menzinho

The ref had the worst performance of the night, closely followed by us and then Barrow. It was just a bad game of football that I really want to forget quickly. No idea what the goal was ruled out for in the end, some Barrow players were appealing for offside others looked they were saying it hit someone’s arm… It was just desperation. And how Barrow didn’t get a single yellow card for their time wasting in the second half was just mind-boggling. But in a game where the opposition lacked any real quality, we just didn’t do anything until we went 2-0 down and in the end we just ran out of time. For 60 minutes prior it was far too slow and the repetition of passing the ball to feet over and over to just put a hopeful cross in was painful. To lose that game is so discouraging, especially when our recent home performances have been so lacklustre in recent weeks too. We are lucky in a sense that from all the other matches only Bradford won, everyone else in the top 8 dropped points… That said, at the moment this doesn't feel like a team that is going to finish in the top 3.

I'd be surprised if Cameron was allowed to play to be honest, I've no idea what the rules are but I can't see why we'd want to potentially cause ourselves a bit of a nightmare. Like @Fan of Big Tone says imagine if he plays, does well and even scores it'll have seriously backfired for us and he's technically our player so he should only be benefiting us really. I do think given the little run of games we've got coming up where we'll play 4 teams in the top 10 (Wimbledon, Grimsby, Chesterfield, Crewe) a win here is much needed as I'm fully prepared for us to drop points after it. I agree with @Robbie too I think it's time to give Traore a start here, I think him and Whitaker in behind Jatta will cause all sorts of problems for Barrow. Maybe a touch to early for Jodi and Macari to start though, but I'll be pleased if either of them do.

I think if a keeper drops the ball and picks it back up it’s an indirect free-kick isn’t it? They can bounce it but I think that’s it. Could be wrong though. I quite like the idea and let’s be honest it probably benefits us, it’s one way of combating all the teams who do just constantly time waste and try to play as little football as possible. I’d go one step further though, if they do it twice in a match the punishment should be a penalty, three times and a goal is awarded! Maybe I’m getting a bit carried away here... 🤪

I agree with @liampie in that I think Scott Lindsey is a decent coach for a League 2 team and that’s about it. I think MK got a bit blinded by how well Crawley played against them against in the play-offs. When you look at the big picture under Lindsey, they did well but they weren’t amazing, they lost 18 matches that season and only made it into the play-offs by a point. Again I’m amazed at how many League 2 clubs are so badly run, like devoid of basic thought and zero foresight. Why do you spend the whole window signing a load of his ex-Crawley players specifically for him and his way of playing only to then dump him? They aren’t short of money at MK now but the words chucking and drain come to mind.

Hull 2-1 Plymouth Preston 2-0 Swansea Charlton 1-2 Barnsley Mansfield 1-1 Wigan Colchester 1-0 Chesterfield Newport 0-0 Gillingham Aldershot 2-2 Dagenham Solihull 1-3 Sutton 🤡

It does feel like he is our emergency/last choice centre back. Macari is back now and letting him go now would suggest to me McDonald's injury isn't that serious either. I hope he does well at Solihull too just for his sake, he only signed for a year (I think) so I doubt we'll see much of him again.

In January after they beat us it looked like Walsall would be coasting to the title, but they've had a real wobble, they should still finish top 3 but it'll be a lot closer come the end of the season now. Salford are rubbish again by the looks of it and now Grimsby look like they are the next contenders to challenge for the play-offs. They are on a good run at the moment but over the season they've been far too inconsistent and a minus goal difference is never a sign of a good team. I think the current top 7 are likely to finish top 7, what order is anyone's guess though!

George Abbott for me too. He created his first goal by pressing their defender and then produced a lovely touch and cross for Jatta's goal. He was the reason we scored 2.

Whilst the second half kind of defined the match, that first 45 minutes was a real wasted opportunity for me. For all our control and possession, we only had the 1 goal to show for it. We rarely tested their keeper, I think he made one save from Jatta but that was it. We didn’t take advantage of Fleetwood being so passive, we lack a touch of aggression in the sense off we don’t pin teams and put them under pressure for long periods. We are too happy to just take it easy, pass it back and wait. It’s not like it’s the first time we’ve seen it happen this season either, lots of teams have started games standing off us, got outplayed and then changed it up second half to come out more and cause us problems. No idea what Bass is thinking for their 1st goal, even after it hits Platt the attacker Graydon is still being forced wide, so Bass turns what was probably a 20% chance of a goal into an almost certain one by conceding that pen. And then that just gave them a bit of a boost and unlike us they made their momentum count. Fair play we got something out of it in the end and a draw isn't a bad result but it did feel like a missed opportunity. Chances are Fleetwood will probably take a few points of our other promotion rivals too so that is something. Oh, and today confirmed it for me that goal music should be banned, no idea what that was that they played but it was some awful fisherman ditty that sounded like something from SpongeBob SquarePants. Awful stuff.

Luton Town 1-2 Portsmouth Stoke City 1- 1 Watford Crawley Town 2-1 Cambridge United Peterborough United 1-0 Shrewsbury Town Cheltenham Town 2-0 Grimsby Town Harrogate Town 1-0 Accrington Stanley Oldham Athletic 1-3 Barnet 🤡 Yeovil Town 2-2 Southend United

It’s interesting how Chris and Alex analyse football, the league table for them is just a small part of it, where as to us fans it’s everything. They look and dig a lot deeper and I’m always intrigued by their own table which they say gives another perspective on how well a team is performing and will likely perform in the future. Ultimately, I guess, this is how Stuart Maynard will be judged. It’ll never happen but I’d like to see that table, my guess is it’ll be similar to an XG table but use a lot of additional data too. For those interested in terms of XG, in that table (the one I use from footballxg.com) we are currently 3rd on 56 Points. We are underperforming our XG by 7, so we should’ve probably scored more goals. But also, we are over-performing when it comes to XGA (expected goals against) which is also 7, that just confirms Bass is really good basically! Anyway, back on topic! Unless we have a bad run and drop out of the play-offs by a considerable margin, I don’t think Stuart Maynard will be replaced because, albeit through some frustrating performances at the minute, we are better off than last season. And I do think performances can only get better again, hopefully Tranmere was a bit of a wake-up call. I do think we need at least one more first team coach though, and maybe that’s where the Bros and Stuart will work together to strengthen us (a tough act to follow on from Matt Saunders who has completed football tactics).

Interestingly at Norwich he has played as their left-back in a back 4. But we played him as part of our back 3, maybe this was a mistake. Should he have been utilised at wingback for us? When you hear he used to play as a winger as a kid it makes you think… Like I said before I’d never seen him play for us but I’ve seen him on the EFL highlights show for Norwich and he’s very slim, I know looks can be deceiving but he definitely seems to be lacking that physicality you associate with most centre-backs. I guess in a way even if he had got into our team, if he’s championship quality/ready, it’s likely he’d have attracted bids and moved up at some point. We’d have made more money I guess but it makes it less heart-breaking for us fans.

Yeah, it’s a tough one I can see both sides to the argument but I get that losing to Accrington is extremely deflating, it’s a massive loss. If you can’t beat an equally poor team, at home, where is your next 3 points coming from? They’ve been averaging a win a month, but it’ll be zero for this month and that recent loss also extended their winless run to 10 games. Knowing all that I can’t exactly say I’d have any faith in Nigel Adkins to keep them up, you’d basically be reliant on Morecambe and Carlisle to keep losing.

I'm still amazed that considering Jodi has only started 10 matches this season (and played 13 in total) he's still our 3rd top scorer and joint 2nd for assists! Luckily I don't think Bedeau's injury is too serious and I'm hoping McDonald just felt a bit off tightness and came off so not to make it worse.

I agree that the result is not the end of the world, but the performance was worrying. I thought we’d show a bit more about us after Port Vale, where we were unlucky to lose. We just about got what we deserved last night. We had the luxury of having more time off after Port Vale but we looked like the team that had just played on Saturday. It was like once we went 1-0 up that was it, we were expecting the final whistle to blow, we just passed the ball around pointlessly and sloppily at that too. There was a worrying lack of urgency to attack them. We gave Jatta pretty much nothing all game, he was far too isolated. But it didn’t help that almost every pass was to feet, it was so risk averse that we ended up going backwards far too often. We looked like we lacked confidence and ideas, especially last 20 minutes when Colchester had pretty much decided to settle for the point. It’s interesting that Stuart says we need the whole squad, I think our first 11 is very strong but for me last night showed the squad is lacking that extra bit of quality. Traore, Whitaker and Jarvis all look promising but it’s harder coming into a team halfway through a season and constantly coming off the bench but I am hopeful they can help us have a positive end to this season.

Richard will be heavily involved in who the next head-coach will be, if he gets it wrong their owners and directors will just blame him… A really tough start to his new job. I really am surprised they’ve sacked Luke Williams this early though, maybe he wasn’t the right fit but there’s a lot more wrong at Swansea than just the head coach. Surely the plan was for Luke and Richard to link up and look at how they can improve the squad over the summer. That’s all out the window now. It shows Swansea owners and directors will no way be as patient as Chris and Alex and I think Richard will be fighting against them a whole lot more than he’ll expect. I wish him all the best in his new job, because I think he'll need it!

Generally speaking when we lose we do tend to quickly bounce back, we’ve only had back to back defeats once all season and those were away games. Colchester have improved but I think a top half finish is their peak, they’ve only won 3 times away this season, equally only lost 3 too, so they basically set up to not lose away from home. They would 100% take a draw and I think a 0-0, 1-1 is the kind of result they will be looking to get (grind out). And whilst the win against Walsall was impressive since January, they’ve had a very favourable set of fixtures (Carlisle, Accrington, Morecambe, Harrogate, Tranmere…) Be interesting to see who just randomly drops out the squad through injury for this one, I’ll go for Bedeau, he’s due an injury… Hopefully not the case though! I was surprised to see Mai Traore in the squad so quickly, suspect he’ll be on the bench again but might possibly get a bit more time on the pitch this time out he was unlucky with that chance against Port Vale, clearly will score soon. Really hoping at least one of Didzy or Whitaker is back for this one, their creativity in that final third will be massive boost.

There was nothing stopping a club approaching Notts to ask for permission to speak with Matt Saunders about a potential head coach role. If that scenario had occurred, I don’t see the club blocking a move as we’d have probably made some money out of it. Now he’s just waiting and hoping, when he could’ve still been a part of a successful team, if anything staying only enhances his reputation. I’m not convinced he chose to walk away to be honest, unless he really thought he was a shoe-in for the Wealdstone job, it doesn’t make any sense to me. He seems very confident in his ability, which I guess you need but at the same time to claim his "blue-print" is complete is a tad odd, especially when you are claiming an away win at mid-table Cheltenham finished it. If it was that good surely we'd have been able to deal with Walsall's man-to-man press second half when Matt was still here, yet we all saw how that ended.

Blackburn Rovers 2-2 Plymouth Argyle Middlesbrough 3-1 Watford Blackpool 1-1 Mansfield Town Stevenage 2-1 Peterborough United 🤡 Carlisle United 1-1 Colchester United Morecambe 1-0 Accrington Stanley Gateshead 2-1 Altrincham Woking 2-0 Tamworth

On paper when you look at the fixtures, we certainly haven’t got the easiest of run-ins, I’d say only Tranmere, Newport and Harrogate are what you’d class as easy (but that’s never always the case!) There’s a mini run in March that looks like the toughest period. Wimbledon away will be a challenge, Grimsby are unpredictable, Chesterfield is always a close one and then Crewe are likely to still be challenging too. And then in April we’ve got Salford and Bradford back-to-back. The Doncaster at home on the final day is the intriguing one, cos it’s either going to be massive, like a must win or pretty inconsequential as the autos will already have been settled... I’d have 100% taken play-offs come the start of the season and I still think we are more likely to finish there, of course I’m hopeful but I think our constant injuries and inability to take points off those in and around us will be our undoing.

So frustrating! 1st half we really needed to take of advantage of Port Vale being so passive and not scoring one of those chances ultimately cost us. 2nd half was just a scrappy game off football really, Port Vale just put us under a bit more pressure and we really struggled to play out. That said we defended pretty well, they didn’t create anything other than the goal which was one mistake getting punished. I think we absolutely missed Didzy or Whitaker up top. We needed a bit more composure and someone to help drive us forward a bit more. For me Edwards looked more and more off the pace of the game as it went on, I know he’s just come back from a long lay-off but I’d have taken him off a lot earlier. Not sure what Gordon did wrong to get subbed either, Bedeau was played out of position for the whole game, he was fine but it’s not his natural game. It was strange that Stuart decided not to play our two wingbacks at wingback when Tsaroulla came on... Just gutted that Port Vale have taken 6 points from us, you can hardly say they dominated and outplayed us on both occasions.

I do feel like I'm in a minority but I genuinely feel Marias could do quite well for us if given the chance. He's pretty quick, he's pretty strong and he is capable of scoring and assisting goals too. His first goal is a corker and the second is a tidy finish. I hope he does really well there and if he does we'd be stupid to not to give him a chance, surely!

We have had a slightly favourable run of fixtures up until this one, it’s easy to get complacent though unlike us Wimbledon couldn’t beat Accrington and Port Vale couldn’t beat Swindon, so I’m definitely not dismissing our recent good results. It has been great run of form but Port Vale are different challenge, they are better than the teams we’ve faced recently. Part of me sees it going two ways, crashing back to reality with a damning defeat, or the run has installed so much confidence we just plough on and keep our run of good form going. I also hope Didzy can come back in, it might just be case of not giving too much away to keep Port Vale guessing. I think Jodi is more likely to miss it though but I’m hoping Tsaroulla will ok because I think he’ll provide us with a bit more defensive nous. I’d be happy to come away from this one with a point.

It's not out of the realms of all possibilities that his first job there could be to tell Luke Williams he hasn't got one anymore. Swansea are in really poor form at the moment and they lost at home again tonight mustering up just 3 shots all game! 😬 It's all good having future goals but they can't keep on losing, they are yet to win a home game in 2025. What happens if Swansea get to the end of the month and they still haven't won any of them? There's hardly going to be a buzz around the place and most fans will want something or someone to change...

Swansea will want our owners next! Just put some black stripes on their home shirts and that’ll be job done. It is a shame Richard will soon be departing; he’s been one of the reasons we’ve been successful over the years. It does feel like there’s going be a tipping point at some point, especially if we keep losing key members of staff and players over a short period of time. Yes, they are replaceable but it's not always easy to replace them, surely at some point it’s going to have a negative impact? Or do Chris and Alex just have some sort of super-human ability to seemingly never make a wrong call...