100milesaway Posted August 6, 2011 Share Posted August 6, 2011 I think the back 4 will be o k, and do feel really sorry for ANYONE who has to play up front for us because when they get the ball there is nobody with a blue shirt on within 20 yards of them to pass to, so they must dwell on the ball, and the move stops or with 3 defenders around them they lose the ball.For me our problems lie in midfield, we must try and find someone who can run at defenders with the ball and give opposition defenders something other than routine defending to do, this would also have the effect of moving the whole team further up the pitch and nearer to our front 2.I actually think Winchester could fill this roll, as he and Lee seem like the only 2 that we have that dont mind going forward and trying to beat a retreating player. As for todays game I thought the first half was absolutely even, but second half the Yorkies did have a bit more class and made it count. Still not to downhearted early days let us see what the next few weeks bring. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stainrod Posted August 6, 2011 Share Posted August 6, 2011 I thought Diamond was superb today and well beyong league 1 standard (did someone earlier think he was slow??). Once the understanding develops I have confidence in him and Mvoto, also like the way he was shouting/motivating/organising. Thought Black was a bit weak so we need a left back, also think if we can't find the right midfeidder then worth giving Keiron Lee a go again in the middle (as may be easier to find a right back instead). Lun disappointed but first game out, Smith looks just ok but will be comortably handled by the better centre backs in league 1 Cisak first half I thoought looked really good, couldn't see whether he was at fault in the second half but doubt it. Problem is more midfield as everyone says where Winchester and Millar aren't yet ready perhaps. Would also agree with much said about Reid, if you are not big you need to be fast and he is neither. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grim Posted August 6, 2011 Share Posted August 6, 2011 Communication at the back could take a while with Aussie,Scottish,French and Manc accents flying around! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobOAFC Posted August 6, 2011 Share Posted August 6, 2011 I think the back 4 will be o k, and do feel really sorry for ANYONE who has to play up front for us because when they get the ball there is nobody with a blue shirt on within 20 yards of them to pass to, so they must dwell on the ball, and the move stops or with 3 defenders around them they lose the ball.For me our problems lie in midfield, we must try and find someone who can run at defenders with the ball and give opposition defenders something other than routine defending to do, this would also have the effect of moving the whole team further up the pitch and nearer to our front 2.I actually think Winchester could fill this roll, as he and Lee seem like the only 2 that we have that dont mind going forward and trying to beat a retreating player. As for todays game I thought the first half was absolutely even, but second half the Yorkies did have a bit more class and made it count. Still not to downhearted early days let us see what the next few weeks bring. Sorry, but what is it Taylor and Morais do? Do they not like attacking? Do they not run at defenders? Do they not try to beat retreating players? Yes i know Morais couldn't play today, but he offers a lot more attacking than Winchester on right-wing.. You could tell Lee missed Morais out on the right today, and could tell Furman missed Fernandez in CM as it meant Furman had to sit deeper rather than further up the pitch.. All we need is another striker, a centre mid such as Fernandez, if he's not possible then someone else who also plays that holding role, and someone like Evina, who can cover both LB and LM. If Lowe is to come in as has been said in another thread, that would be another good signing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobOAFC Posted August 6, 2011 Share Posted August 6, 2011 Communication at the back could take a while with Aussie,Scottish,French and Manc accents flying around! Not to mention a Northern Irish accent shouting at them all from the side-line.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luis Enrique Posted August 6, 2011 Share Posted August 6, 2011 it's hard to judge anything on the first game of the season but here's my view for what it's worth: back four plus the keeper looks like it will be a really good unit & if they stay fit might just keep us up. smith & reid surely cannot be allowed to play as a pair again? that's one of the least mobile partnerships I've ever seen. the majority of our set pieces were absolutely diabolical. even by oldham athletic's standards. we're going to need better than that if we're going to score anywhere near enough goals this season as I don't see too many coming from open play. parker looks like he can make the difference. he'll quickly become a marked man if he keeps that up. looking forward to seeing him start. the over-riding feeling I have six hours later though is that £23 feels like a lot of money to pay for football of that standard. & I mean from both teams when I say that. I thought both teams were pretty poor today, defences apart. still, you can't expect the finished product on day one so hopefully the quality all round will get better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobOAFC Posted August 6, 2011 Share Posted August 6, 2011 it's hard to judge anything on the first game of the season but here's my view for what it's worth: back four plus the keeper looks like it will be a really good unit & if they stay fit might just keep us up. smith & reid surely cannot be allowed to play as a pair again? that's one of the least mobile partnerships I've ever seen. the majority of our set pieces were absolutely diabolical. even by oldham athletic's standards. we're going to need better than that if we're going to score anywhere near enough goals this season as I don't see too many coming from open play. parker looks like he can make the difference. he'll quickly become a marked man if he keeps that up. looking forward to seeing him start. the over-riding feeling I have six hours later though is that £23 feels like a lot of money to pay for football of that standard. & I mean from both teams when I say that. I thought both teams were pretty poor today, defences apart. still, you can't expect the finished product on day one so hopefully the quality all round will get better. Our set pieces were better than usual, and we will bag quite a few from set pieces this season, defences don't know which 6ft+ player to concentrate on.. Parker and Smith will form a good partnership, but you never know, this star striker might sign.. If he does lets hope it doesn't take him as long to score as it took for him to sign! Cody Mcdonald or Oli Johnson would be good additions upfront and both available since Norwich have said they can go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TehMastar!!11 Posted August 7, 2011 Share Posted August 7, 2011 Sheffield United were the stronger team and the better team for 90 minutes. But, even allowing for the difference in quality, I thought that display was totally unacceptable. Easy comparison for me would be the first game of last season at Tranmere. There we battled for everything. Chased lost causes. Went in for 40/60 balls and forced mistakes. Today we let them dictate. We had little in midfield, nothing up front and when the defence fell asleep it was game set and match Blades. We will go down if players don't put a shift in. I don't think they did today. Cisak - 5 - came for a lot but one awful punch in the first half worried me. Seemed to be in someway at fault for their first goal, not clear how the corner reached the scorer - TV will confirm if that's fair or not. Lee - 6 - did ok, would probably have been better swapping positions with Winchester. Black - 6 - I though he had a half decent game without being stunning. M'Voto - 5 - did the basics well a lot of time but then developed a couple of doses of Hazellitis with unforced errors. Diamond - 4- ridiculous head on the half way line to concede possession that lead to their second and missed a sitter when most would have hit the target. Furman - 5 - worked hard but inneffective Lund - 4 - contributed little and is yet another example of a player from a Premiership club who's dead piece distribution is variable in quality. Winchester - 5 - committed to the cause, not afraid to get stuck in, but lacking the pace to play on the right of midfield. Their left back was excellent. Taylor - 7 - excellent first half performance when he was our only threat. Faded a little in the second half. Smith - 3 - looked like a non-league triker. Very few flicks on, which disappointed. Not what he was v Burrnley. Reid - 2 - inability to jump and seemed unwilling to risk getting hurt for the cause. Did occasionally chase back, but was, on the whole, the poorest player on the pitch by a million miles. Millar - 4 - didn't improve the balance of the side, although it's the substitution I'd have made. Parker - 7 - fast, skilful and up for it. Must start next time. I think a lot of players let themselves down today. When you're up against a better team you have to work harder than that to get anything out of the game. We didn't today. It's early days. But we're at least one striker short, 2 midfield players and I'd suggest need more than Tarkowski for cover at centre half. Both the big men showed their weaknesses today and it wasn't pretty. Those ratings are blatenly ridiculous! M'voto and Diamond were by far our strongest and most effective players all game. The first goal was a bad goal to give away and the second was an the result of a bad decision by Black not to close the ball down. My worry is the news story a few weeks ago lauding how many young players we have in the senior team, let's not kid ourselves we don't have the money for a even a decent league one youth academy, these stories about the youth players playing in the first team is bluster to hide how shallow our squad is. It's going to be a long season, hope we stay up, the consequences are not worth contemplating. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
opinions4u Posted August 7, 2011 Share Posted August 7, 2011 (edited) Those ratings are blatenly ridiculous! It depends what you are baselining them against. I've started with a 5 for everybody and moved them up or down based on my own judgement of their effectiveness in the game. From reading this and other threads I'd suggest the only one where I'm way off the mark would appear to be Diamond. M'voto and Diamond were by far our strongest and most effective players all game. The first goal was a bad goal to give away Which puts my scores in to perspective. Where were they? If they were the best we had on the pitch, and were nowhere to be seen at a corner where we conceded a headed goal, I'd suggest that justifies low scores for others. and the second was an the result of a bad decision by Black not to close the ball down. The initial error that gave them so much space down our right side came from Diamond. M'Voto then got done for pace and even then we had three players (including Cisak) who should have been able to cut out the threat. It was poor. Dickov himself has admitted that 4 players "gave up" when we went 1-0 down. It showed. We were in danger of another second half like the Peterborough game until Josh Parker came on and offered an outlet that hadn't been there for the previous 70 minutes or so. So far, I've seen posts in response that have said the defence looks a good unit (but it made mistakes that cost us the game). The midfield lacks creativity and Reid is :censored:e. So am I really way off the mark in posting what I've been slated for? Edited August 7, 2011 by opinions4u Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blue_Guru Posted August 7, 2011 Share Posted August 7, 2011 Let's be honest though even if we had this 'star' striker yesterday he wouldn't have scored because we created no chances from open play that I can remember. Early to be judging but we lacked creativity yesterday and sheff u were very solid. Next 2 games will tell us more, let's see if we can break down poorer opposition Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnno1 Posted August 7, 2011 Share Posted August 7, 2011 furman and lund similar in that they are both content to sit deep and play ball around rather than get on it and run/create things. An ideal foil would be a season loan for Ravel Morrison from Utd. Runs with it, pace, skill - whether PD wants him possibly causing trouble i'm not sure, but he is definately talented and a harsh word in his ear from Fergie stating that any more :censored: ups and he's out, followed by, 'you're going to Oldham for the season to get experience' and good discipline from PD/GT and he may well sort himself out and let his talent talk instead. We will need to try something different for this weeks cup game. Lund is off with Northern Ireland (yes the NI curse remains) for their qualifying game on Wednesday. Morrison would certainly give us a very interesting option either wide midfield, central or a floating role off the front players. A highly talented lad who needs to change his mates. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oafc1955 Posted August 7, 2011 Share Posted August 7, 2011 Smith will be OK but he's not there yet fitness wise and has alot of catching up to do...coming off the bench for 20mins might be the best way to use him at the moment. Reid is like a rabbit caught in the headlamps and tends to panic every time he gets the ball, the amount of times he was caught in possesion yesterday was criminal. I thought the back four were pretty decent yesterday apart from a mad 5 minute spell that cost us the match. They will get better with more games and I believe we have found a good keeper at last! Furman was another who caught the eye and although playing too deep he kept the ball well and consistently found a blue shirt. It's obvious that we need a goalscorer but that won't solve the problem on it's own, we need the supply line to improve because yesterday we created very little going forward. Morais should impove our attacking threat but he can't do it alone. Taylor looked OK in patches but for a winger you need to get out wide beat the full back and get those crosses in, something he consistently fails to do!! Three quality additions and we might surprise a few teams...otherwise we may struggle to stay much above the relegation places. It was difficuly to asess our performance yesterday because Sheffied Utd were a very compact and solid team and on that showing will be up amongst the promotion favourites next May, however, our lack of a cutting edge is still there for all to see. If we can somehow get playing further up the pitch and cause more of a threat to the opposition we could have a decent season, but we've been saying that for a while now and so far nothing has changed. We will have raked in a bit of cash from the away following yesterday but less than 4500 home fans on the first day of the season for a local Derby against one of the bigger teams in the division is not good. I was at the main stand fairly early yesterday (around 1.30pm) and my son and I had to wait 20 minutes for them just to open the turnstyle...the whole of the half time period was needed just queing for a pi**. This re-development of BP can't come quick enough as I think we have one of the worst fan friendly grounds in the country. Let's hope that this time it's going to happen because if for any reason it doesn't I think Corney will walk away and realistically who could blame him! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luis Enrique Posted August 7, 2011 Share Posted August 7, 2011 Our set pieces were better than usual, and we will bag quite a few from set pieces this season, defences don't know which 6ft+ player to concentrate on.. Parker and Smith will form a good partnership, but you never know, this star striker might sign.. If he does lets hope it doesn't take him as long to score as it took for him to sign! Cody Mcdonald or Oli Johnson would be good additions upfront and both available since Norwich have said they can go. i thought the couple of times we got them right we looked a real threat, and obviously that's where our only threat came from. but when we got them wrong, they were dreadful. and more often than not we got them wrong. still, overall, not too worried after day one. so long as we don't repeat the same mistakes week in week out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leeslover Posted August 7, 2011 Share Posted August 7, 2011 We were pretty decent first half, i thought there was a good mix of passing and hoofing. Cisak looks to have very good hands and Zander was excellent. United were very organised. Second half we just had nothing to offer. Early days, we have plenty to build on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slurms mckenzie Posted August 7, 2011 Share Posted August 7, 2011 We looked impotent up front, and I cannot see where goals are coming from this season. Before the start of the season I said we would go down, and I saw nothing yesterday to change that. I feel let down by the club at the lack of signings, and more so in the fact that we haven't made a single quality signing all summer. The midfield was simply dreadful, and Taylor aside, we haven't a single ounce of creativity within the team. We have nothing upfront as Reid is a liability, and again Taylor aside, there isn't a player in the team capable of scoring 10 goals this season. When we were two down, it looked depressingly like when we lost to Leeds under Penney, i.e. we seemed quite content with it. I'll stick to what I said last season, Dickov looks out of his depth, and without any financial support whatsover due to TTA giving up on us, its going to be a long miserable season. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qwerty Posted August 7, 2011 Share Posted August 7, 2011 we lost to a very good experienced team and tbh i didnt expect us to win, thought we did ok move on next game.................. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oafc1955 Posted August 7, 2011 Share Posted August 7, 2011 We looked impotent up front, and I cannot see where goals are coming from this season. Before the start of the season I said we would go down, and I saw nothing yesterday to change that. I feel let down by the club at the lack of signings, and more so in the fact that we haven't made a single quality signing all summer. The midfield was simply dreadful, and Taylor aside, we haven't a single ounce of creativity within the team. We have nothing upfront as Reid is a liability, and again Taylor aside, there isn't a player in the team capable of scoring 10 goals this season. When we were two down, it looked depressingly like when we lost to Leeds under Penney, i.e. we seemed quite content with it. I'll stick to what I said last season, Dickov looks out of his depth, and without any financial support whatsover due to TTA giving up on us, its going to be a long miserable season. 'we haven't made a single quality signing all summer'. So Cisak and Diamond are not quality? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheBigDog Posted August 7, 2011 Share Posted August 7, 2011 We will have raked in a bit of cash from the away following yesterday but less than 4500 home fans on the first day of the season for a local Derby against one of the bigger teams in the division is not good. Local Derby is stretching it somewhat! Sheffield is 41 miles from Oldham .... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maddog Posted August 7, 2011 Share Posted August 7, 2011 Local Derby is stretching it somewhat! Sheffield is 41 miles from Oldham .... 39.8 actually Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mainstandmoaner Posted August 7, 2011 Share Posted August 7, 2011 How the bloody hell did we sign diamond? It's good to see a centre half getting stuck in like he did. The only problem is I can see him picking up a few cards That apart what a player Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fitzhall21 Posted August 8, 2011 Share Posted August 8, 2011 We looked impotent up front, and I cannot see where goals are coming from this season. Before the start of the season I said we would go down, and I saw nothing yesterday to change that. I feel let down by the club at the lack of signings, and more so in the fact that we haven't made a single quality signing all summer. The midfield was simply dreadful, and Taylor aside, we haven't a single ounce of creativity within the team. We have nothing upfront as Reid is a liability, and again Taylor aside, there isn't a player in the team capable of scoring 10 goals this season. When we were two down, it looked depressingly like when we lost to Leeds under Penney, i.e. we seemed quite content with it. I'll stick to what I said last season, Dickov looks out of his depth, and without any financial support whatsover due to TTA giving up on us, its going to be a long miserable season. I thought we started to make some decent chances after going 2-0 down Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oafc-latics Posted August 8, 2011 Share Posted August 8, 2011 I thought we started to make some decent chances after going 2-0 down We did that a lot last season, only create when we're chasing a game and the opposition are just sitting back on a lead. If we come out and get teams defending deep from the start, we'll be so much more effective Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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