Yes Hump's injury .... and Hartlepool speculation may have affected team balance too. The disadvantage of a player of Hump's age is pace and stamina start to decline, but the advantage is he's spent 20 years absorbing the pro-game and can see what's going wrong and react ...... Some players just are team players - maybe Boco and Humphreys are examples - who enable the stars to shine. O'Shea is never going to be a team player, but he can sometimes win games. Roberts doesn't change clubs only because he's a wanted item - he does it because his obvious talents don't always make the team better.
All those crosses interest me. It may be prejudice on my part based on either Jones making them or my own amateurish experience goalkeeping, but a right-footed cross from the right wing, or left from left, never caused me any panic. I was tall, I could catch, if the ball found a player's head, anticpating the header was relatively straightforward. If the player cut inside it was a whole other world. He could change to his left foot and cross an inswinger, shoot with either foot, or lay a simple ball inside for someone to run onto which changed the whole angle of play. If I found meat-and-drink crosses relatively easy how many keepers and centre backs at pro' level feel the same? Obviously Yeovil's for a start, 24, and they didn't concede.
Before the season I burbled on about the potential advantge Darikwa could provide. He spent a lot of his playing life as a forward. He must still retain those instincts. Even from full back I think he should be being told to focus on goal, get inside, get into the box, fire in shots and crosses from there, even win penalties. A player who gets into the corner of the box is awkward to defend against and if the midfield are there in support any defence will struggle. Once a defence is pressurised you'll know yourself that's when your centre forward can lose his marker.
It's not that I think Dancing is wrong about Doyle being muscled out of it. What's wrong is that the opposition muscling him out stops us scoring. We aren't giving them enough different things to cope with. If we were they would no longer be able to concentrate on stopping Doyle. Scoring goals, like stopping them, is a team thing ......... and it is perfectly possible to stop conceding, because you have limited your own opportunities to score. Cookie has to adjust our balance and maybe the best eleven players are not our best team.
All those crosses interest me. It may be prejudice on my part based on either Jones making them or my own amateurish experience goalkeeping, but a right-footed cross from the right wing, or left from left, never caused me any panic. I was tall, I could catch, if the ball found a player's head, anticpating the header was relatively straightforward. If the player cut inside it was a whole other world. He could change to his left foot and cross an inswinger, shoot with either foot, or lay a simple ball inside for someone to run onto which changed the whole angle of play. If I found meat-and-drink crosses relatively easy how many keepers and centre backs at pro' level feel the same? Obviously Yeovil's for a start, 24, and they didn't concede.
Before the season I burbled on about the potential advantge Darikwa could provide. He spent a lot of his playing life as a forward. He must still retain those instincts. Even from full back I think he should be being told to focus on goal, get inside, get into the box, fire in shots and crosses from there, even win penalties. A player who gets into the corner of the box is awkward to defend against and if the midfield are there in support any defence will struggle. Once a defence is pressurised you'll know yourself that's when your centre forward can lose his marker.
It's not that I think Dancing is wrong about Doyle being muscled out of it. What's wrong is that the opposition muscling him out stops us scoring. We aren't giving them enough different things to cope with. If we were they would no longer be able to concentrate on stopping Doyle. Scoring goals, like stopping them, is a team thing ......... and it is perfectly possible to stop conceding, because you have limited your own opportunities to score. Cookie has to adjust our balance and maybe the best eleven players are not our best team.