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Where to start ?

Cant understand Cooks approach today at all. What happened to we'll never park the bus and always have a go at teams !
Well if time wasting at home against the worst team to visit this season and bringing on connolly to hold 0-0 rather than bringing Macca on and going for the (much needed) win is positive i have cleary missed the meaning of the word.
Come the end of the season that could be a massive 2 points dropped.
Never thought Cook would lose his bollocks but there for all to see I'm afraid ?
 
Just read cooks post match comments. I fear he could be descending into madness.
"On the final substitution - people will say its negative, but it"s not"
All together now ahead of panto season -
Oh yes it is.
And to say otherwise is frankly pathetic.
Can we please have the early season tactics back and bin off the Joyce mk2 plan of today Paul ?
 
Two shite teams short on quality in the main. It had the feel of mid to lower table league 1 match. Any team that fails to recognise how weak and inept we are on the left with Naismith and windarse on the pitch and doesn't seek to exploit it deserve relegation. Even then it was us more desperate for the final whistle which is a sad reflection on where we are at present. That said I'd have taken a point pre game when I saw that team sheet.

Make no mistake we are now in a relegation fight and lack of bravery in terms of selection and substitutes mean we have thrown away a golden opportunity to take maximum points of a relegation rival. The uninspiring interview with Royle midweek doesn't offer me hope of any major winter signings to improve us. The first choice 11 can hold their own but the rest of the standard of this assembled squad leaves a lot this be desired and just isn't good enough. Hopefully we'll be the best of a bad bunch - and there are some crap teams down there - and beat the drop.
 
Very disappointing result against an awful Reading team who must be delighted to get a point despite being terrible in both defence and attack throughout.

First half was a decent performance apart from not being able to hit the target with clear cut chances. However, the second half gave me flashbacks of the Joyce era as we were far too negative and never pushed on or put them under any kind of pressure.

Our style seems to be unrecognisable from the start of the season - 10 goals in August and now only 9 in 13 games since. Was happy we were having a go at the start of the season as if we do go down at least we wouldn’t go down wondering if only we had had a go... now we just might end up in that scenario.

I know we are missing some players, but we aren’t even playing our best available XI. Callum Mac looks bright and sharp every time he comes on but is never given a proper go. Naismith was OK today but was hardly under pressure as Reading were toothless in attack. Roberts is not a Championship player either. I don’t know what Windass’ best position is but I assume he hasn’t played it for us yet.

We need to be braver and get back to playing how we did early doors in the season no matter the personnel. Only then will we get back to winning ways.
 
I think at this point we can safely say that it’s between six. Ourselves, Bolton, Rotherham, Hull, Reading and Ipswich. Three of those will go down. Millwall may be struggling right now, but they are streetwise and will be comfortably safe by May.

Didn’t think Gibson was terrible to be honest, thought we had far worse on the pitch than him. Only big mistake he made was that pass to Powell when he should have gone right to an open Windass. Morsy was very poor until the final half hour when he tried to drive us forward and got far more aggressive.

I’m worried about Walton right now as he’s clearly low on confidence, that calamity in the second half where he refused to come out must have been a direct result of what happened against Leeds. He needs to learn to sweep past mistakes out of his mind, be decisive and commanding rather than go into your shell and stick to your goal line. Naismith did alright against awful opposition, the acid test will be in the next two when he’s targeted by Dack, Ameobi and our good friend Yanic. But MOTM once again was James and that wasn’t even one of his best performances.
 
C, I wouldn't be too quick to write Millwall out of the equation. If it wasn't for windarse troubling the New Den roof with a penalty instead of the back of the net we would likely have won that game despite being shockingly poor. It's concerning we dropped 3 points to a relegation rival in that game and another 2 today with piss poor performances. Ipswich haven't won at home this season and Bolton are shite and they're the next two sways. Lose those two and we really will be neck deep in the shit.
 
Bottom line - we couldn’t hit a barn door from 6 inches. Finishing diabolical and no creativity in midfield. Today was depressing. We should have won 2 or 3 nil.
 
I think while Burn is in the side we will continue to play deep, just off today he was beaten by Meite on multiple occasion's over a short distance. Just imagine how much worse that would be with him higher up the pitch, looked more capable at left back.

On the second half decision making i agree it was a very poor way to end the game. On Connolly's substitution i can only think Cook thought if we haven't won the game in 80 odd minutes it's not likely we'll win in the last ten and decided to see the game out.

I would be disappointed to see us do that against a top team, let alone a team that's not created anything for the majority of the game. We didn't look like scoring second half in my opinion anyway, but's that usually when substitutions can change the game and create openings. I complained last season about Cook's choice of subs ect, but it seems set in stone that he wont be changing his approach with the bench selection and choice of player.

Whilst we may not agree with the decision making by Cook on the style of play ect, at least we can see clear changes game by game. Rather than continuing to fail without attempting to change anything. At least we kept the ball on the ground, utilized more general play than we've seen in the past few and created some chances from open play which was good to see. He's learning the league at the moment and trying to adapt, he's experienced in the leagues below. If we are still experimenting in January i'll be disappointed. Hopefully by than we are just tweaking things game by game judging on the level of play.

Biggest positive is that we were the better team today, couldn't say that about the past four. Can't only judge a team on their past performance, hopefully we improve over the next two as they're important.
 
By the time wish fm get around to their post match interviews I'm usually well out of range, but I managed to catch some today. Was interesting to hear Cook acknowledge Mcmanaman as a game winner, but preferred to sure up the point by having fresh legs in the middle. The sly thumbs up to Walton for taking an age over a goal kick didn't go unnoticed either. Giving the benefit of the doubt, we've had an awful set of results and another loss today could have been highly damaging. A point puts stop to that so maybe worth sacrificing the chance for 2 more just to shake us out of our form. I'll be highly concerned if this is how we plan to continue though
 
By the way for anyone gloomy enough, Ipswich Bolton Wigan relegation treble is 40/1 on Sky Bet. Ipswich, Reading, Wigan 50/1. We’re 14/1 to go down currently (very generous) but trust me, we’ll be less than half those odds if Horwich beat us next week.

Here a question for the statsmen on here. How many matches under Paul Cook have we scored a winning goal in the final 5 minutes? Oxford is one but other than that I’m struggling.
 
If Reading had looked like scoring then fair enough but they wouldnt have scored if theyd played all night and we havnt played a worse side all season. Yet we sat back and slowed it down and time wasted rather than go for a win Yootha style.
 
jeffs right said:
If Reading had looked like scoring then fair enough but they wouldnt have scored if theyd played all night and we havnt played a worse side all season. Yet we sat back and slowed it down and time wasted rather than go for a win Yootha style.
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Totally agree , first time Cook has p@ssed me off as our Manager with this tactic. Granted a defeat would have been a bad result but to have no desire to go for it was a big mistake.
 
I thought Reading played some decent stuff at times........ admittedly though, most of it wasn't in the final third.

I thought their no 14 was excellent.
 
jeffs right said:
Not like you to be negative, so that knocks it home how poor that was.
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To be honest at half time i was not too disappointed as we looked likely to score at any time first half. thought if we kept that going we would be okay! Sadly second half we had no leadership,no direction and no tactical nous! Reading were low on confidence after their recent run and played for the breakaway goal all match but we did not have the brains to get behind them,and then rather disgracefully we started to play for a nil nil draw!Sad to say we should forget the new contract for Morsy who has been awful all season.do not extend Gibsons short term contract ,put James into midfield and put Byrne back to full back as he is dreadful farther forward!!Windass,Garner and Vaughn seem to be finding it difficult to lay down a marker up front so why not bring a couple of the young lads in as i am sure they would not be as insipid!Cook was saying after the game that we will be bust in the transfer window and we need to be!!
 
moonay said:
I thought Reading played some decent stuff at times........ admittedly though, most of it wasn't in the final third.

I thought their no 14 was excellent.
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Agree their 14 looked good yet the Reading fans cheered when his number went up to be subbed! Puzzling!!
 
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