cos the team on the pitch has lost the plot.

Carl Cort didn't get injured yesterday, this is the ONLY positive thing I can take from yesterday, and it took a while to find it.

Lets start with the team pick. Barton in for Griffin. Okay I know I've joked about his clapping ability but what on earth was the reasoning behind this ? In the passed there has been the disingeneous argument that Barton is bigger than Griffin and gives us more physical presence in defence. Midfield on paper looked devoid of creative ability. Bassedas may not be the best player in the world, or even Tyneside but he has been known to pass to a Newcastle player. Lee/Speed/Acuna are the same player. This meant it would be up to our right winger to produce all creativity. Our right winger now particularly in form at the moment. Up front I was personally horrified to see Cort playing as I just knew he'd pick up an injury, it was too quick a return. Subs bench was very strange. Harper, okay. Griffin as the sole defender, so that if one of our centre halves was injured we were going to have Boksic up against Warren Barton !!!! Then it was Bassedas, Cordone and Gallacher. Oh dear. What if Quinn was injured, then we would have a team without anyone with a left foot. (No don't even go down the Gary Speed route, it'll only upset me more).

Game itself. It was a hopeless game, the Racing Post had said it would be 0-0 and boring, they were only half wrong. Defensively we coped with them easily, Hughes stuck to Boksic and didn't really seem troubled. Caldwell didn't really look troubled either. A good part of our defensive goodness was that basically Boro are hopeless. In midfield we matched them in mediocrity. Lee and Speed are siamese twins at the moment. They try, I'm not knocking that, but their lack of basic ability is not compensated for by their commitment. Ince was better. Read that one again, "Ince was better". And I mean he was better than the pair of them put together. Now it may well be that their role is to break things down and not to be creative geniuses, but then that just begs the question of the manager "who was supposed to make things happen". Acuna runs around in as a slightly shorter more headless Siamese twin in the making. Solano has either no confidence or no ability. Up front Shola needs a break. Cort, who from my seat could be recognised as not being Shola from his boots not having a white flash on them, played slightly better than I expected and took his goal okay. As I said at the start, the one ray of hope.

All of that was really how we went on in the first half, the second when we were a man up, was in my opinion a disgrace.

An extra man ? What do you do ? Well you what ever it is it doesn't include getting Solano to come inside and play inside right. We had no width at all. We didn't stretch them on the right at all. Clueless. Quinn was fed on the left a few times but there are two sides to the pitch. Boro had to defend but never looked troubled. Put it this way we scored with every shot on target. (As did they).

Now a few wee niggles. 90% of our crosses were over hit, whether from open play or dead ball situations. At one point Barton trapped the ball further than Ben can kick it. Speed kept getting forward and then just cocking it up. Lee and Speed and Barton all had wee runs where at the end they passed the ball straight to a Boro player. (Some of these were unbelievable). The Gary Speed run into the box, swivel on the penalty spot as the ball was played into him, produced a shot (from a professional footballer ?) that Schwarz had to bend down and wait to reach him. Does anyone practise penalties. Substitutions were mind blowing. Griffin on for Barton produced a "circular reference error" in the spreadsheet in my brain. Shola seemed happy enough to be going off. Acuna off, I suppose so. Cordone and Gallacher on, well hey there lets really worry them.

We didn't make a chance the whole game. I cannot see us scoring again, ever. We have played three of the bottom four in our last three home games and been either outplayed or beaten by them all. Bradford is our chance to show we're the worst team in the division at the moment. I think we can do it.

-- Anonymous, March 18, 2001

Answers

Regrettably accurate Macbeth.

Barton's selection I had half expected on "experience" grounds, and my fears were confirmed. BR appears to have little confidence in Griffin, which is unfortunate as he is our best FB by some way. Barton's lack of pace now is proving to be a major problem whenever he plays FB. Like Rob Lee, he worked his socks off yesterday but I'm afraid that's no longer enough.

Similarly, playing two big lads up front, which appears to be the desired formation, was dubious both tactically and practically, with Shola now in danger of being 'over-played' despite the few games we've been playing recently - at his age and experience he can't just be left in the team ad nauseum, or we'll permanently knacker his confidence.
Despite scoring a blinding goal and gradually improving as the game progressed, IMHO Cort should not have started a game at this stage of his comeback. Lack of alternatives doesn't wash as we appeared to write off the season shortly after Xmas, so what difference does it now make?
Quite clearly, Gallacher should have started alongside one of the other two big 'uns, with the second coming off the bench on the hour.

I think Acuna was supposed to be playing behind the front two, in a diamond formation with RL in front of the back 4 and GS and Nobs in the middle. This was a failure: Acuna ran around to no effect, GS and Solano were absolutely abysmal: RL tried his level best but was overwhelmed - he can still make a contribution but can no longer dictate the game from m/f.

Like macbeth, I can only assume Solano came inside in the 2nd half on instructions. This at a time when we desperately needed width to stretch the Boro defence who found it all too easy as we generally attempted to go straight through the middle.
Quinn frequently got forward on the left, but he never got to the by-line, and 75% of his crosses were hopeless.

BR's post-match interview suggested that at long last there are signs that the rampant complacency within the 'corridors of power' is finally being disturbed. However, based on our last two horrific home performances, it is actually difficult to see us winning any of our remaining games, even at Bradford.
Hopefully, we will be able pick up a point here and there and scrape through. However, if one of the current bottom three Clubs puts a bit of a run together, it is entirely possible we could get dragged into a dog-fight at the bottom. The real bottom line here is that we are totally ill-equipped to successfully participate in a dog-fight, and alarmingly we could yet prove to be 'the weakest link'.
Perish the thought!

-- Anonymous, March 18, 2001

I would have liked to have seen Griffin from the start. I'm not so sure on Quinn, he was hopeless in the first half, but in the second when he was playing as a winger, he was quite good. Perhaps playing him as a left winger with Solano on the right, Acuna in the middle alongside Bassedas might be an option? Nah too lightweight, we nee a Don Hutshison / Roy Keane type in the middle and a proper left winger. Upfront I reackon they should give one of the two big black lads fluresent boots. We couldn't tell them apart, which means that some od the players wouldn't be able to tell them apart. If I were Nobby I'd prefer to lay a High ball fr Ameobi , who used to be good in the air, and a low ball to Cort, who proved he's got a good shot on him. Having said that I think I would have started with Cordone. Best of the rest (of the strikers) if you ask me.

-- Anonymous, March 18, 2001

Yeah Rik, I was thinking about Cordone too. Two bigguns up front all too often never works so Cordone might have been a better option.

-- Anonymous, March 18, 2001