MATCHWATCH : Mansfield Town (a)

[under the tin]

That`s right up there was one of our poorest performances ever. desperately awful, feel sorry for the travelling fans who were charged £30 to watch that on a Tuesday night.

Edited.

[Brogue]

Anyone with any footballing clue, knows how we played tonight is how we’ve played in 95% of games since November. Difference is we didn’t get lucky this time. Tonight summed up our general play perfectly

[Brogue]

A lot of overreaction to one bad result.

An absolutely terrible take

[Royal Monkey]

Just got home the one and only good thing tonight is that I live in Sherwood Forest !
Call it an overreaction if you like but that’s the worse performance I’ve seen in god knows how many years!
No one came out of that with any credit and Wing was absolutely shocking just a mind blowing performance of absolute shite !!

[MR. CYNICAL]

Anyone with any footballing clue, knows how we played tonight is how we’ve played in 95% of games since November. Difference is we didn’t get lucky this time. Tonight summed up our general play perfectly

Exactly what I've been saying, can't remember the last time I've left a game thinking we'd played well, even when we've won.

[MR. CYNICAL]

I pointed out after the Luton game that we had to defend 29 crosses, tonight it was 38 so obviously haven't learned any lessons, that's aside of the 17 shots Mansfield had, 7 on target.

[Sutekh]

I pointed out after the Luton game that we had to defend 29 crosses, tonight it was 38 so obviously haven't learned any lessons, that's aside of the 17 shots Mansfield had, 7 on target.

Leam said they had the quantity but we had the quality shot-wise. And the one they did get was yet another sodding deflection.

[Jackson Corner]

I pointed out after the Luton game that we had to defend 29 crosses, tonight it was 38 so obviously haven't learned any lessons, that's aside of the 17 shots Mansfield had, 7 on target.

Leam said they had the quantity but we had the quality shot-wise. And the one they did get was yet another sodding deflection.

Why treat us like oxf*rd idiots. I hate managers who try to sugar coat dreadful performances. Just say we were rubbish and they were better and deserved the win. At least then l would have some respect for him.

[Hound]

I can’t remember many games when you can say absolutely everyone was awful. A couple tried the make things happen (R Williams mainly) but failed far more often than not

Just horrendous all round, barely strong a couple of passes together against a pretty weak Mansfield side

JP looks all over the shop. Doyle just about pips everyone else for the worst of the lot

Anyway, it’s one poor result after a load of good ones. We’ve had our luck recently so can’t complain too much.

[tidus_mi2]

I had a think about last night and some of our previous insipid performances, is it possible we're not possibly preparing adequately for some of these games? We train and prepare in Prem/Champ standard facilities then go and play on a proper worn down League One pitch.

[Sutekh]

I had a think about last night and some of our previous insipid performances, is it possible we're not possibly preparing adequately for some of these games? We train and prepare in Prem/Champ standard facilities then go and play on a proper worn down League One pitch.

So all over to Prospect Park for training leading up to travelling to places with poor pitches?

[leon]

I had a think about last night and some of our previous insipid performances, is it possible we're not possibly preparing adequately for some of these games? We train and prepare in Prem/Champ standard facilities then go and play on a proper worn down League One pitch.

that affects our "midfield's" ability to provide out balls when we're defending?

Last night Savage (?) laid it off to a defender under pressure and then sprinted upfield leaving an enormous hole in centre midfield, giving absolutely no option to play the ball out. The ball went to Pareira -> long ball -> lose possession -> more pressure.

Last night when we were defending you could draw a massive circle around midfield with no one in it = no one to play the ball to. tbf to Richardson it's been like this since before him.

This is kids football. Not professional football.

[morganb]

I had a think about last night and some of our previous insipid performances, is it possible we're not possibly preparing adequately for some of these games? We train and prepare in Prem/Champ standard facilities then go and play on a proper worn down League One pitch.

So all over to Prospect Park for training leading up to travelling to places with poor pitches?

There are numerous pitches at Bearwood so perhaps we could re-purpose a few to give us a variety of different surface qualities plus add a wind machine, a rain machine and a a sign saying "Welcome to Valley Parade". We should also run "after dark" sessions and also invite a few fans down to emulate a real crowd (or have noises played back like during Covid) Add a couple of useless officials and we'd have the full match day experience in a nutshell

[MR. CYNICAL]

I pointed out after the Luton game that we had to defend 29 crosses, tonight it was 38 so obviously haven't learned any lessons, that's aside of the 17 shots Mansfield had, 7 on target.

Leam said they had the quantity but we had the quality shot-wise. And the one they did get was yet another sodding deflection.

Trying to work out how, even though we had the quality shot -wise, we managed to lose 1-0!
Think we had one shot on target FFS.
These are the sort of comments that make me dislike the bloke.

[Brum Royal]

I made the late decision to go up last night. 310 hardy souls according to the announcer.

Agree with much of what has been written:
- We should have taken at least one of the goal mouth scrambles, not sure how we didn't - especially the first one.
- I didn't think the pitch was too bad in fairness, not sure I thought it needed watering especially both before the game and at half time - although the half time watering seemed to be more at our (defending) end than theirs.
- The passing through the midfield was atrocious. Especially when we were trying to play out from the back. We gave the ball away in tricky positions so many times, or ended up lumping it forward to nobody in particular.
- The one passage of play we did a nice passing move from second half, we nearly scored from.
- JP - a couple of incredible saves, but my word his distribution last night was awful.
- Randall Williams one of the few to come out of that with much praise, he was a handful first half. Was also pretty impressed by Ward, thought he was good defensively throughout.

My only other game so far this season was the Peterborough at home debacle, and similar issues crept into this one as they did in that - Wing playing almost between the centre backs at time and this nonsense of one of the centre backs tapping the goal kick two yards for JP to lump it forward. What is the point of this? Does JP like to hit a moving ball more than a static one? Some of his normal goal kicks were far better than trying to hit a moving ball.

One of the contributing factors last night was the strong wind. I wouldn't say either side handled it particularly well, but there was a very big difference in playing into it and against it. First half we had it with us, long goals kicks and balls carrying on further put the Mansfield defence under pressure. Second half, into the wind, you could see every punt forward in the air stalling in the wind and not getting near a target. Similar the long throw ins we had, the few we tried barely reached the box. In fairness it seemed to take Mansfield a good 15 minutes to adapt to playing with the wind second half too. Now obviously wind at a football match is nothing new, but one of the biggest failings for me last night was our failure to at least seem to try to adapt to it. As mentioned earlier, the one time we did put a good passing move together second half we very nearly scored from it. Continually punting the ball forward into a strong head wind achieved nothing under than losing possession and putting us back under pressure, combined with the atrocious passing from the back.

I think the problem Leam has is that when you consistently perform poorly but grind out results, when you put in a stinker last night it means you have less credit in the bank than if you've been getting wins from good performances. Will need a big improvement against an in form Plymouth on Saturday, that's for sure.

[Brogue]

a couple of stats that I've been looking into;

we've been caught off side 45 times this season. only Mansfield have been caught off side fewer times on 38. Now whilst this isn't a table we want to be top of, it does indicate that we don't get into many attacking situations. and certainly shows we don't play off the shoulder of the last defender.

then i looked into the number of crosses this season 539 - we are bottom of the league for the number of crosses this season.

So if we aren't going through the middle, and we aren't getting crosses into the box, then what the hell are we doing? its all very odd.

And on the defensive side we had to deal with 38 crosses from mansfield
28 against luton
24 against bradford
30 against port vale
43 against bolton
34 against wycombe
and so on and so on

Bolton are top of the crosses league table with an average of 23 crosses a game. we are conceding nearly double the number of crosses in some games than the best team in the league manages on crossing to average per game.

So we have no width, we don't go through the middle, we don't play off the shoulder of defenders, and we concede the most amount of crosses into our box than any team in the division.

[Jagermesiter1871]

I can’t remember many games when you can say absolutely everyone was awful. A couple tried the make things happen (R Williams mainly) but failed far more often than not

Just horrendous all round, barely strong a couple of passes together against a pretty weak Mansfield side

JP looks all over the shop. Doyle just about pips everyone else for the worst of the lot

Anyway, it’s one poor result after a load of good ones. We’ve had our luck recently so can’t complain too much.

Disagree. I thought wing was a stand out awful performance. The amount of times he passed the ball to the opposition or slipped in possession gifting the ball, all in extremely dangerous areas was crazy.

[SouthDownsRoyal]

What a truly atrocious performance, I don’t think their keeper touched the ball in the second half.

To think there was a chance to get in the play offs zone, it defies belief

Respect to the poor fans who have the long drive home after that debacle

You can say that again

[Greatwesternline]

a couple of stats that I've been looking into;

we've been caught off side 45 times this season. only Mansfield have been caught off side fewer times on 38. Now whilst this isn't a table we want to be top of, it does indicate that we don't get into many attacking situations. and certainly shows we don't play off the shoulder of the last defender.

then i looked into the number of crosses this season 539 - we are bottom of the league for the number of crosses this season.

So if we aren't going through the middle, and we aren't getting crosses into the box, then what the hell are we doing? its all very odd.

And on the defensive side we had to deal with 38 crosses from mansfield
28 against luton
24 against bradford
30 against port vale
43 against bolton
34 against wycombe
and so on and so on

Bolton are top of the crosses league table with an average of 23 crosses a game. we are conceding nearly double the number of crosses in some games than the best team in the league manages on crossing to average per game.

So we have no width, we don't go through the middle, we don't play off the shoulder of defenders, and we concede the most amount of crosses into our box than any team in the division.

You do actually want to be at the top of caught offside table.

Offsides have a positive correlation with teams who win.

Fun fact I learned from Ruud Gullit I think.

[Horsham Royal]

we've been caught off side 45 times this season. only Mansfield have been caught off side fewer times on 38

You do actually want to be at the top of caught offside table.

I think that was Brogue's point. We're second bottom (Mansfield below).