes, frequently during games, cannot excuse it.
The time for excuses has passed. These are experienced players (bar Inniss) and it is high time it was sorted out and people started doing their jobs properly.
With our re-shuffled side, the second half was better. Not without its alarms, but better.
The defence did look more solid, and dealt better with Agyemang and the wide threats of Wallace, Ricky Holmes and Andy Barcham.
Noble's cool head and good passing got us out of trouble a couple of times, but as time was running out, we didn't threaten Sullivan's goal much.
Mark Yates tried a couple of new systems, taking off Steve Gillespie for Zack Kotwica and moving Sam Deering in off the wing, where again he struggled (not surprising as he is out of position) into the 'hole'.
Like others, I would question taking a forward off for a winger at 2-1 down, but Gillespie was very ineffective. Yes, there was a combination of no service and the wrong type of service, but nevertheless he was ineffective.
That particular experiment lasted all of nine minutes, then it was 4-4-2 again with Byron Harrison replacing Deering and going up alongside Gornell.
Agyemang gradually ran out of puff, and Guy Whittingham did us a favour with one of the longest drawn-out triple substitutions in footballing history.
Thankfully, the Pompey trio coming on were nowhere near as effective as the three coming off (and it is this strength in depth or the lack of it which may keep them out of the top three), and the ludicrous amount of time it took to get them on the field eventually won us a point.
The fact that we did that was, for the second time in the game, solely down to the determination of McGlashan.
He is someone I have been critical of in the past for end-product (and he admitted to me afterwards he doesn't score enough goals) - but this time he deserves all the accolades coming to him.
Elliott dinked the ball through, and Danny East had a simple clearance, but Jermaine put on the afterburners and snaked a leg round East to steer the ball in.
Like his first goal, he wanted to get there. No chickening out, but the sort of determination, will-to-win, commitment and application the chairman was lamenting the lack of... Certainly a message there for some of his team-mates.
We could have nicked it but for the offside flag, yet even the most blinkered CTFC observer (me included) would have agreed that would have been a complete travesty - even nicking a point was maybe a bit fortuitous, but we'll take it, thanks very much.
Regarding Russ Penn, I wondered if being taken off at half-time against Plymouth mean he had a slight knock, and with only six on the bench on Saturday he was asked to do a job while not 100 per cent.
Not so. The manager confirmed he was dropped by virtue of his form so far. If it was a rocket for him, it worked, and maybe it was also a message to everyone else - no-one is guaranteed a place in my team, not even my skipper...
His dropping means, aside from Scott Brown, that Sam Deering is the only outfield player to have started all nine League and Cup games - the majority on the wing and out of position.
I have nothing against Deering, in fact I am a big fan and was delighted when he signed, but he is no wide man. I know it, the vast majority of CTFC fans know it. I hope Mark Yates knows it, yet he keeps playing him there, it seems because he has no alternative.
But he does. He can change the system to one which suits all the players within it, instead of adopting a formation which immediately handicaps one or more of them, putting more pressure on everyone else.
We had success in the past with consistency of selection and consistency of system. At the moment, we have neither - and yes, I know some of that is down to injuries, but not all of it.
Still the side has no natural balance. Nine games in, we seem to be searching for that magic formula and we wonder how long it will take to find it... if at all.
I do not believe the never-ending rumours that there are problems in the dressing room. I believe the players are pulling in the same direction, and are still playing for the manager.
As I said last time, I feel a lot of these rumours and theories will always blow up when results are not going well.
I saw another cracker this week about the way our subs were warming up at half-time, compared to what Portsmouths were doing. Our subs have always done the same thing at half-time whether we are 2-0 up or 2-0 down. It's another straw-clutching exercise which would not be aired in happier circumstances.
So what can be done? We are not going to bring in more players as that ship has sailed, so this is what we have to work with, so therefore maybe the manager needs some help?
This suggestion is not a slight on him, or Neil Howarth or anyone else in the backroom team, but maybe the need is there some fresh ideas - a new pair of eyes to take a different perspective, even just on a part-time basis.
I note also the recent absence of Jason Murphy. He seems to have either taken a back seat or left the set-up completely.
There has been no announcement from the club, but Ian Hutton, a fitness trainer regularly used by the squad and the manager of our Ladies team, has been doing the bulk of the pre-match and post-match fitness work - so I wonder if there is scope for a new coach to come in and just cast an eye over things, and give some different input.
I sense a few more twists in this troubled start to the season, and things don't get any easier with Oxford in town on Saturday.
After years of underachievement, they have made a flying start, and will come in confident mood, so if our season does indeed start here, it would be very welcome!
Friday, 6 September 2013
Frustration and conspiracy
ON Tuesday, as I had no commentary duties, I took the opportunity to watch from my more traditional vantage point, the Paddock.
I lasted 15 minutes before deciding to move as I was utterly fed up with the abuse being thrown at our players, by our fans.
In that time, Jason Taylor, Sam Deering, Byron Harrison and Ashley Vincent had been thoroughly slagged off by certain individuals, as had the injured CBB, by someone who seriously asked his mate if he thought we could tempt Jamie Victory out of retirement. I kid you not.
In the past, I have had a go at people when I have become fed up with their tirades against players, but on this occasion I opted just to turn heel and make for the main stand to watch the rest of the game.
Now, I know what the argument will be ... it's that usual mantra "I pay their wages, so I am allowed to say what I want".
Fine. But, for example, if you saw them shopping in Tesco, or walking in Pittville Park with their wife/girlfriend, would you greet them with something like 'Oi (name of player), you are a lazy f***ing c**t' or 'hey (name), why can't you cross a f***ing ball, you useless pile of s**t' ??
Of course you wouldn't, or I hope not anyway.
In the same way, I pay my council tax, so I must therefore contribute to a dustman's wages, but I don't give him a tirade of abuse if I don't like the way he wheels my green bin towards his dustcart...
I fail to see what the motivation is to hurl abuse at players you claim to support. How does it motivate them? Here, the perpetrators' defence is 'they need a kick up the arse, so I am giving it to them.'
I get as frustrated as anyone when players mis-control a ball, give the ball away or miss a chance, but I don't get the urge to yell abuse at them. I prefer to encourage, along the lines of 'chin up, keep going', something along those lines - and be constructive, as I try to do in this blog and on the radio.
There is a massive difference between constructive criticism and abuse. Abusing your own players is even more brainless in my view when your team is not firing as it maybe should be, like ours at the moment.
Confidence is low, so the players need to have that reassurance that the fans are behind them, that the fans believe in them, and that they want them to succeed.
It isn't always that way though. At Bury on Saturday, I had my first 'Yates out' text. I was a bit stunned, as my own view is that things would have to be pretty rough in December for any thoughts like that to even enter the board's minds.
Expectations are high, and so when they are not being met, frustrations rise - but I feel at the moment things are going too far in the 'negative' direction and everything surrounding the club is being magnified and scrutinised 10 times more than it would be if we were on a good run of form.
For example, Russ Penn's comments after Bury about 'angry exchanges' in the dressing room post-match quickly became 'a full-scale fight', 'a split' or 'serious unrest' depending on what Nest thread or which tweets you read.
My view is that I am pleased they were cross and had a shout and rant at each other. It shows they care. If they were laughing and joking, then I would be angry with everyone else. It would be a shame if players felt they could not talk freely to the media.
Then there was a tweet from Russ the other day, in which he called Scott Brown 'skip'. Straight away, one or two tweets flew around saying Russ had been axed/stripped/resigned as skipper!
Nonsense of course - it was banter as Browny had taken the armband on Tuesday when Russ went off.... but that is the danger of Twitter.
It would be a shame of the players felt they couldn't have this interaction with the fans without everything they say being misconstrued or analysed to the 'n'-th degree.
Next, I saw a post somewhere which said the players 'didn't look happy on the bus to Accrington or Bury, so things must be wrong.' Good grief. I wouldn't be happy if I was faced with a bus ride up the M6...!
Then there is the manager. There is now all of a sudden a lot of criticism of his Pro-Licence visit to Turkey in the summer - now dismissed widely as 'a jolly'. Wouldn't happen if we were winning.
His interview demeanour gets flak. I have been there after practically every game for four years - it rarely changes after a win or a loss! Do people want him wearing a red nose or clown's wig, and cracking jokes if we have lost a game? Wouldn't happen if we were winning.
But we are not, although Tuesday did bring plenty of positives, I felt.
It started like Groundhog Day - 1-0 up, then 2-1 down in the blink of an eye, the first a goal kick, flicked on and lobbed in, the second a cross into our box (shock...) and put in at the second attempt.
It was hardly a surprise, with three defenders injured, that we conceded some poor goals, and we let in another with a header in the second half from a free-kick swung into our box.
Continuing the theme of this blog, some fans weren't so understanding. One wrote how 'we conceded three goals to 10 men'. Give me strength. If you are going to criticise, at least be accurate.
I know - I should grow a thicker skin, and let it all wash over me. But I hate the negativity. It is so draining and pointless, does no one any good, and just hangs over the club like a raincloud.
So that's why from 3-1 down I was delighted to see us show a bit of backbone and haul ourselves back into the game - and arguably we should have won it.
We had our first look at David Noble, and he wasted one pass in 45 minutes, kept it simple and allowed Deering to go forward more, which he did to good effect.
Vincent and Zack Kotwica on the flansk gave us balance and we took the game to Plymouth, with Vincent's great touch to Steve Gillespie bringing the penalty.
That reduced Plymouth to 10, but they kept two banks of four and sat back as we pressed well and, I thought, looked as dangerous going forward as we had in any game - it was Crawley all over again.
Taylor equalised, and then we should ahve won the game - led by the introduction of Jermaine McGlashan, who sent across three or four superb crosses which should have been converted.
Harrison was denied by a good save for the best opportunity - or he missed a sitter, depending on your viewpoint. I give credit to Jake Cole, in the same way I praise Scott Brown for coming off his line to thwart Marvin Morgan, rather than castigating Morgan...
Once it got to a shoot-out, it was a lottery, and there is no blame on Terry Gornell - in fact in some ways I am pleased we are out, as we can concentrate on sorting out the League form - until the FA Cup comes round anyway.
It doesn't get any easier though, with Portsmouth tomorrow. Personally, I would take any sort of result which doesn't involve us being 3-1 down at some point. After Crawley, Plymouth (twice) and Bury, I have had a gutful of that...!
So what team would I play? I would like to see us go back to the system which served us well two seasons ago, three in midfield and two wide men playing off a central striker.
I believe we have the players to do it, and I think we need to show that bit of adventure and go for it.
There are two questions - after his very bright display on Tuesday, do we start Kotwica, and what about Jamie Cureton - do we throw him straight back in?
My answers are yes to the first, no to the second. My team tomorrow (assuming fitness of some players) would be: Brown; Lowe, Elliott, Inniss, Jombati; Noble, Penn, Richards (otherwise Taylor); Kotwica, Gillespie, Gornell.
Harsh on Deering and McGlashan I know after their second half displays on Tuesday - but they can impact from the bench of needed, as could Cureton.
I just feel we need to be careful with him and ease him back in gently. Gillespie's two goals in midweek seal his place in my opinion, while I am a big fan of Gornell's work-rate and creativity.
Let's hope we are all smiling tomorrow evening - including the manager when that microphone is put under his nose at around 5pm...
I lasted 15 minutes before deciding to move as I was utterly fed up with the abuse being thrown at our players, by our fans.
In that time, Jason Taylor, Sam Deering, Byron Harrison and Ashley Vincent had been thoroughly slagged off by certain individuals, as had the injured CBB, by someone who seriously asked his mate if he thought we could tempt Jamie Victory out of retirement. I kid you not.
In the past, I have had a go at people when I have become fed up with their tirades against players, but on this occasion I opted just to turn heel and make for the main stand to watch the rest of the game.
Now, I know what the argument will be ... it's that usual mantra "I pay their wages, so I am allowed to say what I want".
Fine. But, for example, if you saw them shopping in Tesco, or walking in Pittville Park with their wife/girlfriend, would you greet them with something like 'Oi (name of player), you are a lazy f***ing c**t' or 'hey (name), why can't you cross a f***ing ball, you useless pile of s**t' ??
Of course you wouldn't, or I hope not anyway.
In the same way, I pay my council tax, so I must therefore contribute to a dustman's wages, but I don't give him a tirade of abuse if I don't like the way he wheels my green bin towards his dustcart...
I fail to see what the motivation is to hurl abuse at players you claim to support. How does it motivate them? Here, the perpetrators' defence is 'they need a kick up the arse, so I am giving it to them.'
I get as frustrated as anyone when players mis-control a ball, give the ball away or miss a chance, but I don't get the urge to yell abuse at them. I prefer to encourage, along the lines of 'chin up, keep going', something along those lines - and be constructive, as I try to do in this blog and on the radio.
There is a massive difference between constructive criticism and abuse. Abusing your own players is even more brainless in my view when your team is not firing as it maybe should be, like ours at the moment.
Confidence is low, so the players need to have that reassurance that the fans are behind them, that the fans believe in them, and that they want them to succeed.
It isn't always that way though. At Bury on Saturday, I had my first 'Yates out' text. I was a bit stunned, as my own view is that things would have to be pretty rough in December for any thoughts like that to even enter the board's minds.
Expectations are high, and so when they are not being met, frustrations rise - but I feel at the moment things are going too far in the 'negative' direction and everything surrounding the club is being magnified and scrutinised 10 times more than it would be if we were on a good run of form.
For example, Russ Penn's comments after Bury about 'angry exchanges' in the dressing room post-match quickly became 'a full-scale fight', 'a split' or 'serious unrest' depending on what Nest thread or which tweets you read.
My view is that I am pleased they were cross and had a shout and rant at each other. It shows they care. If they were laughing and joking, then I would be angry with everyone else. It would be a shame if players felt they could not talk freely to the media.
Then there was a tweet from Russ the other day, in which he called Scott Brown 'skip'. Straight away, one or two tweets flew around saying Russ had been axed/stripped/resigned as skipper!
Nonsense of course - it was banter as Browny had taken the armband on Tuesday when Russ went off.... but that is the danger of Twitter.
It would be a shame of the players felt they couldn't have this interaction with the fans without everything they say being misconstrued or analysed to the 'n'-th degree.
Next, I saw a post somewhere which said the players 'didn't look happy on the bus to Accrington or Bury, so things must be wrong.' Good grief. I wouldn't be happy if I was faced with a bus ride up the M6...!
Then there is the manager. There is now all of a sudden a lot of criticism of his Pro-Licence visit to Turkey in the summer - now dismissed widely as 'a jolly'. Wouldn't happen if we were winning.
His interview demeanour gets flak. I have been there after practically every game for four years - it rarely changes after a win or a loss! Do people want him wearing a red nose or clown's wig, and cracking jokes if we have lost a game? Wouldn't happen if we were winning.
But we are not, although Tuesday did bring plenty of positives, I felt.
It started like Groundhog Day - 1-0 up, then 2-1 down in the blink of an eye, the first a goal kick, flicked on and lobbed in, the second a cross into our box (shock...) and put in at the second attempt.
It was hardly a surprise, with three defenders injured, that we conceded some poor goals, and we let in another with a header in the second half from a free-kick swung into our box.
Continuing the theme of this blog, some fans weren't so understanding. One wrote how 'we conceded three goals to 10 men'. Give me strength. If you are going to criticise, at least be accurate.
I know - I should grow a thicker skin, and let it all wash over me. But I hate the negativity. It is so draining and pointless, does no one any good, and just hangs over the club like a raincloud.
So that's why from 3-1 down I was delighted to see us show a bit of backbone and haul ourselves back into the game - and arguably we should have won it.
We had our first look at David Noble, and he wasted one pass in 45 minutes, kept it simple and allowed Deering to go forward more, which he did to good effect.
Vincent and Zack Kotwica on the flansk gave us balance and we took the game to Plymouth, with Vincent's great touch to Steve Gillespie bringing the penalty.
That reduced Plymouth to 10, but they kept two banks of four and sat back as we pressed well and, I thought, looked as dangerous going forward as we had in any game - it was Crawley all over again.
Taylor equalised, and then we should ahve won the game - led by the introduction of Jermaine McGlashan, who sent across three or four superb crosses which should have been converted.
Harrison was denied by a good save for the best opportunity - or he missed a sitter, depending on your viewpoint. I give credit to Jake Cole, in the same way I praise Scott Brown for coming off his line to thwart Marvin Morgan, rather than castigating Morgan...
Once it got to a shoot-out, it was a lottery, and there is no blame on Terry Gornell - in fact in some ways I am pleased we are out, as we can concentrate on sorting out the League form - until the FA Cup comes round anyway.
It doesn't get any easier though, with Portsmouth tomorrow. Personally, I would take any sort of result which doesn't involve us being 3-1 down at some point. After Crawley, Plymouth (twice) and Bury, I have had a gutful of that...!
So what team would I play? I would like to see us go back to the system which served us well two seasons ago, three in midfield and two wide men playing off a central striker.
I believe we have the players to do it, and I think we need to show that bit of adventure and go for it.
There are two questions - after his very bright display on Tuesday, do we start Kotwica, and what about Jamie Cureton - do we throw him straight back in?
My answers are yes to the first, no to the second. My team tomorrow (assuming fitness of some players) would be: Brown; Lowe, Elliott, Inniss, Jombati; Noble, Penn, Richards (otherwise Taylor); Kotwica, Gillespie, Gornell.
Harsh on Deering and McGlashan I know after their second half displays on Tuesday - but they can impact from the bench of needed, as could Cureton.
I just feel we need to be careful with him and ease him back in gently. Gillespie's two goals in midweek seal his place in my opinion, while I am a big fan of Gornell's work-rate and creativity.
Let's hope we are all smiling tomorrow evening - including the manager when that microphone is put under his nose at around 5pm...
Sunday, 1 September 2013
Bury-ed
A few years back, after a defeat at Shrewsbury, one of my BBC Gloucestershire colleagues put a microphone under the then-manager's nose and said "That wasn't very good, was it?"
Pete Matthews resisted the temptation to start yesterday's press conference with the same question, but it might have been justified after we returned to type up north, letting in four goals in a heavy defeat.
Mark Yates was honest with his assessment that it wasn't good enough, and there was a lot of hard work ahead, a view shared by a clearly quite angry Russ Penn and a forthright Keith Lowe as well.
But I thought between goals three and four, we actually played quite well - I'm not making excuses for the defending for goals one, two and three however.
From 3-1 to 4-1, especially in the second half, we caused them some problems - Penn hit the post, Terry Gornell had a shot over, Ryan Inniss had a header blocked. But it counted for nothing as the failings at the other end had left us with a mountain to climb. Again.
Two defensive injuries in the opening quarter of the game did not help - but by the time Steve Elliott went off, we were already 3-1 down.
The makeshift centre-half partnership of Inniss, on his league debut, and Jason Taylor, who I would think has rarely played centre-back in his life before, brought back memories of Sam Cox and Julian Alsop together on that horror day at Accrington - but they only conceded one goal as a unit.
No-one had any qualms about the team Yates had selected. Same 18 as West Ham, same set-up, solidity first and after three minutes things were going our way.
It was a great, direct run from Jermaine McGlashan, just what we want to see from him, good movement and timing of the run from Gornell, and a bit of luck when his shot, going wide, was turned in by Andy Proctor.
But that was a good as it got in a crazy, and kamikaze at times, 20-minute spell which turned the game right round.
It started with an injury to Craig Braham-Barrett. He went down, and was playing Bury onside. He got up, limped down the touchline and went down again.
Play carried on, and Bury, under no obligation to put the ball out, carried on. This lasted for about 60-90 seconds. We seemed totally distracted by CBB's injury.
Any player could have made a challenge, committed a foul, tried to get the ball out of play. But nothing, we were at sixes and sevens, no-one knowing what to do - it was farcical, and only ended when Danny Mayor smashed in the equaliser from 30 yards after riding some powder-puff 'tackling'.
Some Bury neanderthals had been booing CBB during all this, and then were more intent on jeering him off the field, rather than celebrating a great strike from one of their own players - butI stopped being surprised at the actions of some football fans years ago.
Looking at our bench, I then expected Billy Jones to come on. Left-back for left-back, not too much disruption. But no - on came Sido Jombati.
I have nothing against Sido, and I actually thought he did ok when he came on, better than he has been performing at right back in fact, but it seemed a strange decision.
Post-match, Yatesy said Sido was ahead of Billy at left-back - indeed, he came on there for Billy in the play-off semi. He also said he wanted Sido up against the tricky winger (Craig Jones).
That is borne out of Billy having problems against Jennison Myrie-Williams and Chris Hackett at the back end of last season - but this decision now effectively means Billy is our third-choice left-back.
Added to that, it seems practically every team we come up against has a 'tricky winger' - so if Yatesy doesn't fancy Billy against that sort of player, then that doesn't say a lot for his long-term prospects at CTFC, wand of a left foot, great set-piece delivery or not.
I am not sure a League Two club is in a position to have a third-choice left-back, especially one conceding goals hand over fist, so it would appear that Billy's days here are numbered. A shame in my view.
If Yates has lost confidence in him, and isn't going to use him, then he has 24 hours to move him on permanently, freeing up a wage to address other areas of the squad - a loan centre-half maybe, if Elliott and Troy Brown are out for a while, a fourth striker, a right or left-winger. Or let him go on loan when that window re-opens.
We cannot have players in the squad who are (as Billy seems to be in the manager's view) surplus to requirements.
"We need players who are going to challenge for the first team" is the manager's own mantra when he is asked about potential triallists signing and loan players coming in.
If he deems Billy isn't going to do that, then he needs to move him on, and give himself some scope, and the situation doesn't deter those who question his man-management - they will cite the names of Darryl Duffy and Shaun Harrad from last season.
Anyway, at 1-1 with one player off injured, surely things could not get any worse. But one free header from a corner and dozing off to allow a cross and a centre-half to nip in unchallenged for a tap-in later, they did.
Then we lost Elliott, knocked out in a challenge by Marlon Jackson. To Yates' credit here, he made a positive substitution. We could have seen Billy, switched Sido over, and put Lowe and Inniss together, but instead he out Byron Harrison on and went to 4-4-2 with Jason Taylor at centre-half.
We got to half-time at 3-1. Just. It was a bit hairy at times, but we got there. Bury should have been down to 10 men, with goakeeper Trevor Carson lucky not to to walk after flattening Gornell on the edge of the box - think a much less brutal Battiston v Schumacher, France v Germany Spain '82 (here).
Post-match, Yatesy said he thought he had got the ball and it wasn't even a foul. Hmm. The referee disagreed, and once he had given a foul, he had to send Carson off as the last man. But he didn't - yellow card.
But once again we seemed incapable of stopping any sort of cross from coming into our box. Craig Jones and Danny Mayor were having a field day, beating our full-backs and midfield players too easily and being given far too much time to deliver the ball in.
We are seeing it too often. Players seem to get so much space to deliver balls in. We don't seem to get tight enough, or show them outside - we seem to get done time after time for pace or fall for a little trick, then the ball is in our box.
In contrast at the other end, teams seem to have no problem in stopping our wide men or full-backs getting forward and getting crosses in. At the other end, it is almost open house.
No matter who is at full-back, they always get exposed, and then seem to fight a losing battle. Sooner or later, with crosses into the box raining in, we will concede a goal.
It's the law of averages. Elliott, Brown, Inniss - whoever is at centre-half, cannot be expected to win every header or make every interception. Scott Brown cannot be expected to save everything.
It was the same against Plymouth - full backs not tight enough. Same at Chesterfield - too much room for Gary Roberts and Nathan Smith.
We are a soft touch down the flanks. Until that is addressed we will keep conceding goals, keep crosses coming into our box, keep giving opposition wingers and forwards an easy ride, and keep giving oursleves a mountain to climb.
Since the game, I have seen tweet after tweet saying fans cannot wait until Jamie Cureton is back. Me neither, but he would need a season of Lionel Messi proportions if we are still letting in two, three or four goals a game.
Others have said we need Alan Bennett back. He was in a defence which let in four at Chesterfield, Rochdale and Rotherham - games were we were also ripped apart down the flanks. This is not exactly a new problem.
But you defend from the front. To stop the wide men being effective, you have to stop the supply to them, which means better ball retention further up the field.
I am not convinced the balance of the side is right. In a 4-4-2 especially, with McGlashan, Penn, Richards and Deering as the midfield four.
We have one out-and-out winger in McGlashan, with Deering forced to fill in down the other flank, be that left or right, in a position he is alien to and which will not bring the best out of him.
He is happier in that 'hole' position, or in the centre of a midfield three, but cannot play in a 'two' in central midfield, or out wide.
Last season we had McGlashan and Kaid Mohamed, which gave us that balance, and pace on both flanks.
This time around, on the bench, we have Ashley Vincent. He wants to be a central striker, but clearly isn't in my view - he is a winger. If we used him as such, we might get that elusive balance back.
Deering hasn't done anything wrong in my view, he just doesn't seem to naturally fit in to the system which the manager wants to use.
I am not convinced we can play 4-4-2 with the players have at the club - with Penn and Richards together in a 4-4-2 we just look too open.
If we are going to fit the players we have into a tactic which suits then rather than shoehorning them into a system, we have to use 4-1-3-2, or go back to the 4-5-1 with two wide men supporting the forward.
Both have Penn, Richards and Taylor as the first-choice midfield three, with Deering behind the front two in a 4-1-3-2, while McGlashan and Vincent would be the first choices as wide men off the forward in the 4-5-1/4-3-3.
Back to Gigg Lane - and for the first half-hour of the second half, I don't know if Bury sat back, but we had some chances. Strangely, I felt if we got back to 3-2, we might have been in with a sniff of a point.
Whether that is just my natural optimism talking, or if was still hungover from Friday night, I am not sure, but we didn't get it back to 3-2, so we will never know if we would have had a chance or if Bury would just have gone up another gear and got another one.
We had some chances, we at least showed a bit of backbone, and didn't cave in completely, which we could have done with a depleted back four.
The fourth came 15 minutes from the end, more poor defending, another easy cross and another free header, this time for Jessy Reindorf, surely the first Rwandan ever to score against CTFC, and that was that.
So where now? Well, the JPT then Portsmouth and Oxford at home, so the nice, easy games keep coming.
For the JPT, we know CBB and Troy Brown are out. Steve Elliott must be doubtful, and saved for Saturday. It's too soon for Jamie Cureton (Saturday maybe...?) while teenager Bobbie Dale has had an MRI scan on an ankle problem.
Joe Hanks and Ed Williams have been loaned to Bishops Cleeve and I am unsure whether their loan terms allow them to be recalled or not, so I have left them out.
I am envisaging a team something like this: Brown; Jombati, Lowe, Inniss, Jones; McGlashan, Penn, Richards, Kotwica/Vincent; Gornell, Gillespie. The bench could be Roberts, Deering, Taylor, Harrison, Kotwica/Vincent, and the likes of Harry Williams (scoring for fun in the youth team) and another of Russ Milton's young guns might get a look-in - maybe Adam Powell or Spencer Hamilton - or we may just go for five subs.
However, the manager doesn't seem to want to use Billy, so he might play a back four of Lowe, Taylor, Inniss and Jombati, the one which finished on Saturday. Whatever happens, it is all a bit threadbare - and after a good run of injuries over the past season-and-a-bit, that luck is changing and we are suffering a bit.
I haven't read the Robins Nest since Saturday, but was told about a post/thread questioning Neil Howarth, and what he actually 'does'. Answer - the same as any other assistant manager at clubs up and down the country, ones which win lots of games, and ones which don't.
He does the same as he did in our great run in the autumn and winter of 2011 taking us to Wembley, the same as he did last season when we kept 20 clean sheets and came within a game of going to Wembley again. It's no use looking for scapegoats - it does no good.
No use either expecting the chairman to dip into his pocket for a signing or two. He did that in the summer (remember, this is the highest average wage we have paid to players since being in the FL).
This is the squad (and manager) we fans need to get behind. It's not going to change.
But this is the squad the manager needs to organise. He signed them after all. He needs to find a system which suits them, and fast.
The players need to look at themselves, buck its own ideas up and show us they are worth their money.
I am consoling myself with a few omens and facts. In 2001-2, we started with six games without a win, and won the play-off final. Two season ago, we took until October to click, then went on a great run and nearly went up.
Yes, is still only five games into the season, but I think we have played three sides in Burton, Chesterfield and Bury, who will be near the top - but have not beaten any of them, and only got close to beating Burton. Plymouth might also be higher than many people think. They swept us aside as well.
Saturday's Echo led with a story about talks tomorrow between Paul Baker, Yatesy and Howarth about a new contract beyond the summer. That alone suggests it is far, far too premature to suggest a change at the top.
But I had a text during yesterday's commentary (just as we went 3-1 down) saying 'Yates out'. My reply was 'don't be silly', and the reply back was 'gone by November'.
That won't happen in my view - but he does need to get to work on a solution, and fast.
While things are not going well on the field, I have noticed that practically everything he does off it these days is getting criticised more and more.
Demeanour in interviews (must say it hasn't changed much down the years...!), not clapping fans after games, and most of all it seems, what he actually says - after yesterday, there were tweets about 'hearing the same old excuses'.
I am not sure exactly what he is supposed to say. He came out and said the performance wasn't good enough, gave his explanation for the Billy Jones substitution, updated the injuries, and said he would do everything he could to put it right. What more he can say? His last line to Pete on Saturday was "We are dishing up a load of rubbish at the moment". Quite right Mark!
The players lost their Sunday off, and if fans are expecting him to slate his players in public, they are going to be disappointed. In private, I am sure he will make it crystal clear.
As will the chairman to Mark and Neil tomorrow. If I were in his shoes, I would be tempted to say: "We'll delay this contract chat for a month or so I think chaps - win us a few games and we'll chat again..."
Pete Matthews resisted the temptation to start yesterday's press conference with the same question, but it might have been justified after we returned to type up north, letting in four goals in a heavy defeat.
Mark Yates was honest with his assessment that it wasn't good enough, and there was a lot of hard work ahead, a view shared by a clearly quite angry Russ Penn and a forthright Keith Lowe as well.
But I thought between goals three and four, we actually played quite well - I'm not making excuses for the defending for goals one, two and three however.
From 3-1 to 4-1, especially in the second half, we caused them some problems - Penn hit the post, Terry Gornell had a shot over, Ryan Inniss had a header blocked. But it counted for nothing as the failings at the other end had left us with a mountain to climb. Again.
Two defensive injuries in the opening quarter of the game did not help - but by the time Steve Elliott went off, we were already 3-1 down.
The makeshift centre-half partnership of Inniss, on his league debut, and Jason Taylor, who I would think has rarely played centre-back in his life before, brought back memories of Sam Cox and Julian Alsop together on that horror day at Accrington - but they only conceded one goal as a unit.
No-one had any qualms about the team Yates had selected. Same 18 as West Ham, same set-up, solidity first and after three minutes things were going our way.
It was a great, direct run from Jermaine McGlashan, just what we want to see from him, good movement and timing of the run from Gornell, and a bit of luck when his shot, going wide, was turned in by Andy Proctor.
But that was a good as it got in a crazy, and kamikaze at times, 20-minute spell which turned the game right round.
It started with an injury to Craig Braham-Barrett. He went down, and was playing Bury onside. He got up, limped down the touchline and went down again.
Play carried on, and Bury, under no obligation to put the ball out, carried on. This lasted for about 60-90 seconds. We seemed totally distracted by CBB's injury.
Any player could have made a challenge, committed a foul, tried to get the ball out of play. But nothing, we were at sixes and sevens, no-one knowing what to do - it was farcical, and only ended when Danny Mayor smashed in the equaliser from 30 yards after riding some powder-puff 'tackling'.
Some Bury neanderthals had been booing CBB during all this, and then were more intent on jeering him off the field, rather than celebrating a great strike from one of their own players - butI stopped being surprised at the actions of some football fans years ago.
Looking at our bench, I then expected Billy Jones to come on. Left-back for left-back, not too much disruption. But no - on came Sido Jombati.
I have nothing against Sido, and I actually thought he did ok when he came on, better than he has been performing at right back in fact, but it seemed a strange decision.
Post-match, Yatesy said Sido was ahead of Billy at left-back - indeed, he came on there for Billy in the play-off semi. He also said he wanted Sido up against the tricky winger (Craig Jones).
That is borne out of Billy having problems against Jennison Myrie-Williams and Chris Hackett at the back end of last season - but this decision now effectively means Billy is our third-choice left-back.
Added to that, it seems practically every team we come up against has a 'tricky winger' - so if Yatesy doesn't fancy Billy against that sort of player, then that doesn't say a lot for his long-term prospects at CTFC, wand of a left foot, great set-piece delivery or not.
I am not sure a League Two club is in a position to have a third-choice left-back, especially one conceding goals hand over fist, so it would appear that Billy's days here are numbered. A shame in my view.
If Yates has lost confidence in him, and isn't going to use him, then he has 24 hours to move him on permanently, freeing up a wage to address other areas of the squad - a loan centre-half maybe, if Elliott and Troy Brown are out for a while, a fourth striker, a right or left-winger. Or let him go on loan when that window re-opens.
We cannot have players in the squad who are (as Billy seems to be in the manager's view) surplus to requirements.
"We need players who are going to challenge for the first team" is the manager's own mantra when he is asked about potential triallists signing and loan players coming in.
If he deems Billy isn't going to do that, then he needs to move him on, and give himself some scope, and the situation doesn't deter those who question his man-management - they will cite the names of Darryl Duffy and Shaun Harrad from last season.
Anyway, at 1-1 with one player off injured, surely things could not get any worse. But one free header from a corner and dozing off to allow a cross and a centre-half to nip in unchallenged for a tap-in later, they did.
Then we lost Elliott, knocked out in a challenge by Marlon Jackson. To Yates' credit here, he made a positive substitution. We could have seen Billy, switched Sido over, and put Lowe and Inniss together, but instead he out Byron Harrison on and went to 4-4-2 with Jason Taylor at centre-half.
We got to half-time at 3-1. Just. It was a bit hairy at times, but we got there. Bury should have been down to 10 men, with goakeeper Trevor Carson lucky not to to walk after flattening Gornell on the edge of the box - think a much less brutal Battiston v Schumacher, France v Germany Spain '82 (here).
Post-match, Yatesy said he thought he had got the ball and it wasn't even a foul. Hmm. The referee disagreed, and once he had given a foul, he had to send Carson off as the last man. But he didn't - yellow card.
But once again we seemed incapable of stopping any sort of cross from coming into our box. Craig Jones and Danny Mayor were having a field day, beating our full-backs and midfield players too easily and being given far too much time to deliver the ball in.
We are seeing it too often. Players seem to get so much space to deliver balls in. We don't seem to get tight enough, or show them outside - we seem to get done time after time for pace or fall for a little trick, then the ball is in our box.
In contrast at the other end, teams seem to have no problem in stopping our wide men or full-backs getting forward and getting crosses in. At the other end, it is almost open house.
No matter who is at full-back, they always get exposed, and then seem to fight a losing battle. Sooner or later, with crosses into the box raining in, we will concede a goal.
It's the law of averages. Elliott, Brown, Inniss - whoever is at centre-half, cannot be expected to win every header or make every interception. Scott Brown cannot be expected to save everything.
It was the same against Plymouth - full backs not tight enough. Same at Chesterfield - too much room for Gary Roberts and Nathan Smith.
We are a soft touch down the flanks. Until that is addressed we will keep conceding goals, keep crosses coming into our box, keep giving opposition wingers and forwards an easy ride, and keep giving oursleves a mountain to climb.
Since the game, I have seen tweet after tweet saying fans cannot wait until Jamie Cureton is back. Me neither, but he would need a season of Lionel Messi proportions if we are still letting in two, three or four goals a game.
Others have said we need Alan Bennett back. He was in a defence which let in four at Chesterfield, Rochdale and Rotherham - games were we were also ripped apart down the flanks. This is not exactly a new problem.
But you defend from the front. To stop the wide men being effective, you have to stop the supply to them, which means better ball retention further up the field.
I am not convinced the balance of the side is right. In a 4-4-2 especially, with McGlashan, Penn, Richards and Deering as the midfield four.
We have one out-and-out winger in McGlashan, with Deering forced to fill in down the other flank, be that left or right, in a position he is alien to and which will not bring the best out of him.
He is happier in that 'hole' position, or in the centre of a midfield three, but cannot play in a 'two' in central midfield, or out wide.
Last season we had McGlashan and Kaid Mohamed, which gave us that balance, and pace on both flanks.
This time around, on the bench, we have Ashley Vincent. He wants to be a central striker, but clearly isn't in my view - he is a winger. If we used him as such, we might get that elusive balance back.
Deering hasn't done anything wrong in my view, he just doesn't seem to naturally fit in to the system which the manager wants to use.
I am not convinced we can play 4-4-2 with the players have at the club - with Penn and Richards together in a 4-4-2 we just look too open.
If we are going to fit the players we have into a tactic which suits then rather than shoehorning them into a system, we have to use 4-1-3-2, or go back to the 4-5-1 with two wide men supporting the forward.
Both have Penn, Richards and Taylor as the first-choice midfield three, with Deering behind the front two in a 4-1-3-2, while McGlashan and Vincent would be the first choices as wide men off the forward in the 4-5-1/4-3-3.
Back to Gigg Lane - and for the first half-hour of the second half, I don't know if Bury sat back, but we had some chances. Strangely, I felt if we got back to 3-2, we might have been in with a sniff of a point.
Whether that is just my natural optimism talking, or if was still hungover from Friday night, I am not sure, but we didn't get it back to 3-2, so we will never know if we would have had a chance or if Bury would just have gone up another gear and got another one.
We had some chances, we at least showed a bit of backbone, and didn't cave in completely, which we could have done with a depleted back four.
The fourth came 15 minutes from the end, more poor defending, another easy cross and another free header, this time for Jessy Reindorf, surely the first Rwandan ever to score against CTFC, and that was that.
So where now? Well, the JPT then Portsmouth and Oxford at home, so the nice, easy games keep coming.
For the JPT, we know CBB and Troy Brown are out. Steve Elliott must be doubtful, and saved for Saturday. It's too soon for Jamie Cureton (Saturday maybe...?) while teenager Bobbie Dale has had an MRI scan on an ankle problem.
Joe Hanks and Ed Williams have been loaned to Bishops Cleeve and I am unsure whether their loan terms allow them to be recalled or not, so I have left them out.
I am envisaging a team something like this: Brown; Jombati, Lowe, Inniss, Jones; McGlashan, Penn, Richards, Kotwica/Vincent; Gornell, Gillespie. The bench could be Roberts, Deering, Taylor, Harrison, Kotwica/Vincent, and the likes of Harry Williams (scoring for fun in the youth team) and another of Russ Milton's young guns might get a look-in - maybe Adam Powell or Spencer Hamilton - or we may just go for five subs.
However, the manager doesn't seem to want to use Billy, so he might play a back four of Lowe, Taylor, Inniss and Jombati, the one which finished on Saturday. Whatever happens, it is all a bit threadbare - and after a good run of injuries over the past season-and-a-bit, that luck is changing and we are suffering a bit.
I haven't read the Robins Nest since Saturday, but was told about a post/thread questioning Neil Howarth, and what he actually 'does'. Answer - the same as any other assistant manager at clubs up and down the country, ones which win lots of games, and ones which don't.
He does the same as he did in our great run in the autumn and winter of 2011 taking us to Wembley, the same as he did last season when we kept 20 clean sheets and came within a game of going to Wembley again. It's no use looking for scapegoats - it does no good.
No use either expecting the chairman to dip into his pocket for a signing or two. He did that in the summer (remember, this is the highest average wage we have paid to players since being in the FL).
This is the squad (and manager) we fans need to get behind. It's not going to change.
But this is the squad the manager needs to organise. He signed them after all. He needs to find a system which suits them, and fast.
The players need to look at themselves, buck its own ideas up and show us they are worth their money.
I am consoling myself with a few omens and facts. In 2001-2, we started with six games without a win, and won the play-off final. Two season ago, we took until October to click, then went on a great run and nearly went up.
Yes, is still only five games into the season, but I think we have played three sides in Burton, Chesterfield and Bury, who will be near the top - but have not beaten any of them, and only got close to beating Burton. Plymouth might also be higher than many people think. They swept us aside as well.
Saturday's Echo led with a story about talks tomorrow between Paul Baker, Yatesy and Howarth about a new contract beyond the summer. That alone suggests it is far, far too premature to suggest a change at the top.
But I had a text during yesterday's commentary (just as we went 3-1 down) saying 'Yates out'. My reply was 'don't be silly', and the reply back was 'gone by November'.
That won't happen in my view - but he does need to get to work on a solution, and fast.
While things are not going well on the field, I have noticed that practically everything he does off it these days is getting criticised more and more.
Demeanour in interviews (must say it hasn't changed much down the years...!), not clapping fans after games, and most of all it seems, what he actually says - after yesterday, there were tweets about 'hearing the same old excuses'.
I am not sure exactly what he is supposed to say. He came out and said the performance wasn't good enough, gave his explanation for the Billy Jones substitution, updated the injuries, and said he would do everything he could to put it right. What more he can say? His last line to Pete on Saturday was "We are dishing up a load of rubbish at the moment". Quite right Mark!
The players lost their Sunday off, and if fans are expecting him to slate his players in public, they are going to be disappointed. In private, I am sure he will make it crystal clear.
As will the chairman to Mark and Neil tomorrow. If I were in his shoes, I would be tempted to say: "We'll delay this contract chat for a month or so I think chaps - win us a few games and we'll chat again..."
Friday, 30 August 2013
A great night and no Hammering
When a lower-league club goes to visit a Premiership side on their own ground, I ask for three things - a respectable performance, a good day out for the fans and no (pardon the pun) hammering.
We got all three on Tuesday night at the Boleyn Ground - only the most churlish fan would criticise any part of our display, the fans made great noise and did themselves great credit and we ran them close - closer than some of the national papers have given us credit for.
West Ham are a 'proper' football club - they have a rich heritage which they celebrate and embrace superbly - 'Moore than a football club' is the branding around the ground, and I was sat five seats away from World Cup 1966 legend Martin Peters.
It was all a bit different from Accrington three days before, but having laid the foundations there we carried on in the same vein.
I thought Yatesy picked the right team - solidity and shape was the priority, with Jermaine McGlashan back in the side and the enforced change at the back with Ryan Inniss in for his debut with Troy Brown injured.
Since the game, I have seen a few critical posts about Brown's displays so far, which I find very surprising indeed. I don't think he has done anything wrong at all, and he and Steve Elliott look to be forming a good partnership.
I know we have let 10 goals in and Accrington was our first shut-out, but I can't think of any of those 10 goals which were Troy's fault - in fact I would say the centre-backs have been let down by other areas of the side and other people not doing their jobs properly.
Any worries about his loss were, however, swept away by young Inniss's display. If he was nervous or overawed in any way by the surroundings at the Boleyn, he didn't show it.
Steve Elliott, Jason Taylor and Keith Lowe deserve some credit for that, as they were in his ear throughout the game, talking him through it with advice, and the odd rebuke if he needed it as well.
Troy is out for two to three weeks, so Ryan will play at Gigg Lane tomorrow, and I have no worries about that after Tuesday's showing - hopefully now he has played in front of 23,000-odd EastEnders, some 3,000 Northerners won't faze him at all.
It said a lot for him that I asked Mark Yates afterwards if he thought of putting Keith Lowe across and bringing back Sido. A firm 'no' was the reply - 'Sido needs to sit out a few games' he added.
Keith Lowe's form in the past two games will only serve to extend that exile to the bench, while on the other side Craig Braham-Barrett, up against Joe Cole and then Stewart Downing, did very little wrong.
Yates interview here
I also spoke to Ryan afterwards and he was very level-headed, even about the elbow he got in the first 10-15 minutes, which knocked him out briefly and saw his eyelid glued back together. He took that in his stride as well... early days, but we might have a player here.
Elsewhere, they say a week is a long time in football. Before the game at Accrington, Jason Taylor was, for some, persona non grata... painted as an impatient moaner who couldn't handle being on the bench and wanted to get on the first train out as soon as he couldn't get a game.
Two games later, he has almost become undroppable, brining solidity into the side, scoring the goal to bring our first win and being one of the driving forces on Tuesday.
His mere presence seems to have lifted Russ Penn and Matt Richards, given them a new freedom to be offensive without worrying about the opposition breaking on us if they were caught upfield and lost possession, or directed a wayward pass.
It is almost a mirror of last season. Then, the Marlon Pack-Darren Carter dynamic was a bit open in a 4-4-2. The last two games may just have proved that the same is the case for Penn and Richards in that system.
So from being on the bench and disconcerted by it, Taylor has been transformed. We have seen the Taylor I thought we were getting when Rotherham dispensed with him, but we only saw fleetingly last season. Hope he keeps it up.
The main thing about the game was that were not overawed. We didn't sit off and show them respect, as we may have dobe against Spurs and Everton. We got in their faces - but players like Taylor, Penn and Richards are not going to do anything else!
Alou Diarra knows all about Jason Taylor now - but I hope he recovers from the injury which will put him out for the season.
I was surprised when West Ham lined up with only Ricardo Vaz Te up front, and bar one free-kick saved by Scott Brown they had very little threat.
We looked comfortable and deserved to be level at the break, but Vaz Te's free-kick was a bit special. Surprising then to find out that Big Sam was yelling from the sideline asking why he stepping up to take it. That soon stopped...!
The arrival of Momo Diame for Diarra changed the whole tempo of the West Ham performance. The lethargy went and he was the hub for everything.
It also pushed Ravel Morrison a bit further forward, and those two were a problem for the last hour, helped by Razvan Rat and Downing when he came on, troubling us down the flanks.
The second goal, 41 seconds into the second half saw a great piece of skill by Downing to lay it off to Morrison, who sent Penn and Inniss one way and shot home right into the corner (think a less pectacular version of Nick Powell losing Alan Bennett at Wembley).
I worried for us then. There was the possibility we could get over-run, and for a few minutes it seemed like wave after wave of claret and blue was coming at us.
Then came the penalty, right out of nothing. A punt upfield, Jermaine moved Terry Gornell out of the way and was cleaned up by the keeper. Good refereeing to see if the ball would go in, then he gave the penalty, and Matt Richards stuck it away.
After that, West Ham had more chances, Browny made some saves, they hit the bar, Ryan Inniss cleared off the line - but we had opportunities, a Penn shot was close, Zack Kotwica came on and sliced one wide and shot wide near the end, and Byron Harrison had a couple of openings.
My heart says we deserved extra time, but my head feels they could have had more goals - but it doesn't stop me being proud of how the team performed overall.
But now the million-dollar question. Can we do the same at Bury, and places like it, on a regular basis? We will soon find out, starting tomorrow!
We got all three on Tuesday night at the Boleyn Ground - only the most churlish fan would criticise any part of our display, the fans made great noise and did themselves great credit and we ran them close - closer than some of the national papers have given us credit for.
West Ham are a 'proper' football club - they have a rich heritage which they celebrate and embrace superbly - 'Moore than a football club' is the branding around the ground, and I was sat five seats away from World Cup 1966 legend Martin Peters.
It was all a bit different from Accrington three days before, but having laid the foundations there we carried on in the same vein.
I thought Yatesy picked the right team - solidity and shape was the priority, with Jermaine McGlashan back in the side and the enforced change at the back with Ryan Inniss in for his debut with Troy Brown injured.
Since the game, I have seen a few critical posts about Brown's displays so far, which I find very surprising indeed. I don't think he has done anything wrong at all, and he and Steve Elliott look to be forming a good partnership.
I know we have let 10 goals in and Accrington was our first shut-out, but I can't think of any of those 10 goals which were Troy's fault - in fact I would say the centre-backs have been let down by other areas of the side and other people not doing their jobs properly.
Any worries about his loss were, however, swept away by young Inniss's display. If he was nervous or overawed in any way by the surroundings at the Boleyn, he didn't show it.
Steve Elliott, Jason Taylor and Keith Lowe deserve some credit for that, as they were in his ear throughout the game, talking him through it with advice, and the odd rebuke if he needed it as well.
Troy is out for two to three weeks, so Ryan will play at Gigg Lane tomorrow, and I have no worries about that after Tuesday's showing - hopefully now he has played in front of 23,000-odd EastEnders, some 3,000 Northerners won't faze him at all.
It said a lot for him that I asked Mark Yates afterwards if he thought of putting Keith Lowe across and bringing back Sido. A firm 'no' was the reply - 'Sido needs to sit out a few games' he added.
Keith Lowe's form in the past two games will only serve to extend that exile to the bench, while on the other side Craig Braham-Barrett, up against Joe Cole and then Stewart Downing, did very little wrong.
Yates interview here
I also spoke to Ryan afterwards and he was very level-headed, even about the elbow he got in the first 10-15 minutes, which knocked him out briefly and saw his eyelid glued back together. He took that in his stride as well... early days, but we might have a player here.
Elsewhere, they say a week is a long time in football. Before the game at Accrington, Jason Taylor was, for some, persona non grata... painted as an impatient moaner who couldn't handle being on the bench and wanted to get on the first train out as soon as he couldn't get a game.
Two games later, he has almost become undroppable, brining solidity into the side, scoring the goal to bring our first win and being one of the driving forces on Tuesday.
His mere presence seems to have lifted Russ Penn and Matt Richards, given them a new freedom to be offensive without worrying about the opposition breaking on us if they were caught upfield and lost possession, or directed a wayward pass.
It is almost a mirror of last season. Then, the Marlon Pack-Darren Carter dynamic was a bit open in a 4-4-2. The last two games may just have proved that the same is the case for Penn and Richards in that system.
So from being on the bench and disconcerted by it, Taylor has been transformed. We have seen the Taylor I thought we were getting when Rotherham dispensed with him, but we only saw fleetingly last season. Hope he keeps it up.
The main thing about the game was that were not overawed. We didn't sit off and show them respect, as we may have dobe against Spurs and Everton. We got in their faces - but players like Taylor, Penn and Richards are not going to do anything else!
Alou Diarra knows all about Jason Taylor now - but I hope he recovers from the injury which will put him out for the season.
I was surprised when West Ham lined up with only Ricardo Vaz Te up front, and bar one free-kick saved by Scott Brown they had very little threat.
We looked comfortable and deserved to be level at the break, but Vaz Te's free-kick was a bit special. Surprising then to find out that Big Sam was yelling from the sideline asking why he stepping up to take it. That soon stopped...!
The arrival of Momo Diame for Diarra changed the whole tempo of the West Ham performance. The lethargy went and he was the hub for everything.
It also pushed Ravel Morrison a bit further forward, and those two were a problem for the last hour, helped by Razvan Rat and Downing when he came on, troubling us down the flanks.
The second goal, 41 seconds into the second half saw a great piece of skill by Downing to lay it off to Morrison, who sent Penn and Inniss one way and shot home right into the corner (think a less pectacular version of Nick Powell losing Alan Bennett at Wembley).
I worried for us then. There was the possibility we could get over-run, and for a few minutes it seemed like wave after wave of claret and blue was coming at us.
Then came the penalty, right out of nothing. A punt upfield, Jermaine moved Terry Gornell out of the way and was cleaned up by the keeper. Good refereeing to see if the ball would go in, then he gave the penalty, and Matt Richards stuck it away.
After that, West Ham had more chances, Browny made some saves, they hit the bar, Ryan Inniss cleared off the line - but we had opportunities, a Penn shot was close, Zack Kotwica came on and sliced one wide and shot wide near the end, and Byron Harrison had a couple of openings.
My heart says we deserved extra time, but my head feels they could have had more goals - but it doesn't stop me being proud of how the team performed overall.
But now the million-dollar question. Can we do the same at Bury, and places like it, on a regular basis? We will soon find out, starting tomorrow!
Tuesday, 27 August 2013
Crowning glory
When Jon Palmer sits down to write the next volume of 'CTFC's Greatest 50 Matches' the chances are that this visit to the Crown Ground will not figure too highly.
In fact, it would probably struggle to make the greatest 500 - however in a few months time it could be looked back on as one of the most valuable.
That first league win of the season is always a landmark - the sooner you get it the better and there is that little sigh of relief all round when it finally does come.
After our curate's egg of a start - Jekyll and Hyde against Burton, rousing against Crawley, beaten by the better side at Chesterfield and downright dismal for the most part against Plymouth, it was important to show some resolve, put down a marker and get that win on the board.
That's exactly what we did at the Crown. It wasn't pretty at all, we won't win any style or artistic impression points from the judges but that 'north of Birmingham' jinx was ended after 15 games.
Everything about the game was scruffy, right down to the winning goal, scored by Jason Taylor with a deflected right foot shot from a free-kick which wasn't a free-kick, which should have been cleared and wasn't.
Mark Yates got the selection and changes spot on in my view.
Keith Lowe in for the out of form and out of sorts Sido, Taylor for Jermaine McGlashan and Terry Gornell back for Byron Harrison - so not much width, not much flair - just dig in and grind it out.
The ploy was obvious from the off - keep it tight, and try to spring the pace of Gornell or Stevens Gillespie on the break. The first bit worked, but the second bit didn't.
Neither forward had a sniff of any decent service in the first half, but they joined in the work ethic, both dropping deep or pulling wide to give an option, but through the middle Stanley's centre-backs and two holding midfielders gave them no space at all.
Deering, Penn and Richards, with the added security blanket of Taylor behind them, had a bit more freedom to get forward and try to spring the forwards without the worry of a quick break opening us up if they lost possession.
As it was, they couldn't get the final ball right - and with Taylor scrapping away and the defence holding firm thanks to Brown and Elliott's best game as a pair and Lowe's positional sense, a 0-0 half-time score wasn't the biggest shock in the world.
Stanley were very poor. They worked hard, gave everything effort-wise, but had no quality - no player who could unlock our defence and make the difference for them.
Scott Brown didn't have a save to make all game - as clean sheet bonuses go, it was probably the easiest one he has ever earned, and the question was could we find a way to win the game.
We did, and after Taylor's goal, Deering could have had a second himself, or laid it on a plate for Taylor, but did neither - irrelevant in the end as it turned out.
Taylor typified the performance. Sleeves rolled up, sharp in the tackle, giving his all and roaring with delight (and no doubt pent-up frustration having been condemned to the bench) when his shot hit the net.
Elliott and Troy Brown were solid, Lowe and Braham-Barrett disciplined, Richards and Penn took their lead from Taylor, Deering was energetic to the last and Gornell and Gillespie battled away. Harrison, when he came on, barely had a touch but ran himself silly to defend from the front as we held our advantage.
That fact that we did that was a big relief. Accrington, on this viewing, will do well to escape the bottom two, and therefore it is definitely filed under 'places a team wanting to do well has to take three points from'.
Whether after this we will ultimately go on to 'do well' is still up for debate, but from little acorns giant oaks can grow, and this is a base to build from.
After the mess which the Plymouth game eventually became, we were never going to emerge seven days later having suddenly morphed into Barcelona - this is a gradual process.
Having gone 18 months without success oop North, it would be one of the perverse things that happens in football for us to go and win again at Bury next weekend.
The shake up at the Shakers has seen 22 players arrive this summer, more than we have in our whole squad, so goodness knows that 11 we will face next weekend.
As to be expected maybe after such a big turnover, they have been a bit hit and miss so far. Miss would be a help on Saturday, but first, we have our big day out in the big smoke.
Upwards of 1,500 fans will be following our freshly-clad Whites to the Boleyn Ground for our Capital One Cup game with West Ham.
It still doesn't quite seem right that we made it past the first round. I can't remember the last time I saw us in the heady heights of round two.
I just hope we give a good impression of ourselves, and as we always say before games like this, you just never know... there will be an upset somewhere... if we play well and they have an off day... we must take our half-chances if they come along... etc etc
There couldn't be more of a contrast for tonight's game from last Saturday. The desolate, delapidated Crown only had 1,224 paying customers inside it on Saturday.
At least 200 more than that will be in the away end alone at the 'Academy of Football.'
But one thing I hope is the same is the level of resolve and effort from our players that we saw on Saturday - but with just a bit more quality. If we get that, anything can happen...
In fact, it would probably struggle to make the greatest 500 - however in a few months time it could be looked back on as one of the most valuable.
That first league win of the season is always a landmark - the sooner you get it the better and there is that little sigh of relief all round when it finally does come.
After our curate's egg of a start - Jekyll and Hyde against Burton, rousing against Crawley, beaten by the better side at Chesterfield and downright dismal for the most part against Plymouth, it was important to show some resolve, put down a marker and get that win on the board.
That's exactly what we did at the Crown. It wasn't pretty at all, we won't win any style or artistic impression points from the judges but that 'north of Birmingham' jinx was ended after 15 games.
Everything about the game was scruffy, right down to the winning goal, scored by Jason Taylor with a deflected right foot shot from a free-kick which wasn't a free-kick, which should have been cleared and wasn't.
Mark Yates got the selection and changes spot on in my view.
Keith Lowe in for the out of form and out of sorts Sido, Taylor for Jermaine McGlashan and Terry Gornell back for Byron Harrison - so not much width, not much flair - just dig in and grind it out.
The ploy was obvious from the off - keep it tight, and try to spring the pace of Gornell or Stevens Gillespie on the break. The first bit worked, but the second bit didn't.
Neither forward had a sniff of any decent service in the first half, but they joined in the work ethic, both dropping deep or pulling wide to give an option, but through the middle Stanley's centre-backs and two holding midfielders gave them no space at all.
Deering, Penn and Richards, with the added security blanket of Taylor behind them, had a bit more freedom to get forward and try to spring the forwards without the worry of a quick break opening us up if they lost possession.
As it was, they couldn't get the final ball right - and with Taylor scrapping away and the defence holding firm thanks to Brown and Elliott's best game as a pair and Lowe's positional sense, a 0-0 half-time score wasn't the biggest shock in the world.
Stanley were very poor. They worked hard, gave everything effort-wise, but had no quality - no player who could unlock our defence and make the difference for them.
Scott Brown didn't have a save to make all game - as clean sheet bonuses go, it was probably the easiest one he has ever earned, and the question was could we find a way to win the game.
We did, and after Taylor's goal, Deering could have had a second himself, or laid it on a plate for Taylor, but did neither - irrelevant in the end as it turned out.
Taylor typified the performance. Sleeves rolled up, sharp in the tackle, giving his all and roaring with delight (and no doubt pent-up frustration having been condemned to the bench) when his shot hit the net.
Elliott and Troy Brown were solid, Lowe and Braham-Barrett disciplined, Richards and Penn took their lead from Taylor, Deering was energetic to the last and Gornell and Gillespie battled away. Harrison, when he came on, barely had a touch but ran himself silly to defend from the front as we held our advantage.
That fact that we did that was a big relief. Accrington, on this viewing, will do well to escape the bottom two, and therefore it is definitely filed under 'places a team wanting to do well has to take three points from'.
Whether after this we will ultimately go on to 'do well' is still up for debate, but from little acorns giant oaks can grow, and this is a base to build from.
After the mess which the Plymouth game eventually became, we were never going to emerge seven days later having suddenly morphed into Barcelona - this is a gradual process.
Having gone 18 months without success oop North, it would be one of the perverse things that happens in football for us to go and win again at Bury next weekend.
The shake up at the Shakers has seen 22 players arrive this summer, more than we have in our whole squad, so goodness knows that 11 we will face next weekend.
As to be expected maybe after such a big turnover, they have been a bit hit and miss so far. Miss would be a help on Saturday, but first, we have our big day out in the big smoke.
Upwards of 1,500 fans will be following our freshly-clad Whites to the Boleyn Ground for our Capital One Cup game with West Ham.
It still doesn't quite seem right that we made it past the first round. I can't remember the last time I saw us in the heady heights of round two.
I just hope we give a good impression of ourselves, and as we always say before games like this, you just never know... there will be an upset somewhere... if we play well and they have an off day... we must take our half-chances if they come along... etc etc
There couldn't be more of a contrast for tonight's game from last Saturday. The desolate, delapidated Crown only had 1,224 paying customers inside it on Saturday.
At least 200 more than that will be in the away end alone at the 'Academy of Football.'
But one thing I hope is the same is the level of resolve and effort from our players that we saw on Saturday - but with just a bit more quality. If we get that, anything can happen...
Sunday, 18 August 2013
Outfought and outmuscled
No point in dressing it up - for the majority of the game we were second best and deserved exactly what we got.
As expected the reaction in some places has been knee jerk - tweets saying we will be lucky to stay up and even one or two putting in question the future of the manager have appeared on my timeline since 5pm yesterday.
Three games in is far too early for talk like that, and he will know more than anyone that things need to turn round - and quickly - but the games don't get any easier.
Difficult away trips to Accrington and Bury, then home games against Portsmouth and Oxford are on the horizon, but suddenly after a result and performance like this every game looks tough.
Hopefully this will be a wake-up call for everyone - management, players and supporters - that this will not be a cakewalk, we cannot just expect to turn up, win games and win promotion.
These things have to be earned by hard work and effort, and also by unity on and off the pitch, so this is not the time for panic and knee-jerk reactions.
The return of Steve Gillespie added to the pre-match optimism, and he was thrown straight in alongside Byron Harrison in the only change from the Chesterfield defeat.
The bench had no Billy Jones on it days after it emerged that he has asked for a loan move, but the other wantaway, Jason Taylor, was included as were two 17-year-olds in Bobbie Dale and Zack Kotwica.
I thought we started well - Gillespie had a good chance, then created another for himself, while Harrison had a header blocked, and it seemed only a matter of time before we went in front.
After the match, I spoke with a friend of mine who covers Plymouth, who told me that they had been very poor in the first two league games, and a goal for us would have (in his words) led to a three or four goal win.
As it was, the boot was on the other foot.
One side did get that all-important first goal, and it did cause the other's confidence to drain away before our eyes. Trouble is, Argyle scored it.
Yes, there was a handball in the build-up which the referee did not spot. He had a mixed afternoon, choosing not to book Curtis Nelson for ploughing through Jermaine McGlashan in the first 30 seconds, and Gillespie for later doing likewise to Neal Trotman.
But this will not be an anti-officials tirade - we did enough to contribute to our own downfall here without their assistance, and it would also be churlish to Plymouth, who took their opportunities superbly when they came along.
The goal came from a cross from Rommy Boco, who found himself one-on-one with Sam Deering (I am still not sure where Sido was) which was headed against the bar by Reuben Reid, then the follow up was netted by Marvin Morgan.
Allegedly, we tried to sign Morgan in the summer. Shame we didn't succeed as he would have been perfect for us.
He and Reid bullied our central defenders all afternoon, and after Deering being unable to stop the cross, to then lose two headers in our own penalty area is nothing sort of criminal.
One header can be excused, but then to have reacted so slowly to the ball coming back off the bar is, I'm afraid, simply not good enough.
The second and third were fairly similar goals, in as much as they started on the Plymouth right, and saw crossfield balls smashed home with pretty much unstoppable shots from the left side of our penalty area.
Conor Hourihane fired home the second after Russ Penn misjudged a header which fell into his path, and under no pressure it has to be said, he drove it home.
That was the signal, I am afraid, for the confidence to drain away and a number of heads to drop.
The third goal started from our free-kick, and Sido and Troy Brown were caught upfield. A good advantage was played, and Reid's fabulous diagonal cross-field pass found Boco, and he again had time to steady himself and pick his spot.
So that was that. 37 minutes in and the long unbeaten run in the league at home was over almost in a heartbeat.
Ironically, Boco scored in a similar sort of defeat against Accrington last September. Then, like here, we never looked like getting back into the game, and from 2-0 down it was all a bit of a mess.
We resorted pretty quickly to hitting balls up to poor Harrison, and I felt sorry for him as he had no chance against Trotman and Guy Branston.
In midfield, Hourihane and Dominic Blizzard were more determined and calm in possession than Russ Penn and Matt Richards, who gave the ball away too much and were forced to hurry as they were under constant pressure from Argyle's pair.
Out wide, Alessandra and Boco, helped by Morgan and Reid when they used the channels, gave Jombati and Braham-Barrett and torrid time, not to mention Elliott and Brown's losing battle against the Argyle strikers.
Put simply, from 2-0 down we were simply second best all over the field. At 3-0 down, our last chance of getting anything came when McGlashan shot over in the first minute of the second half.
After Richards' goal, we never looked like pulling off a great comeback - at no time did we build up a head of steam and test Luke McCormick - Argyle were able to sit back comfortably and just soak up what we tried to throw at them.
Yates is to be commended for wanting to play 4-4-2, but he has to get the balance of the team right - and at the moment it is wrong.
McGlashan started on the left, where he and Braham-Barrett have, going forward, been very effective at times this season, but that leaves Deering on right and hence no natural width.
Kaid Mohamed was marmite for fans, but at least with him on the left and McGlashan on the right the team had some balance. Now it does not.
I am not lamenting his loss, but it was my theory at the time that Ashley Grimes was targetted for his role, and when he turned his car round, Ashley Vincent was the man earmarked.
Arriving late, so a lack of fitness, then the injuries to Gornell and Cureton have forced Yates to use him elsewhere, so in the opening games we had suffered from a lack of natural width on both sides.
Hence, we have relied a lot of Jombati and Braham-Barrett getting forward to provide it - and when that goes wrong, teams break on us quickly, players have a lot of space out wide and we are in trouble.
See Chesterfield's first last week - Gary Roberts breaking down Sido's flank, cutting in, and scoring.
Yesterday, Deering isolated against Boco, cross brings goal. Two crossfield balls to Sido's flank, Hourihane and Boco in space. Two goals.
The lack of balance is leaving too many gaps out wide, too many chances to pepper our box with crosses, and sooner or later the law of averages says a goal is going to happen.
Sam Deering is not a winger. His best role is behind the forward or two forwards, either in a 4-5-1 (that horrible formation which most CTFC fans perceive as negative and don't like us playing) or a 4-2-3-1 (another derivative of the above).
Once again, it seems that Yates wants to get Deering into the side and on his pre-season displays, he deserves to be there.
But by playing him on the wing, he is forcing the players into a system, as he did for spells last season, rather than the opposite - fitting the system around the players he has.
Deering doesn't look comfortable when asked to play there. He wants to be involved in the game, so he comes inside, and that too contributes to the space allowed out wide - this was prevalent at Chesterfield for Nathan Smith in the first half and Roberts, and again yesterday.
But neither full-back played well yesterday either. Jombati and Braham-Barrett were more effective coming forward than they were at what is their primary role - defending.
Everyone loves marauding full-backs - they seem the vogue in the game at present - but first and foremost they are defenders, and if they can't do the basics properly, they can become a problem.
Jombati was caught out of position upfield or was sucked into the middle too often, while Braham-Barrett remains very much a work in progress - and I am wondering if he was thrown in too early.
On the basis of displays like yesterday, and I would say in Sido's case at Chesterfield as well, I have some sympathy for Keith Lowe and Billy Jones being sidelined.
In Jones' case, as I mentioned in the last blog, it seems to be Yates has worries over him when faced by a pacy winger, but I have to admit his experience and better positional sense would give him the nod for me.
Also, we miss his crossing and set-piece ability. That is a secondary issue I know, but when you have aerial threats like Troy Brown, Elliott and Harrison in your side, you need consistent delivery, and he provides that.
I can understand him not being on the bench yesterday. This was a home game and you don't need three defenders on there - I don't see the decision being any more than that, no conspiracy theories.
But I do have worries longer-term over whether Braham-Barrett is ready for this step-up. I would love to be proved wrong of course - but remember he only has a contract until January 1 at the moment.
Sido is, of course, a cult hero, and burst on to the scene when he forced his way into the team, but I just feel over the past few months his form has declined from that consistent level he was hitting.
I don't feel Keith Lowe has ever let us down, and I just wonder if a spell out of the side might recharge his batteries and give him a little thinking time to get back to those levels.
The uncertainty of the full-backs is not helping Brown and Elliott bed in as a partnership. Losing two headers in the box for the first goal won't have pleased them, but as a unit, 10 goals shipped in four games is a worry.
Coming on the back of last season's 20 clean sheets even more so, but with a four-man defence boasting two new members some bedding-in time is inevitable, but it cannot last any longer - two or three goals going in per game is not going to bring many wins.
We are also bedding in a new central midfield partnership, with Russ Penn and Matt Richards, but they were second-best yesterday against Hourihane and Blizzard, after also having problems against Chesterfield with Jimmy Ryan and Sam Morsy.
I am a massive Penn fan, he has run through brick walls for us, but he had a stinker yesterday. When your skipper does not play well, it does not augur well for the rest of the side.
Richards has been a good signing, and his passing is great, his free-kick was excellent - but he gave the ball away a fair few times also, and his movement of the ball can, at times, be too slow.
I still worry about the creativity in the middle of the park, but as I keep saying - this is early days and we have to hope things will click - or there may yet be a way back in for Jason Taylor.
Up front, I felt sorry for Harrison yesterday. Practically every ball he got was at chest or head high, or he was expected to perform miracles with his back to goal - not his game as we have seen in previous games.
I couldn't argue with the changes Yates made, he could only really bring on Kotwica, Vincent and young Dale given the way the game was going.
Two of them are 17 and it is not fair at all to blame them in any way for the result. I hope he keeps faith with them.
It was interesting to see Kotwica come on ahead of Vincent, showing how highly he is rated, and, at 3-1 down, there was nothing to lose in giving Dale a run-out.
So that was that - and we hope it was a blip... but was it?
I was sent a text today with our record in league games since the start of 2013. It is eight wins, 10 draws and nine defeats from 27 games.
That is not top-three form. It's not even play-off form. It is distinctly mid-table form.
So what now? Yates needs to think whether a change in system would suit the players he currently has at his disposal better - even if it means going back to the 4-5-1 to stiffen us up a bit.
He needs to look at the full-backs, and work out whether the overall balance of the side is right, especially in midfield, in order to give our forwards the best chance to perform, and he needs to fit the system around the players - and not vice versa.
The players need to look at themselves as well. There seems to be, at times, a fragility in mental strength when we concede the first goals in a game.
It was quite alarming to me how quickly the confidence went out of a few players when we went 2-0 down - there seemed to be a lack of fight from then on in a few cases.
Too often, there was no movement or players demanding the ball. When Argyle's midfield had the ball, they always had an option - but when ours had it, it was all too static, and therefore the tempo slowed down and we had to go backwards.
Some of them went into hiding, and a number of them need to step up. Too many have - on the whole - started the season disappointingly, and they are 'big' players for us, key players who need to get their form back, and fast.
Gornell and Cureton are out, we can't do anything about that, we have to get on with it, and other players should be saying 'this is my chance' but it isn't happening.
It is still August, so this is not the time to panic, but to pretend everything is rosy would be wrong.
There are concerns to address and time to turn things round, but that time is not infinite. Football fans have short memories, and two play-off campaigns, no matter how the club and squad has been turned around, will count for nothing if things do not pick up in the coming weeks.
A couple of three-goal home defeats last season were the signal for an unbeaten home run and we have to hope that lightning will strike twice again.
I still have confidence in the manager and players to forget this result and challenge at the right end of the table. Let's hope they can justify it.
As expected the reaction in some places has been knee jerk - tweets saying we will be lucky to stay up and even one or two putting in question the future of the manager have appeared on my timeline since 5pm yesterday.
Three games in is far too early for talk like that, and he will know more than anyone that things need to turn round - and quickly - but the games don't get any easier.
Difficult away trips to Accrington and Bury, then home games against Portsmouth and Oxford are on the horizon, but suddenly after a result and performance like this every game looks tough.
Hopefully this will be a wake-up call for everyone - management, players and supporters - that this will not be a cakewalk, we cannot just expect to turn up, win games and win promotion.
These things have to be earned by hard work and effort, and also by unity on and off the pitch, so this is not the time for panic and knee-jerk reactions.
The return of Steve Gillespie added to the pre-match optimism, and he was thrown straight in alongside Byron Harrison in the only change from the Chesterfield defeat.
The bench had no Billy Jones on it days after it emerged that he has asked for a loan move, but the other wantaway, Jason Taylor, was included as were two 17-year-olds in Bobbie Dale and Zack Kotwica.
I thought we started well - Gillespie had a good chance, then created another for himself, while Harrison had a header blocked, and it seemed only a matter of time before we went in front.
After the match, I spoke with a friend of mine who covers Plymouth, who told me that they had been very poor in the first two league games, and a goal for us would have (in his words) led to a three or four goal win.
As it was, the boot was on the other foot.
One side did get that all-important first goal, and it did cause the other's confidence to drain away before our eyes. Trouble is, Argyle scored it.
Yes, there was a handball in the build-up which the referee did not spot. He had a mixed afternoon, choosing not to book Curtis Nelson for ploughing through Jermaine McGlashan in the first 30 seconds, and Gillespie for later doing likewise to Neal Trotman.
But this will not be an anti-officials tirade - we did enough to contribute to our own downfall here without their assistance, and it would also be churlish to Plymouth, who took their opportunities superbly when they came along.
The goal came from a cross from Rommy Boco, who found himself one-on-one with Sam Deering (I am still not sure where Sido was) which was headed against the bar by Reuben Reid, then the follow up was netted by Marvin Morgan.
Allegedly, we tried to sign Morgan in the summer. Shame we didn't succeed as he would have been perfect for us.
He and Reid bullied our central defenders all afternoon, and after Deering being unable to stop the cross, to then lose two headers in our own penalty area is nothing sort of criminal.
One header can be excused, but then to have reacted so slowly to the ball coming back off the bar is, I'm afraid, simply not good enough.
The second and third were fairly similar goals, in as much as they started on the Plymouth right, and saw crossfield balls smashed home with pretty much unstoppable shots from the left side of our penalty area.
Conor Hourihane fired home the second after Russ Penn misjudged a header which fell into his path, and under no pressure it has to be said, he drove it home.
That was the signal, I am afraid, for the confidence to drain away and a number of heads to drop.
The third goal started from our free-kick, and Sido and Troy Brown were caught upfield. A good advantage was played, and Reid's fabulous diagonal cross-field pass found Boco, and he again had time to steady himself and pick his spot.
So that was that. 37 minutes in and the long unbeaten run in the league at home was over almost in a heartbeat.
Ironically, Boco scored in a similar sort of defeat against Accrington last September. Then, like here, we never looked like getting back into the game, and from 2-0 down it was all a bit of a mess.
We resorted pretty quickly to hitting balls up to poor Harrison, and I felt sorry for him as he had no chance against Trotman and Guy Branston.
In midfield, Hourihane and Dominic Blizzard were more determined and calm in possession than Russ Penn and Matt Richards, who gave the ball away too much and were forced to hurry as they were under constant pressure from Argyle's pair.
Out wide, Alessandra and Boco, helped by Morgan and Reid when they used the channels, gave Jombati and Braham-Barrett and torrid time, not to mention Elliott and Brown's losing battle against the Argyle strikers.
Put simply, from 2-0 down we were simply second best all over the field. At 3-0 down, our last chance of getting anything came when McGlashan shot over in the first minute of the second half.
After Richards' goal, we never looked like pulling off a great comeback - at no time did we build up a head of steam and test Luke McCormick - Argyle were able to sit back comfortably and just soak up what we tried to throw at them.
Yates is to be commended for wanting to play 4-4-2, but he has to get the balance of the team right - and at the moment it is wrong.
McGlashan started on the left, where he and Braham-Barrett have, going forward, been very effective at times this season, but that leaves Deering on right and hence no natural width.
Kaid Mohamed was marmite for fans, but at least with him on the left and McGlashan on the right the team had some balance. Now it does not.
I am not lamenting his loss, but it was my theory at the time that Ashley Grimes was targetted for his role, and when he turned his car round, Ashley Vincent was the man earmarked.
Arriving late, so a lack of fitness, then the injuries to Gornell and Cureton have forced Yates to use him elsewhere, so in the opening games we had suffered from a lack of natural width on both sides.
Hence, we have relied a lot of Jombati and Braham-Barrett getting forward to provide it - and when that goes wrong, teams break on us quickly, players have a lot of space out wide and we are in trouble.
See Chesterfield's first last week - Gary Roberts breaking down Sido's flank, cutting in, and scoring.
Yesterday, Deering isolated against Boco, cross brings goal. Two crossfield balls to Sido's flank, Hourihane and Boco in space. Two goals.
The lack of balance is leaving too many gaps out wide, too many chances to pepper our box with crosses, and sooner or later the law of averages says a goal is going to happen.
Sam Deering is not a winger. His best role is behind the forward or two forwards, either in a 4-5-1 (that horrible formation which most CTFC fans perceive as negative and don't like us playing) or a 4-2-3-1 (another derivative of the above).
Once again, it seems that Yates wants to get Deering into the side and on his pre-season displays, he deserves to be there.
But by playing him on the wing, he is forcing the players into a system, as he did for spells last season, rather than the opposite - fitting the system around the players he has.
Deering doesn't look comfortable when asked to play there. He wants to be involved in the game, so he comes inside, and that too contributes to the space allowed out wide - this was prevalent at Chesterfield for Nathan Smith in the first half and Roberts, and again yesterday.
But neither full-back played well yesterday either. Jombati and Braham-Barrett were more effective coming forward than they were at what is their primary role - defending.
Everyone loves marauding full-backs - they seem the vogue in the game at present - but first and foremost they are defenders, and if they can't do the basics properly, they can become a problem.
Jombati was caught out of position upfield or was sucked into the middle too often, while Braham-Barrett remains very much a work in progress - and I am wondering if he was thrown in too early.
On the basis of displays like yesterday, and I would say in Sido's case at Chesterfield as well, I have some sympathy for Keith Lowe and Billy Jones being sidelined.
In Jones' case, as I mentioned in the last blog, it seems to be Yates has worries over him when faced by a pacy winger, but I have to admit his experience and better positional sense would give him the nod for me.
Also, we miss his crossing and set-piece ability. That is a secondary issue I know, but when you have aerial threats like Troy Brown, Elliott and Harrison in your side, you need consistent delivery, and he provides that.
I can understand him not being on the bench yesterday. This was a home game and you don't need three defenders on there - I don't see the decision being any more than that, no conspiracy theories.
But I do have worries longer-term over whether Braham-Barrett is ready for this step-up. I would love to be proved wrong of course - but remember he only has a contract until January 1 at the moment.
Sido is, of course, a cult hero, and burst on to the scene when he forced his way into the team, but I just feel over the past few months his form has declined from that consistent level he was hitting.
I don't feel Keith Lowe has ever let us down, and I just wonder if a spell out of the side might recharge his batteries and give him a little thinking time to get back to those levels.
The uncertainty of the full-backs is not helping Brown and Elliott bed in as a partnership. Losing two headers in the box for the first goal won't have pleased them, but as a unit, 10 goals shipped in four games is a worry.
Coming on the back of last season's 20 clean sheets even more so, but with a four-man defence boasting two new members some bedding-in time is inevitable, but it cannot last any longer - two or three goals going in per game is not going to bring many wins.
We are also bedding in a new central midfield partnership, with Russ Penn and Matt Richards, but they were second-best yesterday against Hourihane and Blizzard, after also having problems against Chesterfield with Jimmy Ryan and Sam Morsy.
I am a massive Penn fan, he has run through brick walls for us, but he had a stinker yesterday. When your skipper does not play well, it does not augur well for the rest of the side.
Richards has been a good signing, and his passing is great, his free-kick was excellent - but he gave the ball away a fair few times also, and his movement of the ball can, at times, be too slow.
I still worry about the creativity in the middle of the park, but as I keep saying - this is early days and we have to hope things will click - or there may yet be a way back in for Jason Taylor.
Up front, I felt sorry for Harrison yesterday. Practically every ball he got was at chest or head high, or he was expected to perform miracles with his back to goal - not his game as we have seen in previous games.
I couldn't argue with the changes Yates made, he could only really bring on Kotwica, Vincent and young Dale given the way the game was going.
Two of them are 17 and it is not fair at all to blame them in any way for the result. I hope he keeps faith with them.
It was interesting to see Kotwica come on ahead of Vincent, showing how highly he is rated, and, at 3-1 down, there was nothing to lose in giving Dale a run-out.
So that was that - and we hope it was a blip... but was it?
I was sent a text today with our record in league games since the start of 2013. It is eight wins, 10 draws and nine defeats from 27 games.
That is not top-three form. It's not even play-off form. It is distinctly mid-table form.
So what now? Yates needs to think whether a change in system would suit the players he currently has at his disposal better - even if it means going back to the 4-5-1 to stiffen us up a bit.
He needs to look at the full-backs, and work out whether the overall balance of the side is right, especially in midfield, in order to give our forwards the best chance to perform, and he needs to fit the system around the players - and not vice versa.
The players need to look at themselves as well. There seems to be, at times, a fragility in mental strength when we concede the first goals in a game.
It was quite alarming to me how quickly the confidence went out of a few players when we went 2-0 down - there seemed to be a lack of fight from then on in a few cases.
Too often, there was no movement or players demanding the ball. When Argyle's midfield had the ball, they always had an option - but when ours had it, it was all too static, and therefore the tempo slowed down and we had to go backwards.
Some of them went into hiding, and a number of them need to step up. Too many have - on the whole - started the season disappointingly, and they are 'big' players for us, key players who need to get their form back, and fast.
Gornell and Cureton are out, we can't do anything about that, we have to get on with it, and other players should be saying 'this is my chance' but it isn't happening.
It is still August, so this is not the time to panic, but to pretend everything is rosy would be wrong.
There are concerns to address and time to turn things round, but that time is not infinite. Football fans have short memories, and two play-off campaigns, no matter how the club and squad has been turned around, will count for nothing if things do not pick up in the coming weeks.
A couple of three-goal home defeats last season were the signal for an unbeaten home run and we have to hope that lightning will strike twice again.
I still have confidence in the manager and players to forget this result and challenge at the right end of the table. Let's hope they can justify it.
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