D 1-1 vs Scunthorpe United (H) - League Two - Tue 17th Aug, 7:45pm

:joy::joy::joy::joy::joy:

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Walsall 2 Scunthorpe 1
3456

If you mean unfit due to a lack of fitness rather than an injury then that is a damning indictment. It’s a basic requirement of a professional footballer to be match fit. There’s no excuse not to be fit after pre-season training unless you’ve had an injury. I thought a few players showed a worrying lack of commitment on Saturday. We were 3-0 down and yet there was very little urgency, no real desire to get back in it, players bottling out of 50-50 tackles. I hope some of these older players don’t think they have come here for one last payday and an easy ride. We don’t expect world beaters but anything less than 100% commitment is not acceptable.

More a lack of sharpness than unfitness, but i thought the Cbs and Ward especially were blowing in the first half but that was probably more to do with FGRs relentless pressure.

I was disappointed with the lack of in game management from the more experienced guys to be fair.

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Ward looked every bit his age saturday for me good on the ball but struggles with pace these days.

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We need to get behind the team big time on Tuesday. Yes we were crap against FGR - too many players, and the manager, had a bad day at the office.
They need to put it behind them quickly. Let’s not take the off-field problems out on the players. It’s not their fault the beer ran out, or the tickets didn’t work, or the bogs leaked. These are symptoms of years of neglect. The players on the other hand screwed up for just 90 mins.
Let’s bombard the club with as many e mails as we can about the off-field issues, but at the same time let’s get behind all the lads on Tuesday and restore some of that pre-season positivity and pride we had a few weeks ago.

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I actually thought the crowd were fairly balanced with their disappointment towards the players. It was only really at half time it was loud, but I think most of that was directed toward the ref.

Certainly, there was hardly anything on the scale of Whitney/Keates during the game.

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What really boils my p*** is the way that the Walsall FC official Twitter feed posts player pictures of a squad member who is terribly off form or out of the starting eleven altogether. If they post a picture of Osadebe on Tuesday with the starting eleven, it will show that they are either deliberately mocking the fans or the media team don’t know who the players even are (and probably support Liverpool or Blues and tweet ‘great win’ after Walsall have lost - it’s happened before).

It’s like Kinsella: get man of the match v Tranmere and then get dropped when your sister is guest of honour- what kind of disrespect is that?

This would be my team for Tue:

Rushworth

Kinsella (RB)
Taylor
Menayese
Mills (LB)

Perry
Labadie

Kiernan
Wilkinson
Shade

Phillips

We need to be a lot more disciplined and pragmatic. Perry can add composure and the eleven can interchange with the likes of Leak, Ward, Monthe and Osadebe on the bench.

If we win, keep the same eleven.

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I’d also absolutely play Kinsella right back in the absence of White.

Mills is god awful, zero pace, and no attacking intent at all.

Would you play Ward at left back @Thanatos?

He has quality but little pace.

He could play in the Danny Fox /Kris Taylor left midfield role where he and Mills interchange?

I agree that Mills is lacking in quality but he is a utility player that can ‘do a job’ in defence or midfield and he is a willing runner with a decent engine. I don’t think we are blessed with great full backs with White out injured.

Holden is the next Alex Taylor and Cuvelier: all the talent in the world but crocked by journeymen hatchet men midfielders. I feel that Earing could come into the mix to become a key part of the machine this season.

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Yep Kinsella has to play right back :+1:t2:

So that’s Alice taken care of. Would you play Liam in midfield?

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:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl: brilliant

Thing is we were outrun in midfield without Kinsella. For a player who is totally shite and barely gets in the team in apparently his least favourable position, we sure did seem to miss him. If the issue is that him and Labadie are not creative enough Kinsella isn’t the one who misses out for me.

I’d play Leak right back. Was fine there against Doncaster. It’s amazing how quickly my negative take on Mills being signed already looks bang on the money.

If we are going to persist with the 4141/4231 then Osadebe can’t play as a midfielder.

There were times when he was playing as the cover midfielder when Labadie was further forward and Osadebe doesn’t have it in him defensively to play there, whereas atleast if you play Kinsella there, anyone in front of him can be abit more adventurous going forward knowing they’ve got some sort of cover behind them.

Saw a picture yesterday of the Jamille Matt goal and Osadebe was pretty much on the halfway line, shocking.

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It would be Perry and Kinsella for me. Bit of a damning indictment of our recruitment considering we brought in players, one of them as captain, in an already stacked position, with massive holes elsewhere in the squad, and to my eye they don’t improve on our central pairing from last year.

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I don’t get the criticism of Kinsella. Barely ever puts a foot wrong and at Tranmere he was back to getting on the ball and spreading it about, on top of his usual game which we all know what he offers. Breaks up the play, professional, doesn’t stop working. Yes, he doesn’t look spectacular which is why I think he gets criticism, but players in his role very rarely do. Take Jay Spearing for example who I’d say is a similar player, he was no better than Kinsella at Tranmere on the day. They’re there to be simple, effective and reliable and what they offer to a team is vital.

Kinsella now to me, is what Chambers was for us in that quality team we had.

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If Kinsella is fit, then he and Labadie should be our first choice midfield pairing with Perry and Bates behind them.

Then you’ve also got Earing who can play there, so you’ve got five natural ‘midfielders’, with three of them being our own and we still persist with an attack minded number 10 as our deepest midfielder.

I think he wants one of the two in midfield to offer a bit more than being an anchor, especially at home. I think that is what was in his mind anyway. I don’t claim to be a football expert but I think most of us could have told him that Osadabe wasn’t the man to be putting in a two man midfield. More to the point it was bloody obvious very quickly. So much so that after FG weathered the initial pressure from us they just exploited it over and over again, until Kinsella came on.

The 4-2-3-1 formation isn’t an easy one to get right. The two players in central midfield can’t be exposed the way we were Saturday. You rely on the 3 and the 1 of the formation to do all the damage and it just isn’t quite clicking at the moment, plus we had no real options to change the personnel in that area. Also, we seem incredibly weak in the full-back positions.

He still has time to work this out but I think if Holden is going to be missing most of the season, which seems a real possibility then a change to a 4-3-3 may be a good idea, especially as we have so many options in the midfield position.

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Odadebe had chased right up the pitch to “press” their centre half. I said to my kids before the pass even went into their midfielder we’ve totally emptied the midfield. Ridiculous. Question is is he being asked to do that, or is he randomly doing it. I thought the Tranmere and Doncaster games we looked promising at least. FGR was a bit disastrous, and we (Taylor) looked a bit naive. Early days for him though.

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