Thurrock-November 2012 results

Hello friends, we are having a good run of results for the last 2 months. Unbeaten for 13 games since the last defeat to Cheltenham in August. I am quite pleased with the form of the players as we were on top of the table leading 6 points comfortably. In this month, we will be playing 6 games so lets take a look at the results.

2 Draws and 4 defeats without any wins, i can’t believe it. What a bad month we had! I know sooner or later we will suffer a dip in form but never did i expect it will be so terrible. I think this is the worst month that i ever have since taking over the helms in Thurrock. But looking back, i made 1 terrible tactical mistake which possibly caused the bad run. I hope thats the reason else i do not know what happen to the team to produce such a bad results.

First game of the month was against Forest Green. they are currently lying in mid-table and employing a formation of 4-2-3-1. They used 2 defensive midfielders to counter any attacking threat and with 2 wingers and a attacking midfielder support a lone striker. My players really had a hard time passing the ball around and create any open chances. Both side had identical shots and shots on target, so i am pretty pleased that we handle them quite well too. First Izale Mcleod gave us the lead when their goalkeeper misjudged the flight of the ball after a cross from Marley Watkins. But they drew level 7 minutes later after we gave their striker too much space on the ball. There wasn’t much to mention in the second half as it was a fairly boring game. It was no surprise that this game was heading for the draw.

Next up was a home game against AFC Wimbledon, they are doing very well exceeding the expectation of the media, so i had to be very careful of the threat they provided us. We actually dominated the proceedings in this match but  it was them who took the lead in the first 45 minutes. I switch to attacking strategy in the second half hoping that we could turn the game around but we got to wait until 79 minutes before we made things level. My strikers were not doing their jobs and somehow the attacking threat is losing in this month. It was a big concern for us. This was our 2nd draw in a row, my players really need to buck up because the teams behind are closing in on us.

This is a FA cup 1st round match against league 1 team Brentford, i do not want to go for defensive strategy. I opt for the attacking strategy and chance tackling to be more aggressive.  We gave a good account of ourselves but Brentford was too good for us. They took a 3 goal lead easily, my defenders tried their best but still unable to contain their strikers. We managed to score a consolation goal something for the fans to cheer about before the final whistle sounds.

An difficult fixtures against our closest rival Accrington, they are lying in 2nd place, 1 point behind us.  The match started with them doing the attacking and within 5 minutes, they took a lead when their young striker scored from 25 yards, my goalkeeper positioning  was a bit suspicious there. What a blow to my players to concede an early goal! I reminded my players that this was a match we shouldn’t lose as we will be falling down the peck if we lose, they seem to come back strongly in the second half but once again my strikers was a big disappointment. They had been firing blanks in this game, missing lots of chances. With this loss, we surrendered the pole position to Accrington after the match.

This was goal feast game for both side of fans but we ended up on the losing side.  They deserved to win the game as they were  better than us in every position, my defenders performed poorly and a lot of mistakes from them result in Stevenage put 5 goals pass us. Everytime we are closing in the scores but they always seem capable of to put the ball in our net. You can see from the screenshot there were 3 goals in the space of 3 minutes from 81 minutes onwards.

Last game of the month was against Chester that had not won for the last 5 matches. This was a game we should won but David King was sent off early in the first half for a professional foul and gave away a penalty. I had to take off 1 striker for replacement and from that on it was all uphill for us. I switched to counter strategy but doesn’t seems to help much. In the end they scored another goal in the second half to pile on more misery for this month. This was our 3rd defeat in a row.

I mentioned earlier in the post that i made a tactical mistake, that was after the Brentford game. I forgot to switch back to default on the tackling option and the attacking strategy. That probably explain that we gave away 2 penalties in the last 2 games conceded by Troy-Archibad Henville and David King. They have decent tackling attributes but i believe the problem is the composure attributes. They had 7 and 8 respectively. I only realized the mistake after the Chester game, too engrossed in the game to know the results. I think i must relax a bit, slow down the pace to avoid this happens again. Is that the reason that the whole team was woefully out of form? My strikers are not showing the form they had in the previous month. Dear friends, what do you think could be the reason that we performed so badly this month? Could it be my tactical mistake, fatigue, or just a one-off thing? Please kindly give me your comments.

The bad run in this month had caused us to throw away our lead and blown the title race open. We dropped to 3rd place, 2 points behind Accrington. The table on top is pretty tight and i believe the title will belong to any of the top 4 teams when season ends. This is becoming very interesting as nobody will know who will have the last laugh in the end.

Next month will see us playing 5 matches including 1 FA trophy match. The most important game was against Cheltenham, the team on top of us. I will see how my team is going to pick themselves up and once again prove that they have the quality to win the title.

Thank you for reading the post. This is my latest update on my Thurrock story, a very poor month in conclusion and i will come back to see you in my next post Thurrock-December 2012 results.