FL2: Wimbledon v Torquay 21 April 2012

I agree....but will go one further---everything appears to have changed since the disallowed goal when we were one nil up.

Today as has already been mentioned was so so poor from minute one until the end. So many players were really struggling and then when changes were made even the subs didnt appear hungry for the battle. I could have understood if this was a good wombles side but it wasnt the case.
Was even more gutted with the result when I heard the other 2 results!!
Anyway keep the faith and lets hope ML can rediscover the magic

I am not so sure that it is the players fault. When you play one up front and your striker can't train because he has a knee injury, that sort of tells its own story. Its been obvious for weeks that our players are knackered (just look at O'Kane) but our squad basically has the first eleven, subs and noone else who is worthy of being a pro footballer.
So under those circumstances Ling has peformed a miracle to get us in the position we are.
However if wee were serious about going up we would surely have strengthened with at least two players before the transfer deadline.
It is definately not over but we need to win our last two games and hope that Crawley slip up.
If its the play offs we genuinely look to have no chance.

But we are 4th in the league. If we didn't put enough pressure on defences, we wouldn't have won 23 matches this year

This whole idea that we are in any way negative is a complete misrepresentation of what has actually been happening in these games. Creating chances has never been a problem - it has been taking those chances that's the issue. I can think of quite a few matches where we bombarded the opposition for most of the game, or at least most of the second half, and yet only came out with a 1 goal winning margin. Howe has scored plenty this year but he has also wasted a lot of chances, and Atieno isn't a goal-scoring striker. If anything, we've lacked a "proper" alternative to Howe


Negative is how Chelsea played against Barcelona on Wednesday - trying to score on the counter-attack by banging it up to the big man, and then spending the second half pinned on the edge of one's penalty area, defending by any means necessary. I can only remember one game where we played like that: it was against the team that got promoted today, and we did win that. It wasn't even like that when we played Sheffield United, who are 2nd in the division above us

Passing football is very rarely negative. I can't think of any instances of teams who pass the ball on the ground that could be described as negative or defensive. Usually it's the opposite - it's the long ball teams that are regarded as defensive

Interestingly if you look at the stats (and I'm no advocate of the idea that stats hold the key to everything), our goal difference away from home is better than Crawley's and only 1 behind Shrewsbury and Swindon. The difference is at home: Crawley have scored 12 more goals than us but have conceded the same number, while Shrewsbury have only scored 1 more than us but have conceded 10 less. So it isn't necessarily that we haven't scored as many as we could/should have - it could also be that we've conceded too many, which goes back to the start of the season when we were shipping a lot of goals even when we were scoring a few

At the end of the day, our form has varied through the season. We've gone through rough patches where we've struggled but we've also gone through great runs of form - all of that has been from playing with the same tactics and generally the same team. We're now struggling to score goals because teams have worked out how we score goals - presumably (at least this was the case against Southend) by shutting off Eunan, who has been our driving force all year

As well as that, the players are probably tired after having 40-50 games this season - they may be professional footballers but they're not cyborgs. Squad rotation would be nice but we don't have Swindon or Crawley's money, and so it makes sense not to change things if you're on a good run of form and the replacements aren't going to give you anything more. The difference in 2003-04 was that we had plenty of options for each position - we had considerable defensive options, and a striking line-up of Graham, Gritton, Bedeau, Kuffour and Wills is, off the top of my head, unparalleled in our recent (Football League) history. Perhaps Mr Bateson wasn't such a tight arse after all...

Sorry, loyalgull, but I'm going to have to pull you up on your choice of adjectives.

You've used "uninterested" (also "not showing the slightest interest"), "gutless" and "disappointing".

I presume you were on the same away terracing as I was yesterday.

I'll agree with "disappointing" and I don't think anyone can be disappointed if they are uninterested.

From my slim step I saw a bunch of players who were desperate to win, to the extent that they were nervous and trying too hard.

Some thought Danny played poorly - he was ineffective, but I felt that was because he was trying too hard. Everything he touched turned to sand (to wrangle a metaphor). He was so frightened of making a mistake that he wasn't playing his usual game, consequently he did nothing BUT make mistakes. That's not because he wanted to.

The players have been taught not to criticise each other when things go wrong on the pitch, but that was happening in the first half. By the second half Ellis was screaming at anyone who misplaced a pass (and there were plenty of misplaced passes!).

You can sit at your keyboard and accuse the team of being disinterested, and that "some are more happy playing dagenham and aldershot next season rather than portsmouth and coventry" but I bet you wouldn't dare go to the training ground and say that to any of them face to face. They'd punch your lights out.

This bunch of players are desperate to win promotion, and unfortunately they are starting to worry unnecessarily when things don't go to plan; call it "panic" if you like.

We will be "getting rid" this summer, but mostly of the fringe players who aren't good enough to make the subs bench: Macklin, Leadbitter, etc. Ling will bring in sufficient players to challenge for places and so that the wizard that is Damian Davey doesn't have to dig even deeper into his book of spells to get players onto the pitch when they are injured and should really be sitting in the stands.

Yesterday was deflating, but it's not the end of the season yet. I don't know where the next win is coming from; but if there is one to be found, I trust Ling to find it.

Apart from the said Macklin, possibly Aiteno (1year) and Jarvis (Loan) aren't most of the other 'surplus' on two year contracts i.e. McPhee, Morris, the left back bloke who's name escapes me?

Good point about the contracts chelstongull

Doesn't seem that there will be too many comings and goings.......with most players signed up for next season anyway.

Ellis, Lathrope and LRT are probably the ones that will be offered new deals - I can see Lathrope staying, Ellis depends on other offers i guess but will probably sign - LRT if you go by his tweets, finds Torquay life a little sleepy! and still hasn't nailed down a 1st team place.

Macklin i think, has another year.......so he'll still be here.

Atieno for me, hasn't done enough and I would expect him to be released, Jarvis seems likely to sign.

Could be just on the look out for another central midfielder and a couple of forwards I reckon.