TheBigDog

Two good points: In recent times there is only Will Sutton who has come through from the youth setup and stayed in the first team picture - Harry Vaughan could have done likewise but was moved on… Couto, Moore, Forshaw and others have still not shown enough and maybe never will. It was the desire and willingness to run the channels, and get a shot off, that impressed me from Stones. Hopefully we bring in one or two more that have the same attitude.

Tyler Golden?

I still think that there’s a decent player there…

WE WIN. 2-0. Not the most convincing display but a first home win for MM - btw Hudson got MotM

Live on TNT Sports- Saturday February 3 – Ebbsfleet vs Oldham Ath (5.30pm)

The lad who came on in the second half, Mancini, looked very good. They were also without Dieseruvwe - not sure if he is long term injured. They will still cause us problems unless MM manages to sort out his home tactics and formation

He’s always smiling nowadays

Don’t agree with any of what you’ve said above… ’not fast enough… to take a loose ball a distance from goal…’ I give you the third goal at Barnet ’an arrogant personality’ Know the guy do you? I wonder if many of his teammates would agree with you? For me, the problem is the micro analysis that seems to be prevalent at the moment. I'm just glad that he is finally showing what he is capable of at this level

I think that the club is making too much of this incident - fine the guy, ask him to apologise, move on fer chrissakes

3-1 victory - Two average sides but in Stones and Norwood we had the better strikers No subs made by Mellon. Surely we can beat them at home on Saturday?

Hartlepool not won at home since October 7th. Latics on a run of 3 away victories… Only one outcome

Yet…

Ridiculous!

Nothing to see here - move on…

The reason for the flat atmosphere at home is the way the team is set up to play and its continuing underperformance. The manager has to take some of the responsibility for this. It’s an easy cop out to say that Mellon has inherited bad players - that is only part of the story. The manager is making mistakes in formation and team selection and it’s his job to get more out of what he has at his disposal. The squad has shown that it can do it albeit not consistently. He has made his mind up about many players but, until he can move them on and bring better players in, he has to get more from the current crop. After all, that’s what he’s paid to do surely?

Agreed. There were 6,500 there on Saturday and the team played very poorly. How long before some start to drift away?

Me neither but I will because they are my team

It’s not about what I expect him to say, it’s more about if he’s saying the same thing each time then he needs to change it! See my earlier post

I must have missed that… what was their vulnerability?

The point I was making is that if his words have a familiar ring to them, it’s because nothing is improving at home. I was surprised that he made little effort to change the formation yesterday. Revert to 442, Hogan and Stones off, Hope and Fondop on - and do it before we go behind

His post home match interviews are sounding the same every time….

As it stands… Whilst I agree with a lot of the above, it was clear very early on yesterday that playing 5 at the back was not working. Gateshead were by far the best passing team I have seen at this level. They were quicker than us in thought and movement. We by comparison looked decidedly average - too many (again) were off the pace and panicked when put under pressure. Often we had three central defenders marking one forward while the midfield was overrun or simply bypassed. Mellon spent a large part of the game screaming at his players to get further forward and work harder - yet when there was a break in play he did not bring them to the touchline to get his points across. As it stands, I’m not convinced that Mellon is getting it right. It’s clear from his demeanour that he does not rate many of the players at his disposal - in his post match interviews he continually stresses ‘we’ to prevent him from slagging off the team. Of course he gets more time from me but there are one or two niggling doubts about his performance so far…

This.

Chapel Road, BP

Artificial pitch so maybe First team will only train on it before we go to Dorking and others who don’t have a grass pitch?