[bluepooch]

For the second game caught with a late sucker punch and in exactly the same way as last week .He takes Weir off and it leaves a space around the edge of the box and they fire in the winner .
My thoughts at this stage is that we are a mid table workmanlike team with a marked lack of creativity who we got carried away with after 3 wins in the first 3 games when in fact we weren't actually very good in those games .To be honest I was bored for long periods today .
One positive was the new keeper who kept us in it a few times and is certainly an improvement on Jalal.
My biggest concern is the central midfield pairing of Weston and Weir who tend to run about a lot but offer nothing going forward and not that much defensively.Brad Barry must be one of the worst town players I have ever seen and as I said before Talbot has had a poor start to the season .
I wont take anything away from Barnet though who are definitely better then their league position , a draw would have probably been a fair result.
Judging by the first 6 games we definitely wont be promoted unless there is significant improvement ,Allen admits its not good enough but is adamant we will improve ,we need to start seeint that improvement pretty quickly .We have all got carried away by his positivity but at the end of the day its what happens on the pitch that matters .

[Dancingwilldoit]

Blue, at least we agree (I think) that had Weir been on the field they wouldn't have scored.
Also thought Weston was poor today along with Barry and Talbot. The new keeper looked ok and Ugwu was unlucky with the one cleared off the line. He looked hungry when he came on. Rowley looked so lightweight I thought he was going to get blown away. He needs to bulk up for this league.
It was very tight today and if he hadn't brought on Muggleton we would probably have ended up with a point.
At least we don't just get rolled over like we did last season. We showed some nice little touches today but it just wasn't to be. I reckon we will win at Hartlepool and am sure MA well get it right

[Devongone]

In the Non-League Paper Weir got a 6, Muggleton a 7 for just ten minutes, Barry got a 5 (for playing out of position?).

From long-range it looks like very little has changed in the last three seasons, apart from that tinge of surrealism Caldwell added being replaced by boring sanity. We have a loanee keeper from a club whose first choice in that position I wouldn't recommend and an old one whose fitness is doubtful. Our centre back pairing is of of old and slow. We can't decide on our full backs, currently we're fielding a centre back there, and our full backs themselves don't seem able to retain their form anyway. The two major improvements to our midfield are both injured so we lined up with three ordinary thirty-pluses in those positions complemented by an apparently failed full-back. Up front our chosen centre forward didn't have much of a game and Hines has slipped easily into the Dennis role of being our only hope. No wonder Martin Allen seems incandescent, which in his case is dangerous as once his blue touch-paper is alight he is off elsewhere with sparks flying.

To add to the familiarity, note that last week Levi Amantchi was given the encouragement of a place on the bench. Midweek he scored three in a friendly. Rewarded by at least keeping his place in the squad? No. Is he he the next Ricardo German? A year down the line will we be reading about his hat trick for Blyth Spartans? Joe Rowley is already clearly progressing backwards, or being progressed that way.

Some of what has happened to Mr Allen's team has been unfortunate, some has been an appalling legacy, but the rest IS his fault. Clearly we desperately need Carter back, but unless he has a phone box to spin round in we need to recruit. More amazing still is that we recruited a guy who has grabbed 60 goals in two seasons at a lower level and we haven't fed him into a team that is struggling to score. (I assume we have now somehow managed to injure him as he wasn't among our subs.)

My hesitant response to the angry Mr Allen would be, if you don't want a bland team don't recruit and select one ......

[bluepooch]

Just seen the interview with MA where he says it was bland and boring .
Dear Martin ,
You've signed mainly bland and boring players !! what did you expect ??
Ill overlook the bland and boring if we win the game but don't make the excuse it was bland and boring like you didn't expect it .I haven't been too thrilled with any of the performances and if you're honest neither should you be .
Take Care .
Edit
Sorry Dev we seem to have posted simultaneously

[Devongone]

Fine Blue - we don't always agree, but HE DID put that team out there and make those substitutions.

My current suggestions would be there's a winger called Matt Briggs at Dorking. Last season top clubs were all eyeing him up but he got a serious facial injury in an on-field collision. He's in the second year of a two year contract at Dorking. He's 20/21. He scored yesterday. While he remains forgotten and before he reignites interest from bigger clubs swoop in with a bit of the Nolan money .....

If not him then Percy Kiangebeni seems to be in and out of favour at St Albans. He's young and needs to move forward now or he'll become a nobody. He can play midfield or defence, he can tackle, pass and score a few too. What more do we want?

Third suggestion would be Rowan Liburd. Guiseley can't decide whether they want him or not. I reckon he's a big, dangerous centre forward, with it in him to make EFL. He's mid twenties now, but so is Fondop-Talom at Wrexham and I suggested him before they grabbed him. Big Liburd went to college in America, has failed to make with several clubs, but at 6'5" I think we could use him.

We could of course decide to swallow our pride and try to get German or Hazel to come back .......... I was also wondering why we couldn't arrange a loan swap with Kiangebeni and Liburd for Sinnott and Smith who we are clearly never going to use.

On another vein why not start Muggleton at full back in home games? Anybody can deal with his throws once you've spent eighty minutes settling them into the game. When you don't want those throws booming in on you is the first fifteen minutes. Otherwise IMO that we might as well get rid of him at the earliest opportunity ...... we aren't showing any sign of originality in how to use him. Yes we're bland, boring and stereotyped, and that's the best way to keep a clean sheet in the opposition goal.

[Dancingwilldoit]

Muggleton hasn't got a tackle in him. It was him backing off that resulted in a goal yesterday. If he started at full back we could be 3 down before we won a throw in. Am not sure exactly where he should play but definitely not starting, too risky.

[spireitematt]

We are 6 games into the season, the Conference is a tough league, anybody who thought we would walk it or get promotion back into the Football League at the first time of asking needs a reality check. Only two teams I can think of which got straight back in the Football League at the first time of asking were Bristol Rovers and Cheltenham.

[SaltergateBorn]

Well, at least I can say what I really thought about this game without reading it through afterwards and wondering whether I`d been too negative. Clearly, we`re all of the same opinion.

I did something on Saturday that I`ve rarely done and always decried in others; I left ( along with may others, admittedly) as soon as their goal went in and spent the next hour and a bit driving back home wondering what words I could use to describe my feelings without getting prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act. I was also mulling over the fact that I`d wasted several quid on petrol to make a 120 odd mile round trip, a ticket and a balti pie; not to mention wasting an afternoon of my life that I`d never get back. In all honesty, I was too angry and frustrated to be bored.

Not much to say about the game itself that you haven`t already said. I don`t like slagging off individual players and, to be fair, I don`t think anybody played well. Zavon Hines did the best he could, perhaps, without any service whatsoever. I can`t remember Muggleton doing anything at all after he came on apart from 2 long throws, which is probably an indictment of his performance in itself, and I certainly wouldn`t play him from the start - not in that position, at least. Giving away 2 very similar goals in consecutive games a few minutes after replacing Weir does seem a remarkable coincidence, I agree. I honestly think MA made the change in an act of desperation in the hope that one of his long throws would create something.

To be fair, though, Barnet should really have been a couple up at least by then; all credit to the new `keeper for that. Sorry, Blue, I don`t agree that a draw would have been a fair result. I think that would have been a travesty, personally. Whether Barnet are really so much better than their position suggests or whether we were so bloody awful that we made them look good I really don`t know.

Anyway, it`s good that MA is angry and is taking the blame himself rather than coming out with a load of excuses ; he could have used the injuries as an excuse, but he didn`t. I respect him for that.

[Devongone]

Matt is right - this IS a tough League. I've been mouldering on about it for two years plus now. If you look at Div 2 you can pick a whole raft of teams who simply aren't going to challenge for the top, but down to the National, they're few and far between, teams are much of a muchness, being a bit prone to concede or being able to come up with a late goal can mean the difference between top and bottom.

Tackling and playing in midfield is MUCH more demanding than full-back, trust me. At full back everything is in front of you. Muggleton has played there quite a lot. If he is going to be good enough anywhere it's there - midfield is demanding, I don't think JBW is up to playing there either. At the moment we are using Muggleton for ONE thing only, last few minutes to rectify an inability to score with his throw. IMO it is a message to the opposition that you've run out of ammunition, you're going to start throwing stuff. Once you've spent 80 minutes heading stuff clear what is another two long throws ..... the time to catch teams out is in the first ten minutes of each half. Maybe the last few minutes of a game pressurise too, IF the opposition feel like our team, that they are supposed to win the game, and that's the other thing about bringing Muggleton on, our team immediately knows the manager ain't happy, they know he wants a goal and once they focus on that they concede one.

You need also to consider that Weir always tends to look as though he is struggling to complete 90 minutes. If MA leaves him on do we concede anyway because he can no longer cover the ground ......?

Barnet should at least make the play-offs if their team begins to match the individual ability of the players.

To me, our failings look to be:-

AGE: you need experience but we have too many important players at the very dog-end of their careers
GOAL POTENTIAL: Shaw is not in the team and Carter is injured, Gozie has scored goals, but you have to remember he was Woking's penalty taker, Zavon and Fortune have never really been known just for their goals
CRAFT/CREATIVITY: we lack in spotting a pass and playing it, beating men and seeing ways in on goal
DEFENSIVE CO-ORDINATION: we apparently showed it at Ebbsfleet and held them quite confidently, but since we have looked vulnerable.

It's a lot to get right. And the opposition is quite tough. Marcus Dinanga would make our starting line-up IMO, at Hartlepool he is coming on 90th minute to waste a bit of time. We need to be realistic. If we win today, it is a very good win!