Gloucester ( Home )

[clive]

City win 3-1 ( att : 301 )

[exile]

City to win 2-0
Attendance 310

[Mark Neal]

Oxford City 4-0. Att 231

[shutler]

2-1 City win, Pato and Zac with the goals att 278

[Padz]

They were poor Monday and we should really win comfortably, saying that, this is City, so i’ll go 2-1, 294

[exile]

Is anyone posting scores on twitter today? We seem to be at 1-1 but I dont know who scored for us.

[exile]

Error by Flashscores, more's the pity!

[Logistics]

Well....What can be said after that!

First Half can probably go down as one of the worst halves we've played this season, and think we did quite a good job of making them look half decent! Certainly didn't help ourselves with the goals, the free kick perhaps should have been headed away, but the last two we couldn't have presented any nicer to them really. 
 
I thought we were slightly improved second half, and may have had a chance to get back into it if we hadn't conceded so close to the break. The third was a real hammer blow as that extinguished the faint hope we may have still had! Would have liked to see Ezra come on a bit earlier while there was still time.

Anyway, Hungerford next, and I'm sure this will all be forgotten with a positive result there! 

[toocoulson4schoolson]

I guess if we're going to make big, costly mistakes at the back we may as well make them all in one game.

Gloucester did look pretty good for that opening 15 minutes but beyond that we've worked very hard to make them seem competent.

The first goal comes from Freddie Grant having gotten a copy of Christian Oxlade-Chamberlain's 'Big Book of Defending Crosses' for Christmas which teaches us that being goalside of the attacker is not only optional but actively discouraged. From there, otherwise solid players have made ridiculous errors at the back to gift them the other two.

Gods made an impact when he came on, as you would expect, and Oxlade-Chamberlain had one of his better games for us - largely due to playing as a winger. Obviously, if Portsmouth ask he was totally playing as a defender. Forde didn't make a huge differene but what can you expect from a 12 minute cameo at 3-0 down? Get him on at half time and maybe the whole game looks different.

Its a stupid way to end what has been a really good run for us, one where we have been able to play poorly and still come away with points when necessary, but hopefully something has been learned from it.

On the bright side, it was quite charming to see their 'keeper so delighted with the win. He seemed like a nice guy.

[OWHH]

Have not read comments above...
Here we go....WTF.... Captain dropped to bench.
And FFS don't look at this board to drop Chamberlain..
Because he had a bad game, at Evesham, people forget
How well he has played and his strength against
Big players....

Gloucester wanted to win the game which must have been a huge surprise.
As they were in dire straights.... Nothing mores to say!

[OWHH]

Well..
Happy New year!

[toocoulson4schoolson]

Praise for Oxlade-Chamberlain? A bold strategy to say the least...

[OWHH]

Don't get me started if only we made our last substitute on 95 when We had the goal kick against Notts Country and 5 added mins had passed!
You don't take chances when your All in. Poker phrase...

[OWHH]

If it is working dont change it.
We did. And it was pants.....
Yeah I know Mr Chamberlain was on the pitch, but Formation.
With Poku they were a formidable challenge for two very good division Two clubs... But maybe it was a dream as I descend down the rabbit hole.

[Rijs]

Just listened to Jonah's post match interview. As always, his assessment was accurate, but he did not explain the dropping of Poku, which was surely one reason why we lacked mojo in the first hour. I think we were also a bit complacent going into this. Jonah said he didn't see it coming, but we've seen it so often before that we play well with our backs to the wall against better teams, but when we expect to win just by sending the shirts out, we lose. We can all see what a close division this is, and Gloucester are not as bad as they seemed on Boxing Day when they had an off day. They were up for it, desperate for a good start to 2018 after a bad end last year, and they were the better team, defending in numbers and breaking quickly. That said, poor defending today made it easy for them.

We shouldn't be too hard on the lads who have delivered for us for the past two months, which were brilliant, but several didn't look like they wanted the ball today. Apart from some sloppy defending, we didn't use the width of the pitch. Dave Pearce must have been frustrated by the number of times he had space down the left but the ball wasn't passed to him. You could see people like Reece Fleet looking to get the ball down the right wing, but for the first 25 minutes Eddie Jones made no forward runs. When he then began to, it was more promising, and when Oxlade-Chamberlain came on he was brushing past defenders for fun, but he too was guilty of holding back deep at times when we needed him to press and make the wide run. Perhaps he could see that the midfield wanted to keep trying to go through the crowded middle. That tactic only works, of course, when the opposition are not getting many players back behind the ball, but it wouldn't have worked today even if we'd had an extra hour. And Patterson was outnumbered there; as others have said, Forde should have been introduced earlier to give him a chance of making an impression.

The deeper problem --and it's why I think we are going to be in this relegation battle till the end --is our lack of a big central defender as cover or competition for Hendo, who has only been able to play 9 times this season and may not get many more. Cristian Navarro is a reasonably solid left back who has been forced to put in a shift down the middle, and to his credit he hasn't done badly, but he lacks a bit of height and presence there, so (especially if the normally impressive Joe Oastler has an off day, as he did today), we look vulnerable. That means we have to cover for that by playing two defensive, ball-winning midfielders, and this has worked well these past two months since Mo returned from injury--but today one of them was inexplicably omitted (though perhaps there was a good reason we don't know). When we lose an early goal and feel a bit nervous about what is behind, the attacking midfielders start to worry about losing the ball, and instead they lose the confidence to run at defenders, something Zac and Robbie have profited from recently. The next stage is we lose confidence and ideas generally, starting to play narrow and then giving the ball away.

Our squad is necessarily small but with Hendo out and some suspensions looming, this thinness at the back is a concern. Neither Jones not Oxlade-Chamberlain are at their best at right back, and Poku's strengths are rather wasted there. Freddie is, like many of the younger players, unpredictable in form, and Cristian is needed elsewhere. Mo, as we saw today, is not a central defender, but both he and Godfrey have been asked to cover there. The squad is unbalanced, with a lot of midfielders and a dearth of defenders. Because Jonah sees the need to play two screens in front of his suspect defence, he then has to choose between width with Pearce or long-passing ability with Fleet, in order to keep both Sinclair and McEachran on to give some support to Patterson. If he introduces Forde or Hirst, which we can see would help Pato, he then has to sacrifice two midfielders, such as Fleet and Pearce or McEachran, none of whom would be happy to be fixtures on the bench.

Let's hope today was a blip rather than a sign of trouble ahead. On the positive side, a performance like that makes it less likely we'll lose anyone in the League's January transfer window!

[OWHH]

Sounds like your striping a car down to its shell.
There is a formation that has worked for 8 games.

To me the difference between today and Hampton at home was.
1) Huge hole from centre half to Mids. No Captain leading
Hendo injured. Poku seemed to be wandering around in his tracksuit looking almost as angry as I was.

2) Completely out of sorts . long balls going nowhere,
Route one blocked off and little alternative, but when through on goal
Cross back in the hope Robbie might turn it in to his own net or we might get someone in a position of threat..... Good Grief!

[Rijs]

All credit to the Shed Enders who tried to give support even when we were 0-2 down.

And hey, the players are only human and they aren't always going to play with the intensity we'd like to see.

[shutler]

Just didn’t get the team selection. Why drop our Captain and leave on the bench our best outlet on the right? I was also very surprised to see Fleet start, thought he was poor at Gloucester.

I suppose this is what Jonah gets paid for but swapping about a winning team seems extremely poor judgement.

We were bullied all over the park. Grant just winds me up, nonchalant passing drives me mental!! Zac was doubled up on and (already mentioned) when Pearce found himself free he never got the ball. When Pato did win a ball he had to chase after it himself because he had absolutely no support.

Very, very disappointing ☹️

[Rijs]

It would be good to know why Godfrey didn't start. I notice he was substituted on Boxing Day -- maybe not fully fit? But he looked fine when he came on. As OWHH noted, he didn't sit on the bench in the first half, but disappeared off into the Arena.

Freddie was off his game and was rightly taken off, but we must recall how well he had been playing before that. He had a poor start to the season but he seemed to learn from that experience and he wants to improve. Overall he has been better this season than last, and if he goes on learning he will be a really good full back, at least at this level, in a year or two. Reece, too, has done well this season and is, with Joe, our best ball passer. He does try to switch the play sometimes and he is comfortable on the ball.

There's only a 10% difference between a poor display and a good one -- the other 90% of what the players do is pretty much the same from match to match in my opinion, but if you take out the best 10% and replace it with 10% of rubbish it makes a huge difference to the outcome. We may bounce back on Saturday, though the pitch at Hungerford will not help.