Bath (A) PL.

[Mark Neal]

Bath City 1-3 Oxford City. For the 3rd season in a row
Att 456.

[Padz]

2-1 Ox City, 446

[shutler]

Bath 1 - 2 Ox, att 401

[exile]

1-1
Attendance: 520

[Joe]

Football is an unpredictable sport but there was a sense of inevitability about this result they are very naive in defence

[hedges]

The galling thing is we conceded from another freaking Set-piece...seriously how difficult is it to defend set-pieces? All teams are going to concede a number of set pieces over a course of a season but the amount we are conceding shows complete ineptitude.

Why is that?

We don't have the most experienced team but most of the players are experienced at this level, we don't have the tallest or strongest team but Hendo, Fleet, Oastler, Patterson are all around 6ft+ even Poku (not the tallest but is strong as an Ox and has a decent leap of the Wayne Blossom mold).. Should all be able to head away high balls and command the Box....especially since we also have Jack Stevens who is obviously a good Keeper and is tall as well....more so than Hill....Perhaps my minor criticism of Hill over his ability to command is box is unfounded as the problems have not gone away.

There was fair optimism at the start of the season....for me a play-off push but the fact is we are seemingly failing on the Basics....if you halve the goals Patterson has scored...the thing thats keeping us above water...we would probably be vying with Whitehawk for the bottom berth....but reverse that and Half the amount of goals we have conceeded from Set pieces then we would be sitting Mid table at least....even with the odd naive goal we concede...like that shambles of a Freekick on Saturday that lead to their winner.

I might regret saying this....While its nice to see free flowing football, im almost at that point of wanting to see a good defensive back to the wall performance...every highball into the box headed or smashed into Row Z...no dillying around with this passing it out from the back...just get the thing out and secure a couple of clean sheets and build from there.

[ChrisB]

Yes, same number of points (7) after nine matches as last season: I think I expected (hoped for) more this time around.

[Rijs]

Bath are becoming experts in coming back from a goal behind. We are reversing this. We can defend well enough for a while but can't keep it up for 90 minutes. But it's not just about defence: we are not scoring enough at the other end either. On Saturday, Braintree looked much more dangerous on the break in the second half than we did. Is that just because our defence was not tight enough on them, or got caught out of position, or was too slow? Or was it because we lacked penetration up front? We had them on the run early on before they settled on our pitch, but after that they looked comfortable and grew in confidence. If we'd added a second goal in either game when 1-0 up, we would probably have gone on to win, or at least draw, and two or four points in those matches would have been a good return.
I feel we are not far off, but are starting to lose confidence. Bath have the attitude that it's not the end when they concede, they believe they'll come back.

[toocoulson4schoolson]

Last night hurt.

We hd a very strong first half. We had a touch of luck for the goal but then came very close to doubling the lead a few minutes later, Fleet was just unfortunate that the chance fell on his left. There had been a bit of a theme of chances falling to the wrong player, Jones had been clean through earlier and seemed to panic, but we were making chances. In defence we looked reasonably assured: they were putting a lot of crosses into their big players but we were dealing with them and even though they looked dangerous on the break Stevens barely had a save to make.

As soon as their first went in we crumbled. It wasn't a particularly bad goal to concede, just a good near post corner and a solid header. The second was much poorer: Poku got closed down on the ball and was heading back towards his own goal, played a sloppy ball square instead of going home and they stole in to score easily. After that we never looked like scoring. We were launching balls into the box but their 'keeper was confident off of his line and their defenders easily had the height over all of our players.

[ChrisB]

In the absence of much else...a link to what looks like an even-handed report on the BCFC site: CLICK HERE.

[Padz]

It's frustrating because as mark has said, and the Bath manager says we are outplaying teams but any small lapse by us is getting punished and it's all well and good playing attractive football but it's a results business.

I'd take an ugly 1-0 win over East Thurrock to boost our confidence, however I really think we need Hirst/Bennett or Forde playing as a partner for Matt, he's a decent forward but the lone role doesn't suit him in the way it did Jefferson Louis, he's not a hold up player imo but I think he'd thrive in a front 2

[shutler]

Unfortunately didn't manage to make the game, but by the sounds of it, defence is our problem and will be for me until we bring in a couple of big hulking no nonsense central defenders, we are just too lightweight. Oastler is quality, the young lad from Pompey could be a good right back, but for me, every other defensive position is up for grabs. Hendo has had a terrible start to the season and Poks got robbed again Tuesday night.

As for the strikers, Pato's a goal scorer - he wants the ball down the channels - he's not as you say Padz a hold up player, but looking at his wiki page and on the H&W message board, he's always thrived when he's got a partner - especially at Gosport where he and Bennett scored an incredible 60 goals between them! So for me just as importantly as shoring up the defence, getting Pato and Bennett together on the pitch is paramount.

Good thing is we're not getting battered (Dartford apart) and there's nothing between us and the teams that have beaten us, just a run of a couple of decent results and I recon the luck will start to go our way

[toocoulson4schoolson]

Sept 7, 2017 11:01:27 GMT ChrisB said:

In the absence of much else...a link to what looks like an even-handed report on the BCFC site: CLICK HERE.

Unfortunately the long run home and work the next morning stopped me doing a report, glad that theirs is well written !