Martin Shaw wrote:BH_Stag wrote:Martin Shaw wrote:I don't agree that the substitution of Maynard, bringing on Hamilton after 75 minutes, had any impact on the result. In principle, it seemed a reasonable change to me, with Hamilton's pace to run at the defence in the latter stages. Unfortunately it was the substitution of Clarke on for Riley (Riley I think off with some kind of groin strain or something like that) which did have an impact as it looked to me like it was Clarke who lost his man Kenyon who knocked in the equaliser.
It may not have had a direct impact on the goal incident itself, but I do think the sub invited pressure. It achieved nothing and we didn’t learn our lesson from just 7 days ago. Twice now as soon as he’s left the pitch we’ve been really poor at seeing the game out because we are just letting teams come on to us. Today they gradually built pressure until they scored and once they did they could have easily scored again, they didn’t have to worry about any attacking threat from us. They had no choice but to go for it anyway of course, but they could do so in the knowledge we were now toothless up top. We barely entered their half after that sub, that’s no coincidence cor me.
I mentioned in commentary when Maynard came off that he was basically getting no service at all all afternoon, save for one brilliant cross from Riley. The principle of having Hamilton run at them and get in behind them was reasonable I think. More of a problem in my opinion was that the midfield, especially Charsley and Tomlinson, didn't have good games. Bishop did at least get quite a few good tackles in in the second half.
I agree that bringing CJ on to get behind them is a good idea. Where it falls down though is facilitating it by taking off the only player capable of converting the fruits of CJ getting behind them. If that was to be the tactic it should have been Rose going off. Maynard is also more capable of keeping up with CJ when he gets behind them, unfortunately Rose isn't.
The whole team seems unbalanced at the moment and maybe that is the root of the problem, reasonable players but not together.
Hello! Hello! We are the North Stand Boys.