v Heybridge

[Yellowbelly]

I thought we were a bit unlucky yesterday. Heybridge were not that good and our problem seems to be that we are not taking our chances. I think that Danny is playing too deep for most of our recent games wether this is due to lack of supply or not I don't know.

 

Isa is better out wide as he proved against Dagenham although I think he needs to know when to release the ball and make that telling pass. How the ref missed the blatant elbow on Easterford from the 10 I don't know, he didn't have a very good game and missed a couple of important things, but we should still have done enough to win it. Their 8 spent most of the time laying on his back screaming like a 6 month old baby who is teething, I don't like to see players feign injury which he was good at. The first time he got Kingy booked when the tackle was the two players going for a 50-50 ball.

 

I was hoping that John would have given Ellis another run out as he played really well on Tuesday when he caused the Dagenham defence all sorts of problems.

 

It is also clear that some of the players are carrying knocks or coming back from injury and are not fully fit yet,

 

But all things said they took their chance and we didn't

 

One good thing is that we don't have to go to Lowestoft on Tuesday night again this season

 

 

Come on you Yellows

 

 

[Matt H]

Got no problem with players being rested for the League Cup, but at least play the players that do start in their regular positions. In all the years Wardy had been with Canvey how many times has he played at left-back in a competitive game, prior to Tuesday night? None.

 

Isa up front didn't work, he was too short. Isa in the middle didn't work, he was too lightweight. Dobbo was positioned too deep and we had a central midfielder playing on the right wing and a left winger playing in central midfield.

 

As I said, got no problem with the players that started but by making only one change from that line-up, (I would've thought Easterford would've been rested to be honest) a more balanced looking line-up would've looked like:

 

------------ Russell ---------------

West - Ward - Moore - Dumas

Isa - King - Dobinson - Kerrigan

------ Heale --- Hallett --------

 

Using Curran for Isa, Rhodes for Kerrigan and Skidmore for Hallett as our Subs.

 

Rather than what we saw of:

 

----------------- Russell -----------------

West - Easterford - Moore - Ward

King - Dobinson - Kerrigan - Dumas

---------- Heale -------- Isa -------------

 

It honestly looked like a Friendly formation.

 

Kingy is obviously not held in high regard by his former Club cause he was taking damage from everywhere and was lucky not to be forced off.

 

Besides that, I think the Referee was weak on several occasions. The Heybridge 3, 4 and 5 were all lucky to stay on the pitch for various reasons and their ugly, defensive play meant whenever we got the ball we couldn't really break their backline down enough to work the ball into the penalty area. Still I think we had enough half-chances in the first half to really put the result to bed at the break.

 

I hope we really make a push for the Essex Senior Cup now as it's the only thing we've got left to have a realistic chance of winning. We appear to be too inconsistent to make a serious Playoff push, unless we hit a run of form in the second half of the season.

 

We'll probably play out of our skins on Tuesday night with the regulars back in the starting XI and I also am hoping to see Skidmore make his League debut.

[Canvey Fan 1926]

Like everyone I was shocked to see Skidmore dropped - can't do a lot for a player's confidence when they make a debut, play well and score, then get dropped in the next match! If we were resting players, surely 1 change is not enough!?

 

These matches are less important than the league so trying new options is not a bad thing - but as Matt said, is it really a good idea to play players out of position? We had 4 strikers on the bench - yet played a winger up front for most of the match? IMO we seemed to start in a negative way with players playing far too deep - we should be going out to win matches especially those against lower league teams.

 

I thought it was silly to still have Robbie King on the pitch for the second half after picking up a yellow. Heybridge were trying their best to get him sent off which would have done as no favours as he would have missed the Concord game - not really a risk we should have took!

 

I don't like to be critical of John as he knows far more about football management than I do - but it's been clear at various matches this season that his selection/tactics have lost us matches we should have won. Why do we always play well against good teams, but bad against teams we should beat!! We need to start building the formation/tactics around the players we have, not build the starting XI around the the formation.

 

I'll get abused for this post now - but it's been building up for a long time. I know I'm not the only one that thinks the above as I've heard lots of people say it!

 

My choice of starting XI would be this:

 

------------------ Russell -----------------

Easterford - Moore/Ward - Dumas

-- Isa - King - Dobinson - Rhodes --

------------- Game/Kerrigan -------------

------ Hallett/Skidmore - Heale -------

 

Not a conventional team - but I think it could work given time. Our problem seems to be getting the ball to our strikers, they end up receiving it too deep and then have no support - so I'd put a player like Game/Kerrigan just behind them to help fix that.

[Matt H]

That's not a bad formation there Charlie, the only thing I'd say is that I don't think our defence is solid enough to only play with three at the back. Personally if I were to look at changing the formation to fit our best players we'd have to probably consider sacrificing our width and go with an unconventional 4-3-3 line-up like:

 

------------------ Russell ------------------

Ward - Easterford - Moore - Dumas

------------------- King ---------------------

------- Dobinson -- Game -------------

----- Curran -- Heale -- Rhodes -----

 

Subs would be from back to front: Everett, Kerrigan, Isa, Hallett, Skidmore - Players that can come on and allow and change in formation to simply switch without moving everyone about.

 

A problem I think we have at the moment is that we have several players that can play on the right but no-one has stood out enough to make the position their own, hence why we've had King, Isa and Curran play on the wing and West, Ward and Everett play at the back.

 

This is all academic of course, in reality it's not that simple while formations and line-ups are forced to change through injury, suspension or the style of opposition.

[YELLOW]

Last year, the left side seemed to be our problem side but we've solved that with the signings of Dumas and Rhodes.

 

Now down the right, we lack a bit of width.

 

Think we miss Rowey up front. Whilst his team work wasn't his strong point nobody could deny his finishing and ability to score goals from nothing.

[The Great Eckscape]

I would have liked to have seen Ellis keep his place for the Heybridge match - he played well against Dagenham and deserved to stay in the team for this one. Plus he was scoring for fun against Div 1 North opposition for Redbridge, so I think it would have been well worth giving him at least a half to carry on from where he left off. When you look at the defence that he played against for Dagenham (pretty much their first choice), he did do very well against them.