[Devongone]

Dear Mr Parker,

You may be the best-dressed manager in football, but I'm afraid you need to apply some of your dress-sense to team selection the next time the FA Cup comes round. Anybody on this site who has noted my very ordinary predictive abilities will assure you that my insight falls way short of clairvoyance, but when I saw the eleven you had selected to represent Bournemouth trot out against Boreham Wood just one simple thought passed through my mind, if Boreham Wood can get a goal they'll win.

You clearly haven't bothered watching any National League football. Perhaps you were too busy on Oxford Street or Savile Row. Anyway your introduction has been a harsh one. Boreham Wood have a physically strong side, which can also play and which is exceptionally well-organised. Against them you sent out a set of players, who were not only clearly unfamiliar with playing together, but also in physical match-ups were going to lose out all over the field. You fielded a wing back too young and frail to consider shaving without his dad's presence to face a side known for its use of its own experienced wing backs. Up front you offered no threat whatsoever to Wood's big back three, and though out wide Charles was able to mount the merest semblance of a threat, he had nowhere to go and no one to go with him. In midfield your Bournemouth never looked like matching their opponent's solid experience and at the back Boden's hard work, backed up by the dangerous Ty Marsh and midfielders bursting forward were too much for a ponderously disorganised defence. Fielding a keeper, who neither filled his jumper, nor his role was your final masterstroke.

The better side won. They had to work hard to do it, but they were required to span a gulf of three entire divisions. The team you fielded was almost a calculated insult to the entire National League. The truth is any of the teams in the top half of that League would have been in with an excellent chance of doing what Boreham Wood did so effectively. Though your players lost the match out on the pitch you need to take on board that you lost it way before the kick-off. Luke Garrard expressed a desire to shadow you in your job. I think a little humble pie might be in order and a few days of you shadowing him would not go amiss. Earlier in the day a team you hope will finish below you in the Championship was capable of wiping the floor with a cup-holding Premier League team. That defeat you suffered will haunt even the players you chose not to put on the field and was a dire introduction to your club for new players, just as their success will increase the threat Forest pose.

You have now built a huge squad. Future opposition ought to fear you. Unfortunately none of them will. Boreham Wood have illustrated your extreme vulnerability.

[Lord Snooty]

We watched the whole of this match last night and thought the same as you, Dev. Even though you can make five subs in the Cup now, the damage was done well before the big guns came on.

Yes, Boreham Wood held on by the skin of their teeth at times, but it was well deserved.

From a Championship perspective, AFCB should walk this league. they're by far a better team than Fulham and all of us in the top half of the division hoping to make the Play Offs. But give them a few injuries and their reserve players don't look up to much at all.

[Devongone]

The last ten were a bit of a struggle for Wood, but they'd have been like that in the National League too. Chelsea played Chesterfield with a very strong side, and they got the benefit, a goal after four minutes and three more in the first half. They could rest players safely with that lead. True it didn't work out so well against Plymouth, but a team full of reserves might have gone two down and they might have gone out as well as being knackered for the World Team job.

If you can pick a team you are sure will win - FFS select it - you can lose often enough when you think you'll win, without deliberately sending out the dodgiest eleven on your books.

There were quite long periods of that game in which Bournemouth looked like the non-leaguers.

I can't say I'm with you Snoots on Bournemouth's superiority in the Championship. You could sell the entire Bournemouth squad and have barely enough to put in a worthwhile offer for Mitrovic and Carvalho. West Brom are convinced they needed their new manager, but in fact they just needed their players to do their jobs properly. If they REALLY played like Barnsley last season West Brom could hardly avoid pinching goals as Bournemouth play their ponderous way out of from the back. I think Bournemouth are okay-ish, but if they go up with anything like their current team they will be plumbing the all-time lows for Premiership points. Scott Parker was a very predictable player and his teams, like their manager, seem obsessed with hitting the repeat button. They were still dinking in little crosses for Boreham Wood to head clear in the dying minutes ......

[themaclad]

Boreham Wood were extremely well organised was impressed by them when I watched their victory at Halifax.