Mon Sept 17th 19:30 Three Rock -v- Fred West Ham

emc2

Disappointing result last night guys, We were like the Irish rugby team in the first half (all huffing and puffing) but showed a good bit of metal to take the game to them in the second half. We needed to test their goalie more (we really wasn't up to much) and needed to be talking alot more.

We also need to cut out the back chat to the Ref, with the exception of a few mistakes (the back pass etc) he's a big improvement on the last Ref we had a that pitch.

Savman

Normally I don't argue with or about the Ref, and he was fairly decent most of the time, but the Backpass fiasco followed by Ed's Yellow Card were the most ridiculous decisions I've seen in a long time. That's not to cover over the cracks in our own game, we were pretty much non existant last night but those 2 decisions just made it worse.
If Refs are gonna send players off for questioning the timewasting of the opposition then there'll be no players left on the pitch by the final whistle. Common sense should prevail and I thought the Ref lost it in the last 10mins for no apparent reason. ****ing backpass my arse. :mad:

Anyway, Gav scored a very good goal out of nothing and other than that we never really looked like scoring. Aaprt from a few flaps by their keeper and some half chances were were very much restriced to huffing and puffing as someone said already. In fairness, you have to give your opposition due credit when they take their chances at one end and defend well at the other, that's the only formula that will ever win you games.

But I wouldn't get too down in the dumps about one result, just a bad day at the office and we all have to "up" it next week.

Also on one issue, WHEN (not "if") we concede a goal can we stop this self pitying head drop that seemed to affect us yesterday. It's just a goal ffs, every team concedes them. I thought when we went 1-0 down, we expected to go 2-0 down and when we did we half expected the floodgates to open. Last week I was playing a Saturday game and we were losing 3-0 at half time, we scored 4 goals in the second half and were winning 4-3 before we ended up losing 5-4. My point is, a one or two goal margin is nothing to get deflated about. It only takes 5 seconds to score a goal and you can get a lucky break more often than you think.

So next time we go behind, get on with the game and keep the heads up. It's not like we were played off the park, they were a decent team but they didnt get many chances themselves and they had to fight for the win. In the end they were good for it, but I heard a few of them shouting at each other to just defend for last 5-10mins. They had no interest in going for a 3rd so shut up shop and got everyone behind the ball.

Apart from the lack of communication on the field, what was disappointing was that we couldn't string a pass together all night. Probably just sharpness or whatever but I'd rather we get beat trying to play football than playing hoofball and getting beat anyway.

FrankGrimes

Yep, quite a subdued performance last night lads for some reason. They were a slick team but we didn’t play anywhere near the level we played at towards the end of last season. If we limit that to one game and get back to what we do best – passing well while fighting hard when we lose it, then its just a blip. So let’s put it in from the very start next week to show that this was just rustiness.

There seemed to be too much distance between our 2 central midfielders, particularly in 2nd half, so they need to always be within 15 yards of each other, though the wingers should be tucking in more when we don’t have it to help with this. The 2nd goal came from a counter-attack – I left a layoff to Sav just a foot short and they got a foot to it and next thing its in our net 5 seconds later. That’s the margins between winning and losing – putting another foot on that layoff like I should’ve done and Sav might’ve buried it, though the attackers should be able to try things in the last 3rd without fear of losing it resulting in such a quick counter, though finding a balance between committing men forward and not leaving ourselves exposed is difficult. Strikers are still not doing enough of the basics of taking it in with back to goal, protecting it, and laying it off to bring midfield runners into the play – that doesn’t require much in terms of skill, but it does require the right decision-making and concentration.

We were strangely quiet across the pitch. I was quiet for 2nd half of first half cos I was struggling with the shin splints, but when I went off I noticed it was quiet across the board. We played better towards the end of last season when lads had played together for a few games in a row and were calling names and shouts much more, so lets make an effort to get that going. And yeh, ref made a few stupid calls, but overall he was better than last season’s joker, but either way the moaning just p*sses them off and is not gonna help us.

homerjay2005

these lads won again last night, 5-2, so at the early stage, they look the biggest challenge.

by the way Des, those fixtures on that site are different again...can you update the list please? from the site list, we have no game next week, it doesn make much sense to be honest.

maybe its worth checking it out

_blank_

homerjay2005 wrote:

these lads won again last night, 5-2, so at the early stage, they look the biggest challenge.

by the way Des, those fixtures on that site are different again...can you update the list please? from the site list, we have no game next week, it doesn make much sense to be honest.

maybe its worth checking it out

It does make sense.

There's only 4 games in our division each week, which means two teams lose out on a match some weeks, I've been in touch with Astro about this, it's right.

Yeah, when I get a spare minute I'll change our fixture list up there.

emc2

We should try and organise a training session mid week as well as at the weekend this week if there's no game, so that we keep up the momentum.