Hello friends, another month of results update coming your way. We were lying in 14th place with a few points off the play-off spot. The season is still early as there is no team that seems to be leading comfortably at the moment. I am sure that there will be drastic changes to the standings after the results in October. There will be 6 games to be played for this month and here is the results.
We did not have a wonderful start, began with 2 draws initially and 2 defeats in the middle of the month. Luckily we returned back to winning ways for the last 2 games. Overall i am still quite pleased with the results considering the strong opposition we were facing.
First game of the month was against the team few places above us 8th place Morecambe. We conceded a early in the 5th minute when their striker shake off my defender and place a shot into the net. I was unhappy with how easily he was able to dribble past my player and have a shot at goal. We tried to control the game after the early goal and created few chances but their goalkeeper saved a few open chances that we had. I switched to attacking in the second half and the player were going in all directions to test the goalkeeper several times. But my players squandered the all the chances including one to one situations. In the end, it was up to my captain Troy Archibad-Henville to level the score by headed in a goal through a corner. I was a bit disappointed with how we missed those chances coming our way, if we had taken those chances we would had won the match by 2 to 3 goals.
Next game was against Tranmere who was lying in 21st place. I had a check on their squad, they had some good players over there and shouldn’t be engaging in a relegation battle. Immediately after the start of the whistle, they were all over us on the field. We totally had no answer to their passing skills, they created loads of chances and a fine team move started from the left resulted in them scoring a goal. The first half ended with us a goal behind and we had no shots on goal. I was extremely angry with the performance of the players and gave a harsh team talk, hoping they could improve the performance in the second half. Things remain pretty the same and they had a man sent off in the 56th minute. We still could not take advantage of that and created little. It was our turn when Troy Archibad-Henville got himself sent off with 4 minutes left on the clock when he collected his second yellow card. Instead of bringing a defender, i substitute my veteran striker Gary Alexander with Thomas Hitchcock. The move paid off when deep into injury time, Thomas Hitchcock started a counter attack by dribbling down the right flank and sent a cross to the penalty area and Mitchell McPike was there to pump in his first goal for the club. Tranmere felt undone by the goal. For us, we were just dammed lucky to get a point.
This was a JPT match against Bournemouth whom we fight to a 3-3 draw in August. The game started by Bournemouth taking hold of possession and mounting the attacks, we were doing the defending most of the time. We took an unexpected lead early in the 3rd minute when Thomas Hitchcock provided a assist for Izale Mcleod to direct the ball into the net to give us the lead. Bournemouth came back strongly in the second half and the score was level when we conceded a goal at the edge of 6 yards box. To make things worse, they got the winner when my goalkeeper pushed out a shot to the path of their player. He pounced on the rebound and place the ball in the net. We went out of the JPT second round.
After the exit of the JPT, we got a home game coming facing 5th place team Burton. They are having a good sets of results and a vast quality of attacking players. Both team had their fare share of chances but it was Burton who took the lead when they headed in a goal from a cross. We had trouble containing their left winger and left back, all their threats coming from the left flank. We pulled a goal back before the break when my captain headed in a goal from a Kevin McDonald corner. 10 minutes after the break, their left winger scored a goal which was to be the winner of this match. We tried to come back into the game by creating lots of chances but there was no accuracy on the shots. The game was lost 1-2.
Dag & Red is our next opponent, they are currently lying in 8th place. The first half was a pretty even with both teams trying to exert authority on the pitch but it came out to nothing in the first half. I told the players i am pleased with what i saw, we took the lead just after half time when a mistake by their goalkeeper allowed Brian Smith to score a goal. They went on searching for the equalizer and we came under tremendous pressure after that. The last 7 minutes saw a dramatic turn of events with a lot of controversy claims from both camps. First they grab the equalizer with 7 minutes left on the clock but it was obviously scored from a offside position. Secondly we paid them back when Josh Falkingham scored his first goal of the season 4 minutes later suspicious of an offside position too. Just when everyone thought the game will finish as it is, Thomas Hitchcock produced a magic when he ran half the length of the pitch, dribbled past 2 defenders to score a wonderful goal, undoubly contender of the goal of the season. We returned to winning ways after 6 games without winning.
Last game of the month was against Luton, they had climbed to 2nd place before they paid a visit to our home ground. They were having a good run with 9 wins in a row including the league cup win against West Brom. Their morale was certainly on a high and we need to be wary of their attacking display. This was a game which we need to perform in front of our fans as a record attendence of 3135 fans turned up for this match. We were peg back in our own half most of the time but we took an unexpected lead when Kevin McDonald sent a fine through ball to Thomas Hitchcock in the penalty area who sidestepped his marker to power home a goal. We could not sustain the lead for long and things were level when we conceded a long shot goal before the break. Both side had chances in the second half and my goalkeeper were the busier among the two, having to save us from numerous occasion. Izale Mcleod were having a bad game, i replaced him with Gary Alexander in the 66th minute. He got us the winner when another fine through ball from Kevin McDonald put him in a good position to bring us 3 points in the bag.
Nothing much has changed in this month, we were lying in 13th place with few points off the play-off spot. Few of my loans will be expiring soon, the likes of Brian Smith and Gonzalo Vicente. I tried to extend the loan of both of them, Gonzalo Vicente does not want to play for us anymore. Brian Smith is keen to extend his stay with us but the loan was cancelled due to us exceeding the short term loan limit. Does it mean if i make the loans limit, i can’t extend the loans even if the players went back to his own club? My friends, can someone enlighten me on this? If all my loan were to return to their respective clubs, i believe i will face problems for the rest of the season.
Next month will see us playing 4 games with the opposition mainly in the bottom half of the table. I hope we can gain some good results over them in order for us to get near to the play-off place. This type of fixtures is something that we cannot afford to lose ground on.
Dear friends, here is the latest updates on my Thurrock story. Thanks for the reading the post, i will leave you here and will see you back in my next post Thurrock-November 2013 results.
The team definitely proved to be competitive by beating Dag&Red and Luton, well done. I don’t know too much about the loan limit but I think that a player can’t go on a short term loan to the same team more than once per season. I could be wrong though, maybe somebody else has this covered.
.-= Johnny Karp´s last blog ..Swindon Town: “Now is the winter of our discontent” =-.
Hi Lye
Firstly,i think Johnny is right about the loan signings as I vaguely remember the same problem with Swindon when i was loaning players from Arsenal. Anyway’s nice to see you holding your own in a tougher league and your team reacted positively to back to back losses so well done!
@Johnny
Thanks mate, i think you are right probably on the loan signings. I will try to get other players in if the loan signings can’t extend the stay with us. So the rules had changed? In previous version the loans can be renewed easily.
@Kevin
Thanks Kevin, i am glad that the players performed better after the 2 defeats in mid month. Especially the match against Luton, we were definitely the underdogs. i still don’t understand how we managed to beat them.
Two good victories against tough teams.Good reaction to the back to back losses.Hopefully next month since your playing lesser opposition you will be able to pick up a few wins!i wish all the best luck!
Thanks Sears, we really need to raise our game for next month. If we can, i thought we should have a great chance to close in on the top of the table.
Good to see the team bounce back with a couple wins, which is keeping you still in touch with the play-off zone. Hopefully you can take advantage of playing clubs from the botoom half of the league next month, and push up closer.
.-= TheZiggy´s last blog ..September 2012 – Keeping Up The Solid Start =-.
Thanks TheZiggy, the defence needs to perform better as i am a bit concern at how we conceded some goals. I noticed that the goals scored against us normally between the gaps of both central defenders. Any ways or instruction to improve this?
Lye,When you first signed up on word press how long did it take for the e-mail they send you to come through?I am trying to set one up but have been waiting over a hour for the e-mail to come through when it said it will come within a halfhour.
Hi Sears, i am using wordpress self-hosted instead of wordpress.com platform. But from my understanding, the email should come pretty fast, probably you can try again or email to their support team.
Lye, it’s hard to stop the gap between the two central defenders being exploited. There’s a lot of factors that come into effect, such as marking, positioning, concentration and teamwork. Work rate can also make a big difference. Oddly though, Kjær my best central defender only has 10 for teamwork, and 13 for workrate, but 18 for marking. The pace of the defenders can be a big factor, although if a player has good positioning and anticipation, such as John Terry, they don’t have to have lots of pace. The better the teamwork, the more likely your backline will work together and gain more offside decisions. Even with this, I still see some weird positioning sometimes, in particular full backs, dropping deep for what seems to be no sensible reason.
The pacier the players in the other team, the harder the defenders have to work, so sometimes it’s worth dropping deeper, but that can leave you more open to long shots flying in.
One thing it does indicate, is that the opposition are having an easy time of passing the ball about and finding those killer passes, because that’s one of the other key ways of stopping the problem. Unfortunately that means first identifying the player that needs to be closed down quicker, but also means a lot more work for the player who is trying to do that.
I’ve seen tactics, where pushing high up the field if you good pace in the centre backs, does the trick, because you compress the midfield so much, it’s harder to find the passes. I can only do this against teams that don’t possess fast strikers, which are few and far between in the premiership.
There is the option to play narrower, which would tend to force the opposition to attack down the wings, but if that allows them to bombard the area with crosses, that could be just as bad, or even worse.
There is no simple answer, because it’s dependent upon what is best for your players. That’s part of why football is so unpredictable, because some days your tactics will just be totally wrong for using against a team you should beat.
I know for my team it’s my full backs that are causing most of the issues, by playing attackers onside by being in poor positions.
.-= TheZiggy´s last blog ..September 2012 – Keeping Up The Solid Start =-.
Thanks TheZiggy, you had lay out a very detailed explanation on how to defend better. I think probably my problem highly due to the fact that i always start with standard strategy meaning my defence line is normal. I will try drop deeper for the defensive line for the next few games to see whether it helps. This also depend on the opposition that we face.
TheZiggy, i always think that you gave very constructive comments regarding issue on tactics. I am thinking whether you will consider making a post on tactic(just like the comment above)various scenario that you can think of in your blog. I am sure your readers will benefit a lot from reading it.
Lye,I am currently trying to find a site to sign in on wordpress self-hosted but have not had any look.Where did you create your blog?
Hi Sears, self hosted wordpress doesn’t require sign up. You need to pay and have the domain name and web hosting, then download the wordpress running script from wordpress.org.
However i think its better for you to sign up from wordpress.com. Its free and easy to use. You can try signing up again. If you still face problem, probably you would like to try out at blogger.com. Signing up is easy and you can get your blog running in few minutes.
Thanks Lye. As I was writing that, I was beginning to think about making a post on my blog. I’ll definitely look into doing that. Some screenshots to illustrate things would be great as well.
.-= TheZiggy´s last blog ..September 2012 – Keeping Up The Solid Start =-.
Hi Lye
I seemed to have the same problem with centre backs all season long with Swindon. Some games it looked like the Grand Canyon between them!
If i can get this part right I think I can do better next season
Kevin, most of my first season in the premiership I had to play very deep, which does of course bring some other issues when the opposition have a good target man in the area.
.-= TheZiggy´s last blog ..September 2012 – Keeping Up The Solid Start =-.
@TheZiggy
That will be great, i am looking forward to your post.
@Kevin
This is a difficult issue as what TheZiggy had mentioned in his previous comment. A lot of factors contribute to the conceding of goals. Probably the ability of the opposition strikers play a big part on this.
.-= Lye´s last blog ..Thurrock-October 2013 results =-.
I believe next month is extremely crucial for your squad, as currently 13th in the league. But that’s actually misleading because there are 7 teams in front of you, within 3 points away from you. A string of wins against the weaker clubs in the league and your position might chance significantly better.
I wish you the best of luck Lye, hope to hear your good news (:
.-= FootballManagerGuru´s last blog ..Wolves Celebrates A Memorable Christmas =-.
Thanks Jason, its pretty tight at the moment so there will be a lot of changes in the position along the way. I hope to have some good news for you. I haven’t got time to play the November fixtures, hope to get the post up either today or tomorrow.