Exeter City (h): What 3 Things Did We Learn? | Vital Football

Exeter City (h): What 3 Things Did We Learn?

1. You have to be very fit to play 58 (or 59) games in a season.

City ran out of steam last season with their incredible 61 games, and we thought it could not happen again. But here we are just twelve months later, and City will have played an almost unbelievable 120 games in two seasons if they make the play-off final. Saturday was about the walking wounded, with players with injuries filling in for players with worse injuries, and some of them look dead on their feet again. The Checkatrade Trophy win was fantastic to witness and represents lots of money in the bank, but those eight games must surely have had an effect on fitness at this late stage of the season.

Fortunately, Exeter have played 55 themselves and looked tired on Saturday with twenty minutes to go. What Lincoln players do have in abundance is character - do they have another massive 90 minutes in them?

2. April is a bad time to stop scoring goals.

City have scored just eight goals in their eight league games since the start of April, and four of those came in one game. They failed to score in four of those. Green and Rhead have just two between them in that time: Rhead has scored just one in his last twenty games, while Green has hit another goal drought with none in eight. On Saturday, it was difficult to see where the goals were going to come from, and City appear too dependent on their defensive prowess (just six conceded in those same eight games). They did it at Coventry, they need to do it again.

3. The tie is still there for the taking.

City were not great on Saturday, but neither were Exeter. Pretty passing in neat little triangles may persuade supporters that their team is playing 'the right way', but the fact remains that Exeter got precisely nowhere for the majority of the game. Their two best chances came from huge hoofs down the centre of the pitch, which will not suit the hypocritical purists one jot.
 
1. We learnt that playing 4-3-3 without a specialist full back on one side of the pitch who is a decent ball player / deliverer of a cross isn't a recipe for flee-flowing attacking football.

2. We learnt (once again) that Rheady is our only front or midfield player with any real finesse, the rest are either battering rams or speed merchants. I can't help but think if Elliot's chance had fallen to Rheady he would have found a way to take the pace off and find the net, it was a pretty tough chance at this level to convert though.

3. We learnt that Sam Habergham is pretty much done for the season and so is Freck. On a day when we put the walking wounded out they didn't even make the bench
 
1) We are playing crocked players. Eardley and Bostwick were 70-75% fit. Wharton picked up a nasty knock at the end. Anderson ran himself into the ground with little end product.

2) We played as a long ball team. Whether some people like it or not. So were Exeter.

3) Whitehouse, for all his industrious play, did not really create many opportunities and more often than not gave the ball away cheaply. We have a huge mountain to climb as a result of all three.
 
I also learnt that it isn't just us that think Rhead gets dick all from referees. In the words of a Leeds s/t holder this morning, "He is a big lad, the fat monk, but he didn't half get knocked about. Why is it that referees think the bigger a player is, the more shoe he is allowed to get?"
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