Today answered a few questions

[Rudders]

Hecky has credit in the bank from doing so well earlier this season but I felt he spent a lot of that today with an unbelievably bad and naive team selection, bizarre tactics and botched substitutions. It looked clueless today.
His presser afterwards was full of BS. It really is a truly bad day at the office when you get schooled by the perennial managerial failure Paul Ince.
After new manager bounce Hecky has really struggled the last few games to get any sort of tune out of the players And has been culpable for quite a number of off days.
A lot of the players do need binning off at the end of the year but I just don't feel that Hecky is a good enough football manager to keep on in the role going forward. Most championship managers can seem to counter what he offers tactically. Reckon he is tailor made for DoF though to oversee things...just not tactically aware and I don't get a vision or style of play that he would like to play or run through his team..

 

[247Blade]

Fire sale in the summer. Absolute shite in every position bar Wes

Sale ... more like a giveaway!

 

[Sean Thornton]

Hecky has credit in the bank from doing so well earlier this season but I felt he spent a lot of that today with an unbelievably bad and naive team selection, bizarre tactics and botched substitutions. It looked clueless today.
His presser afterwards was full of BS. It really is a truly bad day at the office when you get schooled by the perennial managerial failure Paul Ince.
After new manager bounce Hecky has really struggled the last few games to get any sort of tune out of the players And has been culpable for quite a number of off days.
A lot of the players do need binning off at the end of the year but I just don't feel that Hecky is a good enough football manager to keep on in the role going forward. Most championship managers can seem to counter what he offers tactically. Reckon he is tailor made for DoF though to oversee things...just not tactically aware and I don't get a vision or style of play that he would like to play or run through his team..

If he does have something in the bank l’d guess he’ll soon be getting a low balance alert.

 

[Eskimo]

Is Bristol on Monday sold out?

 

[Bergen Blade]

If that was the intention it didn't work. Osborn never got close to Mcb and Gibbs White and was too deep meaning there were numerous occasions where Mcb was the only player in the box marked by 3 players.

The decision to play him as a 10 is even more baffling. He doesn't go past players and creates nothing offensively. He ruins around a lot but creates little with the ball at his feet. Ndiaye and Berge are far better options as they have the ability to go past players. PH has made a mess of team selection to-day and this decision compounds it.

After a few games trying to copy Wilder, the tweak to 3-4-2-1 was the change that Heckingbottom got improved results with in the PL. Osborn was an integral part of that, playing in an advanced role where he helped improve our pressing play, something Wilder had neglected for months. I've thought Hecky wanted to try that again at some stage.

And our pressing play has been poor in the last few games with 3-5-1-1. The defence has been too deep and not dynamic enough. The front two haven't had the support of the midfield and when the opposition teams have possession in full back positions, who are wasting their time and energy to half heartedly close them down? Our RCM and LCM. They've all been easily bypassed.

So I think today was the day Hecky thought we'd try his PL tweak, hoping that Osborn, MGW and McBurnie would give us a trio defending from the front, preventing them from getting moves going and the rest of our team challenging and picking up harried forward passes from Reading. Norwood and Hourihane had some success a while ago and I think Hecky hoped they'd be able to control midfield. Norwood has been man marked the last couple of games, and getting another midfielder deep with him is a way of counter acting that.

Well, we all saw it didn't work. Our front trio didn't win the ball in good areas and the rest of the team weren't able to pick up things, nor really control things in our half. Instead their players looked too fit, strong and fast for us and they caused us problems with direct running. Reading got comfortable, playing a compact 4-4-2, where they knew we lacked pace going forward, meaning their defence could keep a high line a lot of the time, then drop deeper with the rest of the side when we built slow attacks, preventing space for MGW and Osborn. We really looked like a team lacking attacking threats, a team far too reliant on MGW's brilliant, but inconsistent creativity.

 

[Rudders]

If he does have something in the bank l’d guess he’ll soon be getting a low balance alert.

I like the guy, he speaks well, is amazingly qualified, hard worker and all that and yet then we lose to tinpot outfits who playact all game and shithouse the ref, usually with a useless fat old has been manager who spends the entire match berating the ref on the touchline and we get done on a cheap set piece in the last 5 minutes after spurning 25 golden chances ourselves. Rinse and repeat.
We need someone who can do something a bit different. Not Wilder-lite.

 

[ChipButtyBlade]

Starting formation was 3-4-2-1 today.

View attachment 134173

Some rather generous ratings in the image above though .

That team selection says to you,,,,,you will struggle when in the last 3 games we have scored only one goal and that was scored by Norwood (first goal in two years ? )

 

[ATL Recs]

A few disagreements...
Osborn. Sticking him in CM ahead of Berge was beyond baffling for starters. He looked even worse still, when deployed as an all left-footed RWB in the second half. He once created a goal from nothing a few matches ago, when he started a sting at RWB. Every other game/substitute appearance/tactical shift that saw him played there has been a waste of a shirt as every team seemed to know better than PH that he's so 'all left foot' he's easy to take out of the game for the duration. Why he was set up as inside RM today for 80 minutes is beyond me as he's no better there due to his lefty ness. If he'd played inside of and in support of Stevens, we might have got some use out of him for 90 minutes not the last 10. This then brings in to question how 'bad' Baldock and Stevens were today. With Osborn inside of him for most of the game, and the novelty signing Uremovic behind him, it was down to Norwood to pick out Baldock with a couple of cross field balls, otherwise his first half contributions were, as we saw, very lacking. To then relegate him primarily to RCB with Osborn in front of him, did neither of them any favours. Ditto, Stevens having Hourihane inside him and the woeful Davies behind him, left him almost with three players jobs to do for most of the game. All three players today, imho, were the victims of woeful team selection and tactics, if there were any, by PH.

I’m usually with everyone regarding Osborne but other than Norwood yesterday he put a shift in he actually played CM LM And ( baffling as fuck ) RWB

He did put three decent crosses in second half and we had one player in the box one fucking player

I don’t rate the manager he’s got results without the level of performance ( except on the odd occasions) his tactical ability is poor and yet again he starts his interview with “we knew what they were going to do and how they’d play” see Coventry Derby Stoke Millwall for the repeat
So he picks a team like that ffs

 

[Grappler]

Me and Mrs G went straight to the pub after the game, trying to drown my sorrows.

What a waste of a public holiday afternoon, watching that.

 

[blades78]

We have quite a few players that have probably been here a season too long and have gone stale. They need to move on for the good of their careers and the club.

 

[finlaytheblade]

I don't get the criticism of Heckie he inherited a
squad ( a fairly big squad)
With limitations in vital areas.
He realised the only way to get results was to play basically the Wilder way!
is that is favoured way or is it really as I stated earlier! It is the only way to get some results on the board.
Lack of energy and nous in midfield with a strike force lacking in pace did ok ,we then started to lose players when we had our momentum taken away with all them covid related
Postponed home matchs.
It's been like emergency ward 10 since culminating in losing all our strikers and other injuries ( I think Heckie has done a good job under the circumtances).
Looks like our none scoring centre forward is crocked again we are left with kids
who are not ready for the aggression which centre half's in general dish out.
As Bergen said he has tweaked it before and got results ! Not yesterday unfortunately , Reading are not as badder team as there position suggestes I would swop our front players for there's any day
January for one is a great finisher just can't keep fit

 

[finlaytheblade]

I don't get the criticism of Heckie he inherited a
squad ( a fairly big squad)
With limitations in vital areas.
He realised the only way to get results was to play basically the Wilder way!
is that is favoured way or is it really as I stated earlier! It is the only way to get some results on the board.
Lack of energy and nous in midfield with a strike force lacking in pace did ok ,we then started to lose players when we had our momentum taken away with all them covid related
Postponed home matchs.
It's been like emergency ward 10 since culminating in losing all our strikers and other injuries ( I think Heckie has done a good job under the circumtances).
Looks like our none scoring centre forward is crocked again we are left with kids
who are not ready for the aggression which centre half's in general dish out.
As Bergen said he has tweaked it before and got results ! Not yesterday unfortunately , Reading are not as badder team as there position suggestes I would swop our front players for there's any day
Jauofor one is a great finisher just can't keep fit

 

[mattbianco1]

Gibbs-White for all the good he does at times, he also needs to acknowledge that he has some absolute stinkers too where he just needs to get the basics right and stop chucking away possession.

I called this back before Xmas. Think you were one of the few who agreed at the time TBF

 

[Champagneblade]

I called this back before Xmas. Think you were one of the few who agreed at the time TBF

At the moment his stinkers still put him in the top 3 performers. He's gone off the boil a bit. Ever since he scored that sumptuous back heeled volley against Boro his levels have not been the same.

Maybe the success allowed one or two to get carried away and forget the basics, like marking your men, closing people down, keeping the ball etc!