doctor evil

He was booked for kicking the ball away for the first, the 2nd was definitely the challenge. Had his hand in his pocket immediately. Because it was simulation it might get overturned, but I'm not sure if that was only for straight reds....

It's their first appointment, they'll stick with him until it becomes untenable (which is probably a couple more bad results away).

Doesn't rate Gardner = Troll . I'm not deyres

Also I'm seeing a lot of "Gardner best of the midfield" type comments. The guy was useless. He can't run, he can't tackle, he overhits every pass. He offers nothing.

That's the most concerning aspect for me. People criticise DU for his "excuses" but in fairness they're (mostly) legitimate. Had we been coming into this season off the back of a really strong one, there wouldn't be this kind of reaction. But although results improved towards the end of last season, the quality of product didn't follow that trend. There wasn't a particular identity or style begining to appear. In fact DU mentioned time and again that he couldn't play the way he wanted until he had a squad capable. That bought him time, but also put pressure on the beginning of this season. And I think it made his job a lot harder, he's effectively had to try to implement a philosophy or identity from scratch over the summer. There's a reason why we always hear that you have to give a new manager time. It takes time to implement major change. And there's always bumps in the road at the start. But he's already had that time, so fans rightly will demand results and crucially an improvement in the quality of football. And I just don't see a plan, a philosophy, identity whatever you want to call it. We try to play out from the back one game then go hoof ball all game the next. The best teams have recognisable patterns of play, you see them create and score chances the same way all the time. We don't have that, it's aimless hopeful balls waiting for mistakes from the opposition. When we do create chances it's more often than not just because of the quality we have on the pitch. This is a squad more than capable of achieving a top 3 finish but at the moment it looks like a team that will be fighting at the wrong end of the table. It's entirely possible that we could turn things around over the next few games, the injured players come back and we begin to see the style of play unsworth wants. But he's got very little room for error now. 1 or 2 wins won't stop those calls for him to go. It needs to be a sustained period of improved performances and results.

He shouldn't be at the club never mind on the pitch. Has about 1 good game in 20 and gets sent off in 3 of the others...

Yeah

Fondop to get sent off before HT?

I'd never play 442 and I'd bloody love it

So yeah as soon as we do anything other than pass the ball backwards it drops to a pretty poor level.

Don't get me wrong I'm happy with a point, but it's not a sin to look at what we could've done better. Equally had we lost it wouldn't be unreasonable to point out the things we did well.

70% pass accuracy is the thing to take away from this. If you're going to play like we did which was to be compact and allow them to have the lions share of the ball, the times we win possession we have to be better with it. Too many times we gave the ball away too easily and weren't able to launch enough counter attacks. I don't mind us sitting back against the better teams away from home. But we need to work on being a lot more ruthless with the ball. We created 2 chances of note in the game and one was because of a bad bit of goalkeeping.

Technically tonight was more 442 than Saturday. Saturday was more 4222 with tollit and Dickenson as almost two wide attacking midfielders. Tonight was more rigid with those 2 predominantly staying wide. Anyway it doesn't matter because, believe it or not, formation isn't the only thing that makes a team good or bad...

We played 352 because that's what Southend play.....

Not an incredible half of football. On the few occasions we've got the ball down and tried to play we don't look atrocious, especially down the left. But on the whole it's just a god awful watch at the minute.

Said EFL club would have to wait until January....

Not usually one to go to town on wanting to see different formations because, for example, 2 teams playing 352 can play it completely differently. However I do think a switch to a flat back 4 might give us a bit more. I kind of understand why unsworth has stuck with this (remember shez was playing it with this lot). If they're already (in theory) used to playing this way it should be easier to improve it. Also from the sounds of his interviews, the area they've been focusing in training is the defensive side of the game (in and out of possession) and it's likely the base formation used will be a 3/5 back. Changing formation now almost puts all that work in the bin. This lot are barely capable of learning how to play 1 formation nevermind 2.

I don't know what it is about the 2nd half but every game we immediately become dreadful (or at least more dreadful than before).

There's definitely a lack of urgency in our play at times. There's been very little pressure from Chester. Towards the end of that half we started developing some decent phases of play but we still struggle to create from open play. The wingbacks are getting a lot of space and if we can get the ball out wide a bit quicker we can put this one to bed....

Fondop scores, offside flag goes up....

3-0. Not much more to say

There's definitely some garbage in the squad. But I'm positive with the right manager there is enough quality to see us threaten the play offs.....

They're not playing for him....

Yeah there's been no sign of improvement at any point this season. It's been the time for a change for a while. If we are waiting for him to walk, can we maybe convince him to do it sooner rather than later...

There is a solution to this.....