MATCHWATCH : Carlisle United (h)

[Hound]

Agree on the DK speed thing. A number of times he was in a foot race with their number 3 yesterday and the the #3 came out on top every single time. And don’t think he was exactly Usain Bolt either

[tmesis]

One of the shocking things is how little effort the players made in extra time. It reminded me of the Kiddermister game, where we just accepted defeat and went through the motions.

[leon]

Without Marriot our front 3 is just plain shit.

DK is a nonentity and contributes nothing that I can see. Speed? I don’t see it. Lane always looks like he’s playing on the wrong wing - whatever side he’s playing on.

Kelvin isn’t a centre forward actually I don’t know what he is.

[Mid Sussex Royal]

Clyde will find out.

Doing a quick look, so may not be 100% accurate.

I think the last time a Berkshire side progressed further than us was in 1982-83 when Slough reached the second round and we were knocked out by Bishop's Stortford in the first round. Not sure if Slough was in Berkshire by that stage, rather than Buckinghamshire, though.

Seems to have happened twice in terms of date since then:

1. 1998-99 - R1 by Stoke (14 Nov); Slough: R1 replay by Macclesfield (24 Nov).
2. 1983-84 - R2 by Oxford (10 Dec); Windsor & Eton: R2 replay by Bournemouth (19 Dec).

Great work as usual, Clyde.

The 1983-4 Oxford game was a 1-1 draw at Elm Park, we lost the replay at the Manor.

[Royality creeps In]

Now I've calmed down after yesterdays debacle.
The first 90 minutes were quite comfortable with the oppos offering very little. It appeared to be a good steady win.
However
Then came added time in which we folded like a deck of cards. Our "centre backs" Dorsett and Stickland should not be without any criticism. They just plodded around whilst a non league team (who never gave up) ran rings around them. I couldn't believe how Dorsett just kept going backwards and sideways with misplaced passes, leaving Carlisle to push forward. He was chasing shadows when he could be bothered. From what I saw the defending was scandalous.
Not saying they were the only two who were poor in extra time, but they, from my view were the main culprits along with the keeper.
Richardson has a real issue getting a team out of that bunch of pathetic clowns.
I suppose the only positive is, we can now concentrate on avoiding dropping to Div 4

[Sutekh]

Deep in injury time? Need a goal urgently? I know, how about taking a short goal kick

2 urgent problems that need addressing right now are the lack of a physical presence up front and the non existent pace in defence.

[South Coast Royal]

Stickland's days are certainly up. Have been for a while. It's such a shame, a player whose come through with a big potential ticket on him, Unders captain, and he just doesn't look FL standard. I'd far rather Borgnis got his minutes now, looks far more comfortable and natural on the pitch.

Camara's only just back from injury and seems to have 9 lives. A bunch of mediocrity then something to save him. Him and Garcia back at least give some options with Ritchie and now maybe Lane out, especially with Big Kelv covering striker too.

I don’t think LR is going to bin many of them off on the basis of a terrible 10+ minutes when the game was seemingly won at 90 mins.

Just watched the highlights....

Iirc from the comms, Garcia gave away a cheap freekick near our box for the first. Loose ball off the wall and we're too busy stepping up to try offside from the ball in to track their forwards going in to pick the ball up.

Second is typical early season farce of a straightball down the middle. Stickers gets sucked up wrestles for and whiffs. Then Stevens fumbles a shot in at his near post.

The final one is a break and cracking finish.

I really don't get the Jacob complaints, not at fault for any of the goals unless maybe he gave away the first fk... but I guess he's a favourite scapegoat.

You’re forgetting extra time. We were horrific in it. Maybe players won’t be totally binned off but I think their limitations were very obvious. DK got 70 mins to unimpress

Don’t really know on Jacob. I didn’t see him do a lot wrong. He was excellent first half but wasn’t anywhere near as effective from ht onwards going forward though

I've ignored ET because it's a cup only deal, it's not going to feature for us again this season. And conceding 2 in injury time followed by a third almost immediately in ET is an absolute hammer blow to morale. It's going to effect performance, especiallly with a weak bench.

Ian, since the start of the season you have adopted the stance of everything will be all right in the end, Hunt is ok, the players are ok and losing matches is no big deal-this stance is very different from your earlier self-have you been .doing transcendental meditation or something?

I feel as depressed and as low as Hound (very much an optimist in the past IIRC) about our club and yesterday wasn't unexpected.
Obviously it was Hunt's team and some blame must attach to somebody for the lack of fitness as well as mental alertness.
November 1st and we are out of the League Cup, out of the FA Cup and in a relegation fight-not really where I guess the owners either wanted or expected us to be..
We might even be out of the Mickey-Mouse cup soon.

I think we will probably get enough points to stay up by winning our share of home games when O'Connor and Williams and Marriott are fit but I can see the fan numbers falling away sharply which again the owners won't like and we fans won't like either being in a more than half empty stadium.

Maybe some exciting signings in January will give everybody a boost but they will have to be more exciting than those that the owner promised pre-season (typical unnecessary Yankee hype).
It's going to be a long old winter.

BTW , knowing your bent for pedantry , you will appreciate me pointing out that you should have used the word "affect" rather than "effect" in your post.

[SouthDownsRoyal]

Everything is ok

[tmesis]

2 urgent problems that need addressing right now are the lack of a physical presence up front and the non existent pace in defence.

The problem is that neither of those things are something that can be worked on in training.

Richardson has basically got about a month to assess the squad, see if he can work out some sort of game plan that will work with the players we have, before starting to look for replacements for the holes it has in it.

At the moment I'd say our ineffectiveness in the final third is more damaging than weakness at the back.

[Snowflake Royal]

2 urgent problems that need addressing right now are the lack of a physical presence up front and the non existent pace in defence.

The problem is that neither of those things are something that can be worked on in training.

Richardson has basically got about a month to assess the squad, see if he can work out some sort of game plan that will work with the players we have, before starting to look for replacements for the holes it has in it.

At the moment I'd say our ineffectiveness in the final third is more damaging than weakness at the back.

I disagree. We are at least scoring regularly, if not many, rather than drawing blanks... though Marriott out harms that, but haven't we only kept 1 league clean sheet?

If we can get some nils against, we'll win more games.

Personally, I'd be sending Burns and MOM back in January, and giving a hard look at Doyle for the same. Plus seeing if anyone will take Stickland and Camara on loan.

If we can get Williams and O'Connor fit that's a big boon. Maybe replace Burns with someone who isn't all knees and elbows and ideally has some pace. Bring in a striker who knows how to score and is either a unit or quick.

Obviously easier said than done.

[Norfolk Royal]

To add insult to injury I went to the early Norwich game today, which they lost 0-2, with the fans attempting to storm the directors box after the game.

What on earth is going on at Norwich this season?

New American owner, tick, poor recruitment, tick, sold best players apart from Sargent, tick, new DoF Ben Knapper who is very unpopular, new manager Liam Manning failing to motivate, and to cap it all the pies ran out at half time.

[RoyalBlue]

Now I've calmed down after yesterdays debacle.
The first 90 minutes were quite comfortable with the oppos offering very little. It appeared to be a good steady win.
However
Then came added time in which we folded like a deck of cards. Our "centre backs" Dorsett and Stickland should not be without any criticism. They just plodded around whilst a non league team (who never gave up) ran rings around them. I couldn't believe how Dorsett just kept going backwards and sideways with misplaced passes, leaving Carlisle to push forward. He was chasing shadows when he could be bothered. From what I saw the defending was scandalous.

Was it Dorsett stood like a statue as that freekick was taken, allowing Linney the Freedom of Berkshire to move away from him and score his/their first?

[Jackson Corner]

Doing a quick look, so may not be 100% accurate.

I think the last time a Berkshire side progressed further than us was in 1982-83 when Slough reached the second round and we were knocked out by Bishop's Stortford in the first round. Not sure if Slough was in Berkshire by that stage, rather than Buckinghamshire, though.

Seems to have happened twice in terms of date since then:

1. 1998-99 - R1 by Stoke (14 Nov); Slough: R1 replay by Macclesfield (24 Nov).
2. 1983-84 - R2 by Oxford (10 Dec); Windsor & Eton: R2 replay by Bournemouth (19 Dec).

Great work as usual, Clyde.

The 1983-4 Oxford game was a 1-1 draw at Elm Park, we lost the replay at the Manor.

Remember that Trevor Senior missed a penalty.

[tidus_mi2]

Yeah it's been a bit of a come down since the Summer, the transfer business seemed solid, nothing spectacular but it seemed good enough but for whatever reason, the majority of the signings just haven't worked out and yeah, the loan signings have been pretty abysmal, would agree with sending them all back in January really and try and look for other options.

[WestYorksRoyal]

Yeah it's been a bit of a come down since the Summer, the transfer business seemed solid, nothing spectacular but it seemed good enough but for whatever reason, the majority of the signings just haven't worked out and yeah, the loan signings have been pretty abysmal, would agree with sending them all back in January really and try and look for other options.

Loan signings not delivering, but also lots of injuries. Surely they need to be looking at the sports scientists and physios. So many non contact injuries, Richardson saying yesterday fitness was a problem. O'Connor doesn't miss a game for 4 years and then moves here and barely features.

It's not bad luck; broken legs, dislocated shouldes etc are bad luck. These are muscle strains and other internal injuries. We're doing something wrong.

[Hound]

I realise I’m a lone voice here but we score just as many without Marriott and our results are better

Obvs personally he’s done quite well so he’ll come back in, but he certainly isn’t a solution to our bigger problems and his lack of physicality himself will hinder us like the other 5ft 7inchers we seem to have collected


Fwiw I thought Kelvin, Lane and MoM (when Kelvin was on) all did well yesterday and threatened - lane put in some great crosses, Kelvin had a couple of very good efforts on goal and MoM scored a nice goal as well. We dropped off massively when Kelvin was subbed

If we’d had anyone of any use RW I think we’d have been really dangerous

We need a big strong striker who can bully a defender, hold the ball up and get on the end of crosses. Hopefully we have someone in mind in Jan

And I’ve no argument at all that we need Paudie and Williams back asap

[Hound]

Yeah it's been a bit of a come down since the Summer, the transfer business seemed solid, nothing spectacular but it seemed good enough but for whatever reason, the majority of the signings just haven't worked out and yeah, the loan signings have been pretty abysmal, would agree with sending them all back in January really and try and look for other options.

Loan signings not delivering, but also lots of injuries. Surely they need to be looking at the sports scientists and physios. So many non contact injuries, Richardson saying yesterday fitness was a problem. O'Connor doesn't miss a game for 4 years and then moves here and barely features.

It's not bad luck; broken legs, dislocated shouldes etc are bad luck. These are muscle strains and other internal injuries. We're doing something wrong.

We also signed 3 30+ players who a) haven’t play in England for years, b) didn’t have a preseason and c) hadn’t played 90 mins for over a year and probably not player many 90 mins previous to that as he was always a sub/subbed

Zero suprise they break down in a month

[Sutekh]

Issues then with insufficient warming up and warming down? But surely that’s the basics for any professional club and player these days?

[John Madejski's Wallet]

Only “agree” is on Danny K. Just cannot see anything there, people say he is quick, he simply isn’t, so not sure what he brings to the party.

Agree with this

He can get in the bin along with Jacob, who has no redeeming qualities as a LB

[From Despair To Where?]

I think Richardson will have learnt a hell of a lot more from that collapse than he would have from an insipid 2-0 or 2-1 win. He clearly nailed a lot of our problems from 120 minutes of football.

I'll take that as a crumb of comfort rather than a positive.