The day started poorly and got worse
Was in the stadium early and saw the two keepers warming up with oggy .... neither looked confident, both dropped simple catches and the kicking was average at best, some was awful.
The Worcester lads came out as a team and warmed up as a team, there was a togetherness. Our lads ambled out stood doing little passes for 5 minutes and then did a couple of drills that looked poor in quality, then ambled off. Set the scene for what was to follow. Said to my lad then that it all felt wrong and I thought that it was going to be a bad day
Worcester took 10 seconds to have a crack at goal it was best part of 20 minutes before we even got in to their penalty box. By that time Worcester had had several good chances
They pressed high up with plenty of energy and no little skill. Their passing was decent and progressive ours was deliberate and unimaginative. They won tackles, got their foot in we stood off and let them play. The one thing you know you have to do against a non league side is to win your battles on the pitch, I can not think of one player for CCFC who did that. Even Reda didn't get his own way against their No9. The centre forward looked lumbering and round but got his body in the way, fought for every ball, played some decent lay offs and worked himself in to the ground
The passing for CCFC was generally slow and deliberate and even short 10yd passes found touch rather than the man...... Worcester had players clipping passes the width of the pitch and even before the sending off always had a man free in space. In short WCFC played the better football through out
The sending off was ridiculous, what the hell was Burge thinking off, yes he got tripped but what he did next was inexcusable. BUT it was not the reason we lost this game. We were lucky not to concede before the penalty and defensively looked weak and out of sorts. BUT where was the midfield? there was no leadership no strength no guile no pace ..... nothing in the middle of the park. Yes Maddison showed a few good touches but lets be honest he was going to stand out just doing simple things well in the team that surrounded him.
Reda, I think tried too hard tried to do it all himself tried to drag the team through by his effort ...... and ended up not being that effective because of it. Nothing wrong with a centre half taking a penalty but surely his manager could see Reda was trying too hard and failure beckoned. I felt that the penalty was soft in the first place.
I do wonder if the off field stuff is getting to the players? I do wonder why it is that SP's message is not clear and bought in to by the players? I do wonder why performance levels of the players are dropping? I do wonder what long term damage is being done to the young players because of the pressure put on them?
I could go on...... Yesterday was not about investment because the players we had should have been good enough. Nor was it just a bad day at the office because these kind of performances are becoming too regular, 20 minutes against Posh does not make us a good team. There is something fundamentally wrong in how we set up and approach games, the desire and commitment doesn't have the edge it needs, there are deficiencies throughout the team. The first question that SP has to answer is "how do I improve what I am doing?" because unless he can adapt and get his message across clearly in a way the players commit to then I do not see how he solves this
Yes they are in it together but SP controls this. Yes there are restricted things you can do once the players get on the pitch but he has the power to set the scene and make substitutions. Yes he can talk about players taking responsibility but that starts with him doing exactly that. He identifies the players, he has benefitted from an academy that was progressing players before he got here, but its his team ........ and its not working
Yesterday was the latest in a long line of embarassments that CCFC put their fans through...... so few good days of late
Finally well done to Worcester City, they thoroughly deserved their win and showed many of the qualities we are missing at present. 2:1 did not flatter them
