[bluepooch]

He's getting a battering on Bobs board .
Tonight was yet another performance which shows have far we have come in a short space of time ,very comfortable and should have been at least 6 .i know they only had ten men for 40 mins but we played the game tactically to perfection ,hitting them on the break with ease and it was only the final ball which prevented us racking up a big score .BW at fault for their first although did ok going forward ,maybe hes better higher up the pitch .
Man of the Match was between Dennis and Mccourt although Evo was great .None were below 7 out of ten which is what we need every week to get up that table .
Onto Saturday and I'm quite confident for the simple reason we are not easy to beat under Jack and he knows what the game means to the fans and will have us up for it.Having said that I would take a draw to keep the unbeaten run going and not lose the bragging rights

[spireitematt]

Just read what he said on Bob's Board. I didn't go but looking at the stats it sounds like we controlled the game and were all over them, a win is a win and its 3 pts on the board to getting out of the relegation zone and its the first time we've won back to back matches in 361 days but Dancing does have a valid point lets say if the score remained at 2-1 then FGR's 2nd goal would have nicked a point for them. When your playing a team which is down to ten men you shouldn't let them score once never mind twice.

I also think we should be grounded and enjoy this unbeaten run of form under Jack and lets hope it continues but I don't think we should get carried like I've seen people talking on social media about playoffs etc. The worry for me is Dennis has scored 12 goals in all competitions and he's our top goalscorer and has scored the majority of the team goals, now he will be attracting attention from Championship clubs and so will Rowley now if we sell them in January and don't replace them and don't get a replacement for Tommy then we've got problems and could easily fall back into the bottom two.

[Dancingwilldoit]

I was fuming last night, yes we played well and should have scored a lot more but we didn't. We scored 3, we then sat back and decided to piss about with the ball at the back inviting them on. Now everybody that goes regularly to town games knows full well that we are simply not good enough to play possession football at the back and that was Caldwells downfall. But our players obviously think differently and almost cost us a win. Yeah great back to back wins but we were lucky on Sat and I thought we rode our luck last night. To give 2 goals away to 10 men in my mind is just criminal. We had their defence all over the place when we attacked and took advantage of the extra man and yes it could have been 6 or more but it wasn't 6 it was 3 and we shouldn't have sat back IMO. Our goal difference is -14, other than Forrest Green, nobody near us in the Lge is anywhere near as bad so why not just go for gold and try to score a few more? We had them on the ropes and then just went defensive after our 3rd goal. If things don't improve and we end going down on goal difference last night will be why. Some of our balls across the back were suicidal but we managed to get away with them but there really was no need.
Yes Blue, massive improvements but why is it we never seem to be able to take advantage of a 10 man team and yet when the tables are turned we get walked over?

[themaclad]

Wins breed confidence also getting a new manager does not automatically mean an instant up turn in form takes time. My lads have just lost four on the bounce but a draw and a win gets people feeling better. Think you will be OK this season but you have to keep the faith when things are not going well.

[Devongone]

The good things about Dennis are he's a bit long in the tooth anyway, and selling him would be almost a commitment to non-league football, which might scare even AC.

Last night we beat one of the form sides in the division. We scored three in a game (without German or Brewster in the team which hasn't seemed like happening for a long time.)

We conceded two to one of the most dangerous players in the division, but we played with a central defensive pairing I still think impossible long-term without a very defensive midfielder ......... but Jack Lester does seem to be making it possible. The game is about conceding fewer than you score after all.

I think Dancing's criticisms are valid. I'm sure everything he says is true. But you do have to remember where this "team" has come from. It couldn't score, couldn't stop conceding, and although it tried to retain possession it usually managed less than 50% on the stats. The prospect of drawing with Swindon, and beating Exeter and Forest Green could hardly have been more distant.

I keep reiterating we can't treat Jack as if he were a Messiah, but even I think it is pretty near roll-away-the-stone time that he has shaped such a dysfunctional squad into a viable unit. I still think it is unreasonable to expect that they will come out and get everything right. BUT, I'd bet that like Dancing, Jack Lester is aware of the failings and is even angry that certain mistakes keep reappearing to haunt him. AND you do have to remember there are two sides out there and sometimes the opposition adapt and change too; ask Liverpool (who could have predicted that Sevilla's manager's half-time team talk would be, "I'm suffering from Prostate Cancer"?)

We are going to get things wrong. The other teams round us in the division are all going to win sometimes too ........ We can't expect our improvement to plot a sweeping upward curve on the graph. But let's savour the positives - Dennis's goals, our new-found ability to score now that CO'G isn't leading our attack, Evatt stepping up to the plate so bravely, Jak McCourt who came to us as a defensively-based combative midfielder who seemed all heart and no head and who had only ever scored one goal ....... and now he is attacking, adding an extra dimension to our play and is confident enough to have a crack from anywhere ...... and his success seems to be allowing Kellett and Reed to show aspects of their play they were keeping under wraps.

A critique such as Dancing's is valuable, but it is a giant stride to be thinking BEFORE the Mansfield match that at least we have a chance. The big difference now is that we do have ways to win. Previously we had none, and there are always plenty of ways to lose.

---

Wins breed confidence also getting a new manager does not automatically mean an instant up turn in form takes time. My lads have just lost four on the bounce but a draw and a win gets people feeling better. Think you will be OK this season but you have to keep the faith when things are not going well.

This is so true. In football you often win despite having done loads of stuff wrong. And when you win you become more likely to win again, but almost everybody would like to win too ........

My opinion of Gary Caldwell was that he concentrated on how we played and entirely neglected the goals at each end of the pitch. Consequently we had no real concept of how to break down the opposition, and weren't very good at stopping them either. We played as if a panel of judges were going to assess the winner, like ice dancing .......

Only when he became desperate and parked the bus at Swindon did we seem to have a clear plan of how what we were doing might achieve a result.

[bluepooch]

Dancing,how you can say we rode our luck is incredible .19 shots to their 3 .We battered them and should have won 6-2 ,it wasn't down to luck at all.it was down to poor decision making in the final 3rd and errors at the back .BW was at fault for the first he should have cut out the through ball and instead prodded at it tamely with his left foot .He was being hailed as the saviour by some but the jury is still out for me ,he did ok but would like to see more both defensively and attacking wise.Having a good engine is all well and good but you need to be good with the ball as well.The second goal was a decent poachers header by their top scorer and one of the top scorers in League Two .However,to criticise us after that is very harsh .
Dennis will be the subject of quite a bit of interest, he is improving at the age of 27 and clubs will be sniffing. We will have a price for him but I'm hoping Jack and the new CEO will have an influence and we can keep him .

[Dancingwilldoit]

Blue, I wasn't criticising the performance I was criticising the way we took our foot off the gas in the way we did. If you can honestly sit at home now and tell me you were not jittery in the last 10mins then you must be the only fan in the ground that wasn't. Everybody sat around me was shouting to get the ball upfield.
Re luck Blue, at one stage Evatt passed a ball across from one side of the field to Hird on the other, the ball passed within 3 foot of their forward who fortunately had his weight on the other side as he was moving backwards. If he had gotten hold of it and he very nearly did he would have had a simple goal.
Look at your stats, we had 19 shots and scored 3 they had 3 and scored 2, does that not tell you something? Our defence and Anyon nees a bullet up the jacksy for gifting them 2 goals.

[bluepooch]

Its clear Jack wants to play possession football but not in the Caldwell way where we had possession for possession's sake .He likes the players to play with a purpose and alluded in his interview to the fact we were passing it around in front of them too much last night .It seems the modern way I'm afraid with the keeper acting as sweeper .However no one can grumble with 19 shots and 3 goals ,I'd take that every game.We need to cut out the silly mistakes like the BW one, they are easily preventable.

[Devongone]

Poor old Binnom-Williams got better and better in our supporters' eyes simply by not playing. Tuesday was his second proper outing since the trip to Portugal. I think he got 10 first team games last season. He's very inexperienced and he's been injured a lot. Did we think he would come in and be the Division 2 Paul Pogba? We can expect him to make a mistake or two, he will if we play him further forward too ........ but they'll cause an attack to break down rather than a goal to be conceded.

It's hard to distinguish between taking your foot off the gas and closing out a game like the Italians. Last ten minutes they'll play possession, slow the game down, waste time and expend very little energy doing that. They will however close the opposition down very effectively when they lose the ball. Now the fact that Forest Green only managed three efforts on goal in the whole game suggests we didn't do a bad job of stifling a lively attacking force.

Getting the ball forward can be an effective way of keeping the opposition from your goal, BUT it is often the most certain way of giving them the ball back. If you get the ball upfield in these circumstances you have to be capable of holding onto it ....... or speeding away to score another goal because you have sucked the defence forward. Do either of those sound like us?

[bluepooch]

I know they only had 10 men but honestly on Tuesday we looked like we could have scored every time went forward.It looked easy if Im honest and yes it could have been 3-3 but it would have been a travesty and if we play like that every week you would think law of averages says we would score more and make less defensive mistakes .Of course Saturday will be a totally different game and we may well come under heavy pressure so it will be interesting to see how the defence stands up.