Hungerford Town 17th Nov H

[Irishadrian]

As always I'm hoping for a good game and at least a point from the lads It wont be easy with Hungerford having a surprisingly good start to the season and of course their Saturday game with Dulwich H was a victim of the weather whilst we had a hard game with Billericay

Last few games though Lady Luck has been missing  A number of unforced defensive errors have gifted goals to opponents and  chances have been missed that looked easier to convert plus of course we've  had several referees whose parents never married

Fact is that on their day and with a bit of luck  Neil/Jon's team can beat any of the other teams in our league imo so I'll  be optimistic as ever.

[3spirit]

Sounds like Hungerford are a hardworking side who defend in numbers and use the long throw as an attacking option. What team does that remind you of? !  I believe Hungerford's surge up the table will falter soon but against Slough, in what is a Berkshire derby, I think it will be a tight match but I'm expecting a Slough win, though I can't see it being a walk in the park for our boys and our team certainly aren't going to get it all their own way.

I'm going for a narrow 2-1 win.

[Rebellier]

Didn't get to see the stream so am following on twitter but it just seems to me that all our attempts go wide,  just wide, or over! Are we not getting anything on target here??

[Reading Rebel]

We started the game with a 3-5-2 formation which mirrored the Hungerford line-up.

Unfortunately for most of the first half Hungerford were that much quicker and sharper than us it looked like they had 13 players on the pitch against our 11.

The first goal for Hungerford was a carbon copy of few goals we've let in this season where we failed to stop a cross to the far post and an un-marked player had a simple tap in.

We hauled ourselves back into the game with a well worked equalizer from Dan Roberts only for us to shoot ourselves in the foot when a poor mistake just outside the area from Sean Fraser gave Hungerford a 2-1 half time lead.

The second half didn't get much better when an error early in the half from Jack Turner gave Hungerford a 3-1 lead.

After some substitutions were made we were given a glimmer of hope when Paul Hodges was fouled in the area resulting in a penalty, unfortunately Dan Roberts had his penalty saved which just about summed up our evening.

Overall a really bad night and poor performance from the Rebels.

 

 

 

 

 

[Shredding Green]

And it doesn't get any easier - Ebbsfleet United and St. Alban's City coming next to Arbour Park.

It looked like we had got the system in place by the start of the season :  0-1 at Wealdstone and Dartford and 1-0 at home to Hemel Hempstead Town.

But of late, there has been a run of matches in which poor goals have been conceded and despite all our attacking, we have scored few goals.

May the turning point be by the new year.
 

[Reading Rebel]

7 hours ago, Shredding Green said:

And it doesn't get any easier - Ebbsfleet United and St. Alban's City coming next to Arbour Park.

It looked like we had got the system in place by the start of the season :  0-1 at Wealdstone and Dartford and 1-0 at home to Hemel Hempstead Town.

But of late, there has been a run of matches in which poor goals have been conceded and despite all our attacking, we have scored few goals.

May the turning point be by the new year.
 

Only 7 teams have scored more goals than us but only Braintree and Hemel have conceded more.

Dartford who are top have only scored 2 more goals than us but have only conceded 7.

It's only my opinion but at present I don't think we've got the balance between attack and defense right. 

  

 

[Reading Rebel]

My point on balance between attack and defence is not all to do with whether we play with one striker or two.

 

[Reading Rebel]

Of course it's easy just to look at just the negatives from last night but to even it up a bit there were positives to take from the game.

Yes, we didn't play well but if you just looked at the scoreline we only lost the game because of two mistakes. Take away those mistakes and we would have taken a point from the game.

To our credit we kept pushing forward trying to get back into the game and when Paul Hodges came on I thought he added a bit of an extra spark to our play and we started to create some good chances going forward.

Hodgey won a penalty, we then created another really good chance when Warren Harris had a free header in front of goal which if placed either side of the keeper I'm sure would have resulted in a goal.

So despite my initial doom and gloom after losing, there were positives to take from last nights game.

 

  

[3spirit]

Just watched the Unders post match interview and thought he talked a lot of sense [not that he doesn't other times ! gulp]. Fair play to Hungerford on the night. They have turned over Dorking this season, so we shouldn't really feel despondent about the Slough result against them. I think Mark Nisbet coming back might be just at the right time. Probably too early for the Dartford game but he's got to start some time,so you never know. Ironically playing a top team in Dartford on Saturday, might provide the spur for our players to get back on track. I'd be happy with a draw there but we have beaten them, so it's not like we can't do it again.

How did our system of 3-5-2 go last night? It's not like we are well rehearsed with that formation. By all accounts that's Hungerford's regular shape, so to me I thought Slough may make a few errors going into the game with it but it seemed the right way to go. How was it on the night?

        

[Shredding Green]

25 minutes ago, 3spirit said:

Just watched the Unders post match interview and thought he talked a lot of sense [not that he doesn't other times ! gulp]. Fair play to Hungerford on the night. They have turned over Dorking this season, so we shouldn't really feel despondent about the Slough result against them. I think Mark Nisbet coming back might be just at the right time. Probably too early for the Dartford game but he's got to start some time,so you never know. Ironically playing a top team in Dartford on Saturday, might provide the spur for our players to get back on track. I'd be happy with a draw there but we have beaten them, so it's not like we can't do it again.

How did our system of 3-5-2 go last night? It's not like we are well rehearsed with that formation. By all accounts that's Hungerford's regular shape, so to me I thought Slough may make a few errors going into the game with it but it seemed the right way to go. How was it on the night?

        

I was also very impressed with Unders post match interview which was in relatively difficult circumstances. The club aims to get the right sort of characters in the dressing room. I imagine that team talks are meaningful discussion in a mainly dignified manner, unlike those days when we used to put our ears against the dressing room wall at Wexham Park to hear what a certain ex Tottenham Hotspur centre half had to say.

Hungerford Town's Ryan Seager is still only 24 but one of those young players who didn't quite make it at the highest level, having played twice for England under 17s and being contracted to Southampton for 5 seasons. He has scored 7 goals in 8 games for Hungerford having scored just 6 in the previous 56 senior appearances of his career.

[Reading Rebel]

53 minutes ago, 3spirit said:

Just watched the Unders post match interview and thought he talked a lot of sense [not that he doesn't other times ! gulp]. Fair play to Hungerford on the night. They have turned over Dorking this season, so we shouldn't really feel despondent about the Slough result against them. I think Mark Nisbet coming back might be just at the right time. Probably too early for the Dartford game but he's got to start some time,so you never know. Ironically playing a top team in Dartford on Saturday, might provide the spur for our players to get back on track. I'd be happy with a draw there but we have beaten them, so it's not like we can't do it again.

How did our system of 3-5-2 go last night? It's not like we are well rehearsed with that formation. By all accounts that's Hungerford's regular shape, so to me I thought Slough may make a few errors going into the game with it but it seemed the right way to go. How was it on the night?

        

I personally thought the 3-5-2 didn't work for us on the night.

Hungerford looked comfortable playing that system and I might be wrong but if you go like for like with 5 across the middle I would think you'd have to at least match them (hopefully be better) for pace, movement, closing down etc. but on the night they were all over us like a rash and didn't give us time to play our game.

One of their goals was scored at the far post were Josh Jackman or whoever was at right back would possibly have been so they might have prevented the goal.

I can also remember at least a couple of times when we had a throw in on the far side that it looked a bit odd when I think it was Lenchy and then Aaron Kuhl took the throw ins when it would possibly have been Josh Jackman or our right back. 

 

 

 

[3spirit]

16 hours ago, Shredding Green said:

I was also very impressed with Unders post match interview which was in relatively difficult circumstances. The club aims to get the right sort of characters in the dressing room. I imagine that team talks are meaningful discussion in a mainly dignified manner, unlike those days when we used to put our ears against the dressing room wall at Wexham Park to hear what a certain ex Tottenham Hotspur centre half had to say.

Hungerford Town's Ryan Seager is still only 24 but one of those young players who didn't quite make it at the highest level, having played twice for England under 17s and being contracted to Southampton for 5 seasons. He has scored 7 goals in 8 games for Hungerford having scored just 6 in the previous 56 senior appearances of his career.

As a player for Tottenham Hotspur I thought Graham Roberts was an absolute class defender. When he came to Slough as a player I thought he was still a wily old fox and still had the nous to know how he could get the best out of himself at an older age. He served Slough well as a player. I was delighted when he got the Slough manager's job and he brought some very talented players in with him. His half time team talks left a lot to be desired, though. You didn't need to put your ear to the wall to hear him !

Mark Hawthorne, Slough's central midfielder at that time, came out with a funny story in the Non-League paper when the paper was running an interview on Mark's non-league career, when they asked him about notorious managers he had played under, he said of Graham Roberts, that as a manager he didn't just throw tea cups against the wall, he would throw the players up against the wall ! ! ! ?   

I remember Slough playing a game at Wexham Park, when Graham Roberts was manager, can't remember the team we were playing but know it was a league game, it was 0-0 or 1-1 at half time, and I thought Slough had played well up to half time and was deserving of praise for their performance, I then happened to walk past the changing room which had a small window open, and the torrent/tirade of abuse Graham Roberts was heaping on to his players was madness in itself. He was ranting and raving at them. God knows, what he was like when they were losing ! ?  Having said that, I enjoyed watching Graham Roberts managed teams as a whole but when he left, Steve Browne took over. I liked Steve Browne as a player and as a coach but as a manager he drove me to the demon drink ! ha ha ha!

 

[Reading Rebel]

13 minutes ago, 3spirit said:

As a player for Tottenham Hotspur I thought Graham Roberts was an absolute class defender. When he came to Slough as a player I thought he was still a wily old fox and still had the nous to know how he could get the best out of himself at any older age. He served Slough well as a player. I was delighted when he got the Slough manager's job and he brought some very talented players in with him. His half time team talks left a lot to be desired, though. You didn't need to put your ear to the wall to hear him !

Mark Hawthorne, Slough's central midfielder at that time, came out with a funny story in the Non-League paper when the paper was running an interview on Mark's non-league career, when they asked him about notorious managers he had played under, he said of Graham Roberts, that as a manager he didn't just throw tea cups against the wall, he would throw the players up against the wall ! ! ! ?   

I remember Slough playing a game at Wexham Park, when Graham Roberts was manager, can't remember the team we were playing but know it was a league game, it was 0-0 or 1-1 at half time, and I thought Slough had played well up to half time and was deserving of praise for their performance, I then happened to walk past the changing room which had a small window open, and the torrent/tirade of abuse Graham Roberts was heaping on to his players was madness in itself. He was ranting and raving at them. God knows, what he was like when they were losing ! ?  Having said that, I enjoyed watching Graham Roberts managed teams as a whole but when he left Steve Browne took over. I liked Steve Browne as a player and as a coach but as a manager he drove me to the demon drink ! ha ha ha!

 

Looking at his playing record for Slough, he only played 24 times in the 5 seasons he was with us and even more surprising is that he only received 3 yellow cards.

He certainly didn't take any prisoners with his tackling.  

[Reading Rebel]

To keep our records up to date, I might be wrong but I'm sure Matt Lench got booked on Tuesday but it's not showing on our match report.

[3spirit]

1 hour ago, Reading Rebel said:

Looking at his playing record for Slough, he only played 24 times in the 5 seasons he was with us and even more surprising is that he only received 3 yellow cards.

He certainly didn't take any prisoners with his tackling.  

Cor, I thought he played more than that !

Dave Russell signed him first off and I thought he served Dave well as a player. He came in when Slough were having a shaky spell of results and steadied the ship. Graham Roberts then left, think he got a job managing. He came back after his stint with Chesham, in Martin Deaner's chairmanship of Slough as manager. He didn't play much then,as he was past it really.

Agree about his tackling. There weren't many players willing to go toe to toe with him !  

[3spirit]

15 hours ago, Reading Rebel said:

I personally thought the 3-5-2 didn't work for us on the night.

Hungerford looked comfortable playing that system and I might be wrong but if you go like for like with 5 across the middle I would think you'd have to at least match them (hopefully be better) for pace, movement, closing down etc. but on the night they were all over us like a rash and didn't give us time to play our game.

One of their goals was scored at the far post were Josh Jackman or whoever was at right back would possibly have been so they might have prevented the goal.

I can also remember at least a couple of times when we had a throw in on the far side that it looked a bit odd when I think it was Lenchy and then Aaron Kuhl took the throw ins when it would possibly have been Josh Jackman or our right back. 

 

 

 

It sounds like Hungerford did to Slough what Slough normally do to other teams. I'm not worried that Hungerford got the upper hand this time around, as 3-5-2 takes a good few games to get it functioning properly. If you are going to play that way all season, I think pre-season is best to rehearse it. Slough look like they have tried it in a one off game. I can't see them going with it against Dartford.  

Ironically, if Guy Hollis and Mark Nisbet were available, I would like to see them operate in a back three with either Sam or Lee Togwell between them, and use Ryan/Josh/Louie/one of the Togs to cover for any of them. I would use Josh Jackman as my wide right wing back and tuck Warren Harris into the right side of central midfield, giving him the option to use the flank when he is covered[by his players] and sees any openings. Can't see this happening, though, as Bakes and Unders favour 4 at the back, and with how we are giving goals to the opposition with all these mistakes, you don't want to over complicate what this relatively young side are doing.  

[Shredding Green]

I've just watched the match highlights.

Sometimes one sees a player give the ball away but one can see what he was trying to do. Apart from making a perfect pass to a Hungerford player, I couldn't see what Sean Fraser was trying to do for the second goal.

As for the third goal, taking too much time to clear the ball and losing it to an opposition forward who scores, happens to the world's finest goalkeepers on occasions. Remember Hugo Lloris for Tottenham Hotspur v Southampton on 28th September 2019? I could see what Jack Turner was trying to do ... but he just didn't have enough time. But I feel confident that he will be fantastic for the rest of the season!

 

[3spirit]

19 hours ago, Shredding Green said:

I've just watched the match highlights.

Sometimes one sees a player give the ball away but one can see what he was trying to do. Apart from making a perfect pass to a Hungerford player, I couldn't see what Sean Fraser was trying to do for the second goal.

As for the third goal, taking too much time to clear the ball and losing it to an opposition forward who scores, happens to the world's finest goalkeepers on occasions. Remember Hugo Lloris for Tottenham Hotspur v Southampton on 28th September 2019? I could see what Jack Turner was trying to do ... but he just didn't have enough time. But I feel confident that he will be fantastic for the rest of the season!

 

Players are just humans like the rest of us and make mistakes. We all make them but loads of people go around pretending they don't or trying to ring it on someone else. In a football match, there is nowhere to hide. I can understand the frustration of Bakes and Unders[and fans] when a result like the Hungerford game goes up in smoke because of these costly mistakes but at this precise point of time I wouldn't over fixate about it.

As you say, Shredding Green, keepers will always drop clangers from time to time but Jack is a quality keeper and he saves Slough points more often than he ever costs us.

As for Sean Fraser, you have to take into account that he is in and out of the team and this season is trying to convert from a right back to being a central midfielder. No easy task. He came on as a sub, so it's not always easy to get straight into the match and the thick of the action. If anything I think Sean is trying too hard [trying to impress] because he wants to be playing regular and is vying with all the other midfielders we have especially the new young ones we've brought in this season. Bakes and Unders seem to be trying to mould his game to be like Lee Togwell in sitting him in front of the defence and using him to mop up and slow down attacking threats. The thing is Lee does this side of the game so well. Sean when he was a midfielder in Steve Bateman's team didn't play that role at all, so I wouldn't be over critical with the circumstance of this mistake. Sean's our longest serving player now, so I'm sure he doesn't need telling off, as he probably hurting about this gaffe himself. 

Hungerford have a new manager and are riding on their fantastic start to the season. They have a game plan that they are sticking to. Slough on the other hand, have injuries to players and are chopping and changing to try and find the right blend. It's early days for both sides.         

[Reading Rebel]

The other thing to remember is players like Sean Fraser and in particular Ryan Bird need game time to get and keep themselves match fit.

At this moment in time this is not possible so to expect them to come on, be up to speed and not make mistakes is probably a little harsh.

 

 

[3spirit]

28 minutes ago, Reading Rebel said:

The other thing to remember is players like Sean Fraser and in particular Ryan Bird need game time to get and keep themselves match fit.

At this moment in time this is not possible so to expect them to come on, be up to speed and not make mistakes is probably a little harsh.

 

 

Keeping everyone happy and getting players match fit through getting games is the constant dilemma for a manager/s.

Sean and Ryan to me are squad players, they wouldn't be my first eleven team choice in the Conference South but these days it's more about squad players than just the certs to make the team. I feel both are worth keeping on board but it's more than likely they will be loaned out to keep sharp, as Bakes and Unders chop and change to find the right balance. We are fortunate to have both really, as they could easily play regular for someone else.

Considering we bought Birdy in as a forward, we have made good use of him as a centre half. Whereas Sean always has good games throughout a season and is unlucky not to make the starting first team more often. I feel we haven't quite found a position that suits him best. He is used as utility player in our squad and I can see why. Josh now has the edge on him at right back and Lee Togwell is a better holding midfielder but I would like to see Sean given a chance to challenge Aaron Krul and Cameron McGilp for a place in the team. Trouble is Sean looks like he will get a nosebleed if he gets into the oppositions half. Being that he is always asked to be defensive, he can look lost in the headlights getting forward. When he was younger he didn't. This season looks a crossroads for both Sean and Ryan in our team. I wouldn't be surprised if either of them left for pastures new. I hope not but if games are hard to come by, then it might happen.