When a player has a bad game, in good football clubs we rally round. We chant their names on the terraces, behind the scenes they get a cuddle, it's always been that way. It's much harder when the whole team is as bad as they were yesterday. Who's name do you chant? who do you cuddle first?
Let's be clear here. The players will know it and the manager will know it already, but this was a truly awful performance. It was absolutely desperate with barely a single redeeming feature. We were passionless, totally clueless and what's more our football was utterly bereft of joy. Against a bang average opponent who had little to play for, we were outfought, outthought and outplayed throughout the whole ninety minutes. Our fans ironically sang that we were "coming for" the franchise, but I dread to think what the score will be if we serve up anything resembling this shambles.
We conceded what will no doubt be described (by us) as a poor goal after a few minutes. Defensively it wasn't great (are conceded goals ever?) but it was an interesting one to win the game anyway, a good case study if you like. You can see the goal here:
https://www.skysports.com/football/video/26947/13080346/doncaster-1-0-afc-wimbledon-league-two-highlights
You'll note that the left back skims it TO FEET into the central midfielder, he squares it to the rushing left midfielder, he makes ground before slipping in the striker who scores. It's not exactly Pep Guardiola or total football of the Dutch in the seventies, but at least it's football. Even if you look closely, at the actual ball itself, there is no snow on it. Contrast that with us. There were aeroplanes from Leeds Bradford being diverted each time we briefly had the ball, we were completely lacking in the fusion and movement we saw earlier in the season. Quite why that has happened I've absolutely no idea, but we cut a very confused and confusing shape right now.
If we had a Kyle Hudlin up top, I wouldn't agree with the way we're playing but I could sort of understand it. If we had midfielders who bust a gut to get box to box, tall athletic lads who were within 10 paces of the football all game, I'd understand it. If we had a lightening quick front man who was bursting to get half a yard and then sprint away for flick ons, maybe. But we don't do we? We don't really have any of those things. Nor do we have pacey centre halves who can compress the play into the opponents half after we've launched it. We don't have a style of play nor coaches which are brave enough to bomb both full backs on. If we even had SOME of this stuff, I'd understand what we are trying to do, but we don't. We end up with our defensive line barely getting ten paces beyond the edge of our box, us launching it to give the ball away, then our opponents playing through our stretched lines and dominating the game. It is an utter shambles, and surely this is not what we are a talking about trying to do before we go out to play?
It isn't just the one game either. The home games against Morecambe and Crawley both had extensive spells of it, here it was practically the whole 90. Maybe that's it? Maybe it's just that here were behind for the whole game so we got progressively worse?
I don't know. I run a pub not a football club, but we need to change up our mindset and sharpish. There are already "tell me again why we extended the contract" murmurs amongst the fans, it'll get worse if we play anything like this at the weekend.
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