Accrington Stanley (A) 26th October 3pm

Interesting interview and i think sadler has been taking some pointers from king crod as he couldn’t emphasise enough what a tough place it is to go and that we shouldn’t underestimate the value of that point! My favourite quote, though, was: “Accrington away is accrington away for a reason”!!!:joy::joy:
Yeah, Mat, because it’s in Accrington!!

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But he didn’t say " travelling gate" when he was praising the away support. He’s still got a way to go.

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For me we have to give others a go from the start eh maybe earing daniels dj just to fresh things up as we become very obvious to play against and any gold manager will do an Accrington and let us have the ball

But why would you change a side that had won the last two, scoring seven goals?

Daniels for who? Okagbue who has improved in the last few games? Or the basically irreplaceable Harry Williams?

Earing for Lakin, possibly. But then Lakin does a solid job for the team, Earing comes on and streches teams and it’s obvious Earing’s minutes are being managed so he doesn’t get another long term injury.

Johnson for who? Both Matt and Lowe are in form scoring and assisting.

Was nothing wrong with the substitutions made today.

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DJ could have been on a lot earlier for Lowe who was poor for most of the game but other than that i agree, no way am i changing that back 3. Dave was class today.

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Disappointing not to get the win but not as clear cut that we deserved it today as for example at Chesterfield where we really bossed it but had to settle for a draw .

But it was telling that we finished by far the stronger team . Our expectations were to win which is encouraging.

Sorry , I see both sides of the debate on Matt but his hold up play was simply not good enough today . Very poor touches too often . And why does every single ref seem to side with the defender in the 50-50 tussles he has ?

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I think the default setting for most referees is you favour the defender against player like Mat who for most part are pushing obstructing backing on you name it he does it .the thing is he’s not the smartest at it .and very rarely gets away with it .you play like that and most refs have got your card marked before a ball is kicked .Its not something new been going on years .

Referees tend to award the foul to the player who is most clearly trying to play the ball. Matt is often more concerned with winning his struggle with the defender than actually winning the ball.

Incidentally, there are some posters who, every single week, complain that the referee gave a disproportionate number of decisions against Walsall. Do they ever stop and think that this simply cannot be true?

Referees make mistakes all the time, but unless there is some long-running conspiracy worthy of QAnon, they make as many mistakes in our favour, as against us.

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My issue is more with Matt than the refs !:slight_smile: Something is clearly not working with his approach on the 50/50 tussles .

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I agree, I don’t think that he makes it clear enough that he is trying to win the ball, rather than trying to hold his ground against a defender pushing into him.

If Matt went down screaming like a little girl, he would probably get more free kicks. As that was apparently, what the referee wanted today anyway.

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I agree with that this is we’re I was saying he’s not that smart how he’s going about it .George Kirby could teach him a thing or two .

Matt was poor today - for a bloke his size, his hold up play has to be a lot better. The amount of times it bounces off him or he mislays a header or pass is frustrating.

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Exactly

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Croddy gets someone to run for him, surely you know that by now :wink:

I’m not defending the ref today, but in general, I get that Matt is meant to be a bit of a battering ram, rough them up, wear them out. Still, if he actually tried to play the ball sometimes instead of fouling first I think he would fair better. A lot of times when Walsall fans are screaming for a free kick, Matt has fouled several times first. Carry on doing the same job just do it a a bit smarter.

We weren’t at our best but we were the only team trying to win that game in the last half hour. They had a plan to deal with us and overall it worked pretty well for them. Matched us up and let us have the ball a lot more than we are used to. Still had the chances to win it, but a point away is no disgrace. I was talking to a mate at the game and they mentioned how narrow the pitch was, got to have an affect on our ability to break them down, especially as Barrett is one of our main creators.

Thought Big Dave had his best game for us today, very good.

We are a good team, we may have to find different ways to win as teams adjust to how we play, but I am still confident we will be right up there all season.

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yeah i agree he loves to give it as well, and also dont think he had a great game anyway, but he cant do much about having his shirt torn off his back for the entire game either. They got away with it, dont blame them for carrying on. He was a disgrace of a ref. Absolute homer.

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It’s a fair point, he does get pulled around a lot, his shirt grabbed and so on. It happens so often I think the refs clock his game from the start and once they have seen it a few times it works against him. Not saying it’s right but I think that is what is happening.

Disappointing not to win but you don’t often see opposition teams wasting time at home against us when we are drawing. I think we just about deserved to snatch it, but it wasn’t to be. We have been much better away from home so far this season than we have been for years, can’t win them all.

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Not really in any danger second half other than a little flick they nearly scored on.

Think we left it too late to really try and turn a screw but id have taken a point anyway to be honest. They snuffed us out and i dont think many will do that this season. A few inches here and there we would have scored. I would have stuck everything on Lowe scoring one on one, just one of those days. A very division 4 game.

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