"Fuchsia, scarlet, gold, and crimson colors seemingly Appear overnight amidst the forest-green leaves"
Acrostic - Emile Pinet
A trip (for the team), a remote trip (for the supporters) to Nailsworth, the smallest town in England to host a Football League club, and the only vegan one to boot. Mark Cooper’s Forest Green Rovers side are just a point ahead of us having played one game more, and they have an identical goal difference to ours (scored 3, conceded 2). Their current form looks like this:-
September 5th Leyton Orient (H) Carabao Cup, Lost 1-2
September 8th Exeter City (A) EFL Trophy, Lost 3-2
September 12th Bolton Wanderers (A) Won 0-1
September 19th Bradford City (H) Drew 2-2
September 26th Salford City (A) Drew 0-0
There are no obvious connections between the two clubs in terms of players or managers, but Rovers’ manager Mark Cooper will be well-known, having had a colourful career as a player (18 clubs (including Hednesford Town) in 22 years), and as a manager (9 clubs in 16 years) - his current stint at Forest Green is the longest he’s stayed at one club (4 years). The club has only re-adopted the name Forest Green Rovers since 1992, having previously been known as Stroud FC (1989) and Nailsworth and Forest Green United (1912).
Darrell Clarke will have noted how his re-jigged side performed against the Chelsea youngsters in mid-week, but his selections for this match will probably largely revert to the “tried and tested” principle, the major problem seemingly that of effectively defending at set-piece situations. There are no reports of any imminent signings ahead of the transfer deadline (yet), so we must wait patiently for Saturday!!
Prediction? A 0-1 win for the Saddlers, with Wes MacDonald showing that he can score in consecutive games…
This will be difficult game. Forest Green had a tough first few fixtured ‘on paper’ but have come out of it well.
The weather on Saturday looks horrific, that plus no atmosphere, playing out a boring nil nil with not many chances for either side!
A key to doing well in the fourth division is set pieces. Being able to defend them at one end and profit at the other end is really important and makes all the difference.
We win an absolute ton of corners. We pulled off an imaginative one at Harrogate but when we put it in the box we never come close. Yet at the other end we look like conceding from every corner.
It is a flaw we’ve had for a while. We don’t have players who really attack an aerial ball at either end. We’ve got some big lads but I don’t think I’ve seen any of them absolutely bury a header. You know the type a Rammell or Viveash type right off the sweet spot of the forehead rocketing into the net.
I’ve said it before but Scarr is really poor at reading flight. Which he usually gets away with as a defender because often any touch is good enough. But his journeys up front are a waste of time. Far more likely to convert a second ball with his feet than meet an initial cross with a well timed leap.
We’ve done ok away from home so far and I don’t see that changing tomorrow. Do our defenders switch off occasionally? They do, so do all defenders.
Quietly confident.
FGR are a good footballing side. Play 3 at the back, as seems to be the vogue these days, can create good chances and are better than both Grimsby and Harrogate. Having said that in all of their games so far there have been defensive mishaps. Caught out passing it around at the back v Salford and Bolton, and very dodgy keeping v Bradford.
Seems a game made for Sinclair to me. Ideal for him to break up their play.
I’d like to see us go 3-1-4-1-1 with Sinclair in the Makelele role. Gordon as the lone striker using his pace to catch them on the break. Just one up front to leave one of their back 3 redundant.
Who knows what side we will pick. Given both sides have Decent attacks and poor defenses I will go for a 2-2 draw. I could really see either side win it though.
Hoping iFollow is as good as it was against Chelsea (ignoring the missing commentating for part of it) rather than the fiasco we had with Harrogate.
BTW Although I’m still waiting for them to reply to my e-mail, the problem I reported with not being able to watch the full match replays on a browser (only with the app) seems to have been resolved. But then I’ve noticed that you can access them even if you didn’t buy a pass for the original stream (as my dad’s login lets him watch the Chelsea game now and he wasn’t able to watch live on Tuesday so didn’t buy a pass). Maybe that will work for @Michal who hasn’t managed to see a full game yet?
Might save you a few sleepless nights if you can leave it until the next day or whenever it’s made available (so long as you can avoid learning the score before you watch).
