nzlatic

Just keep making bad choices or bad final pass/cross. Very frustrating.

This commentator has no idea who Hope is. Has mistaken him for about 5 other players.

Golden chance there but instead of passing to Conlon and Norwood with a 2v1 Gardner played hope in on a tight angle.

We have too many players on the pitch who do a better job of slowing down our play than they do contributing something quick or positive. It’s too easy to defend against. We don’t really have much in reserve either. Other than the call for Atherton who would we like to see on the pitch making chances?

I still think we don’t have the players for anything other than 352.

Absolute calamity.

Commentators practically willing Altrincham to score.

I would say that’s tactical today - allow them to come out and hit them on the break.

Is it 451/433 with Dallas and Hope wide?

Early, blatant yellow card for Alty number 6 completely ignored by ref. This league!

I did see an image of when he’s due to return but can’t find it now so I don’t know sorry.

Agreed. I just wonder if having that character on the pitch is what he is preferring over a round peg in a round hole that he can’t rely on as much. Man marking Conn-Clarke today?

He’s banned for 4 games BP.

Like they said, you can forgive the original decision but you can’t forgive not overturning it on appeal. What rule has Fondop broken?! Or law. Before someone picks me up on using the wrong word!

Could be that he feels he can rely on McGahey to not shit the bed under pressure. To be fair he doesn’t look like someone who’s panicking on the ball, he’s just limited as a footballer.

442… Sutton RB, McGahey in centre mid, hope and Gardner wide?

Nah F that. It’s the latics way to start believing again the closer you get to kick off. Let those hopes get up!…

Was looking at Cook’s record at Chesterfield as it gets referenced how far behind them we are. He got the job in Feb 22 with the team doing really well and only getting rid of the previous manager due to off the field stuff. By the looks of it he got 20 points from 19 games and they clung on to 7th, ending with 3 wins from the last 12 games. Season 2 they were doing really well then had a big blip of 3 points from 9 games mid season. Ended strongly though and finished 3rd. Then this season they’ve walked the league.

It’s staggering that red isn’t overturned. The slowmo shows he’s first to the ball by some distance, left foot takes the ball away, right foot stays on the ground. The fylde player swings for the ball, misses, kicks Fondop’s left leg while falling over his right. Not late, not dangerous, not high, not even a foul. All there to see on film. What an absolute joke. No point in even having appeals.

I think the fear of making a mistake is a thing, but that fear doesn’t come from the possibility of the crowd groaning. It’s bigger than that. Put it this way, a player could have a great game for Brentford against Man United. But put them in the other team and the expectation that comes from playing for a club like that could mean they don’t perform as well. And I shall now resign from this board for comparing us to Man United.

I don’t think they’re ignoring him, I think they’re just panicking in certain circumstances. We either have no plan, so Mellon is just not actively doing anything at all in terms of coaching or tactics. Or there is a plan but they aren’t carrying it out on a consistent basis. Which is the most likely? Personally I think the second. In our best performances we’ve employed a mixture of direct and short passing. Eg Garner goal at Maidenhead (direct) and the second goal at Eastleigh (passing move). To me that makes sense as the sort of football you’d expect from a manager like Mellon. But when it goes to shit it is just aimless hoofs. Why do they do it? Who knows but I don’t believe it’s part of a deliberately set out plan. In my opinion it’s the pressure and weight of expectation that they’re struggling to deal with. I owe an apology of sorts to @GKing521 here because I now do think it is an element of mental fragility. I don’t agree with him that the club has a losing mentality permeating through it, but I think some players are struggling with pressure. That might actually only take a few squad changes to fix. So we might not be as far off success as it currently looks.

When they play like they did first half yesterday, or away at Aldershot or any of the other games where they’ve had a total nightmare I don’t believe that is intentional tactics. That isn’t direct football or long ball football. It’s total disorganised, panicked chaos where they look like they haven’t trained together let alone played together. I do not believe that Mellon and Brabin stand on the training pitch working through patterns of play that involve them passing slowly backwards then just hoofing aimlessly into the middle of nowhere while the strikers chase after it having no idea where it was meant to go. If that was the plan then why don’t they start Fondop every game? It’s not pragmatic football that just isn’t bringing results. I wouldn’t even know how to describe it. It’s non football. So what is the reason for them doing that? I don’t believe that’s the plan. I think they take it upon themselves to do it under certain circumstances. Mellon isn’t absolved of any blame of course, he is the boss and he needs to work out how to get them to not do it. But I don’t believe that just bringing in someone who plays it on the deck will suddenly have us climbing the table. I think we’d still be seeing the same pant shitting spells this group churns out regularly.

But we have had games where we’ve played decent football. Are you saying they ignore him in those games but listen to him the rest of the time? Or he tells them to play in those games, they do it and win so he then says don’t do that again, what I want you to do is aimless punts forward out of defence? And even though doing that is killing our play off chances he persists in telling them to do that each game? Unless he’s an agent sent by Rochdale fans then that would make no logical sense at all.

I’ll add to this - if mentality and coping with pressure and expectation is a problem, then we need to bring in a top sports psychologist as well.

There absolutely must be! Not in the grand scheme of football obviously, but there certainly must be when it comes to playing for us in this league - where we are a sleeping giant. We urgently need to go up for financial reasons (loss of EFL payments). The investment in the club facilities by the owners has been done so we can compete higher. We have one of the biggest budgets in the league. Fans have been starved of any success for decades and now can see that investment in the club and on the pitch so expect to see results. The pressure is on the players and the manager to deliver on that. It seems that pressure is too much. We have plenty of players capable of passing a football. Even if Mellon is wanting a more direct approach, we have plenty of players capable of delivering wins playing that way instead. But it doesn't look like direct football, it just looks like complete panic. Just look what happens when a team puts any sort of pressure on the ball early on in a game. And there'll be even more pressure next season where we'll rightly be expected to be consistently top 3. This summer we need to fix the gaps in the squad but also need to focus on character.