***Match Thread*** Tue 17/5 20:15 WES2 -v- FC Vaughans

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This will be a tough game lads, no doubts about that, get there early, get properly warmed up.

Clay - in
Conor - in
Keith - in
Gav - out
Jules - in
Ciaran - in
Martin - in
Gary - susp
Eamon - in
Kenny - in
Cathal - away
Eoin - in
Collie - in
Anto -out
Karl - in
Wes - in

Mall10357

I Am In

helimachoptor

Going to be a very tough game. The monks will most likely pick up 3 points so we'll need to make sure we dont lose ground on them and SMH are close behind so a bad result could see us drop to 3rd. As said lets get up get a proper warm up in, we started well last week so lets try to do it again.

FrankGrimes

In.

Spiritofthekop

If your short a player tonight pm mail me.

I play a good standard.

Thanks

J.

murtagh

What was the score lads?
Fearing the worst, good news is usually up the same night.

helimachoptor

2-1 loss. Went a goal up with Jules penalty. Got another penalty, missed by ciaran.

We played poorly but their 2 goals were bad decisions in my opinion. Martin tried to clear the ball but their guy went to head at the same time Martin gave him a blood nose and the ref gave a penalty.
Next goal one of their lads was all over Martin for a corner and knocked it in.

FrankGrimes

Our worst performance for some time, we rarely got the ball down to put passing moves together as we usually do.

Two reasons for that: 1) we were quite lethargic and across the board we didn't seem as hungry as usual and 2) our shape was off.

You could focus on the first part and just say 'we played sh1te' but that's looking more at the symptoms than the cause and it doesn't make us learn anything other than 'don't play sh1te'. If we don't that, we don't learn and improve from the defeat.

Or you could look at the root cause, which was clearly our shape - both distance between the defence and forward and laterally we weren't as compact as usual. Both served to stretch the game out, though with their long ball approach, it's understandable for defenders to have an inclination to set a bit deeper. But when we're reduced to playing long balls too, we need to do a bit more than just point it out, we need to ask why. It's because midfielders receiver options for defenders looking to pass the ball out of defence were in their own half and under pressure. If defence gambles on dealing with opposition long balls over the top and pushes up, those midfielders are now in the opposition half when receiving passes, so the next pass to a forward or in behind for a winger is only a 20-30yard ball, and the distance to forwards is also doable without a long ball.

We had a very similar game almost at the exact stage last season and it was the turning point as from then on everyone fully bought into the idea of pushing forward regardless of the opposition threat and it served us very well. There's no denying several of us did play sh1te last night, but there's a lot more than that to it when it was so widespread.

The above in no way criticises any individual and one point we all need to seriously take onboard is not to take constructive observations personally and react defensively. We have a tendency to do this both during play and afterwards: everyone in this squad clearly has the best intent of the team in mind so don't feel the need to react to an observation, digest it, if you agree with it, take it onboard, if you don't agree with it, raise it later rather than in the heat of the moment.

Foot to head or head to foot - either way, when a fella walks away with a bloody nose you can hardly call it the most outrageous peno decision ever, we've all seen them given and not given. Their 2nd goal was an absolutely blatant two-handed push on Martin. This happens, but our over-the-top reactions to referees needs to stop, it doesn't help. We had the chances in the 1st half to kill the game off, so those decisions should have been irrelevant if we'd played better ourselves.

This will be a blip if we respond to it correctly, we're still the best team in this league.