Player Scores v The Wall | Vital Football

Player Scores v The Wall

Calvin Plummer

Vital Football Legend
Pants: 5.5, had a lot to deal with, mostly fairly well...

Robinson: 4, slow, constantly beaten, no offence.

Fox: 6, the best of a band bunch. Not saying a great deal.

Hefele: 6, cult hero in the making but too ponderous at times.

Janko: 5, only a slightly better version of Robinson.

Colback: 6, meh

Gueddy: 6, meh

Osborn: 6, meh

Carvalho: 6.5, occasional flash, otherwise meh

Lolley: 7.5, biggest threat till he had to go off. If he could add consistency to his game he'd be some player.

Grabban: 6, meh

Subs: 6, meh

Karanka: 4, for a while I way fooled into thinking he'd turned us into a team that could play badly and win. I was wrong.
 
Last edited:
Pants made some decent saves but his distribution was shocking and in the end let them back into the match after we'd (undeservedly) gone 2-0 up. His whole performance suggested someone on the wrong sort of drugs.

Under AK we've lost 1 in 14 this season. Too many draws, but he's doing OK.
 
Only change I would make to that is to drop Pants to a 5. Most of what he did was routine and for all the team as a whole was poor, I thought he cost us tonight.
 
Lolz is the only one who can hold his head up after last night. We were terrible & I think a draw flatters us, ok Millwall aren’t going to win any awards for their style of play but they have also been put together on what a 20th of our budget.

If it wasn’t for their idiot, racist, stuck in the 80’s fans & their general cockneyness, you’d feel bad for them that they’ve been to the CG twice been better but only got 1 point to show for it.
 
Last night we played against a team playing 4 4 2. It was clear from the off (and I guess AK should have known before the off), that they were going to press and stop Pants rolling the ball out. However he didn't seem prepared for this. We struggle to score, but went 2-0 up, despite not playing well. Pants is then panicked by the crowd to get rid of the ball. His distribution was poor all night, though to be fair to him we still had plenty of chances of keeping the ball out with some decent defending.

If we had gone 4 4 2 or 4 5 1 we could have doubled up on defenders and still played a reasonable attacking game. We had well over 60% of the ball for most of the game, but just went into panic mode at the end and couldn't keep the ball. With our 4 2 3 1, there is no clear defensive system, and Robinson and Janko spend most of their time near the halfway line, providing the only width we had.

It took us about 20 passes to usually get nowhere, whilst a long ball to Elliott (won everything in the air) took them from one end of the pitch to the other in a couple of passes. Still can't help thinking that last season we robbed them here, but this season they have got their own back.
 
In defence of Pants (somebody has to). He couldn't kick it long as Cooper and Elliott won everything in the air, thus it was just coming back. He had to either throw out, but they marked up thus a pass to Hef or Fox wasn't on, or he punted out to one of the wings hoping players like Robinson could get a touch. They had huge fullbacks as well who won everything in the air.

At 2-0 up he should of been content to punt it deep in to the corners and say chase that. Instead he let the crowd pressure him in to risky passes out. Confidence fell after a couple of howlers.
 
In defence of Pants (somebody has to). He couldn't kick it long as Cooper and Elliott won everything in the air, thus it was just coming back. He had to either throw out, but they marked up thus a pass to Hef or Fox wasn't on, or he punted out to one of the wings hoping players like Robinson could get a touch. They had huge fullbacks as well who won everything in the air.

At 2-0 up he should of been content to punt it deep in to the corners and say chase that. Instead he let the crowd pressure him in to risky passes out. Confidence fell after a couple of howlers.


I was as annoyed at our fans last night as I was at Pants, they were on his back the whole game. Fair enough at 0-0 it is frustrating if the ball is played out too slow, but having a go at him for being slow at 2-0 is just stupid. As a professional he should be able to ignore the crowd but we are meant to make the opposition goalkeeper feel uncomfortable not our own!
 
In defence of Pants (somebody has to). He couldn't kick it long as Cooper and Elliott won everything in the air, thus it was just coming back. He had to either throw out, but they marked up thus a pass to Hef or Fox wasn't on, or he punted out to one of the wings hoping players like Robinson could get a touch. They had huge fullbacks as well who won everything in the air.

At 2-0 up he should of been content to punt it deep in to the corners and say chase that. Instead he let the crowd pressure him in to risky passes out. Confidence fell after a couple of howlers.


he should have worked this out by himself but do think someone from the dugout could've helped. I guess this comes from the'not going to change our game' style but think for the occasional game we might have to.
 
I was as annoyed at our fans last night as I was at Pants, they were on his back the whole game. Fair enough at 0-0 it is frustrating if the ball is played out too slow, but having a go at him for being slow at 2-0 is just stupid. As a professional he should be able to ignore the crowd but we are meant to make the opposition goalkeeper feel uncomfortable not our own!

at the same time tho by not going for a quick release, we were getting marked out of it and forced into a long punt. quick release kept the ball on the floor which suited us.
 
at the same time tho by not going for a quick release, we were getting marked out of it and forced into a long punt. quick release kept the ball on the floor which suited us.

True, I think for this reason instead of Dawson I would have got Murphy on to enable us to play the long ball for the last 10 minutes. I hate bringing on defenders for attackers as it just invites pressure, get Murphy on alongside Grabban and they can hold the ball up the other end well away from the goal!
 
I think some of those players looked tired, which isn't in anyway a defence of the somewhat abject performance - Millwall knocked us off our stride and looked physically stronger almost all over the pitch.

We scored 2 good goals, but let them back into the game via mistakes and arguably some poor tactical decisions by AK.
 
Pants 3
Janko 6
Fox 5.5
Hefele 5
Robinson 5
Colback 5
Gueddy 5.5
Osborn 5
Lolley 7
Carvalho 5.5
Grabban 5
Very poor last night, AK needs to change formation once in a while!!