Player Ratings

Marshall 7 Not much to do, except pull of a save better than the one against Watford. It was beyond him. It would have been beyond anyone.

McNaughton 6 Good to see him back but we didn't gain from having a right back playing where we've normally got a centre half.

Taylor 7 Was Taylor not organising things in front of him or was Conway going awol? A solid night for our left back was undone in a ten minute spell where Barnsely constantly found space on their right.

Turner 8 With our midfield dominant Barnsley were forced to hoof the ball and Turner just ate it up. Then Turner scored and Malky decided things were a little bit too easy so he surrendered midfield. Barnsley still found Turner in the way of just about everything. Just about everything, but not quite everything.

Barnett 8 His best game for us and he's wasn't bad in the others. We must secure his services for the rest of the season.

Smith 6 He has good touch, nice balance and he adopts good positions, but there is just not enough end product. For an attacking midfielder/striker 1 goal is a pretty poor return for a season. Still, he did produce one moment of magic and sent in the sort of cross any pub league forward would have buried. Nice one Heidi.

Kimbo 8 There were a few ragged moments, including a daft tussle with Barnsley's #7, but there was also improved set piece delivery and lots of the amazing ability to keep the ball under pressure. Tonight was something of the Jordan Mutch show in the middle but Kimbo was a worthy support act.

Gunns 8 Gunns by name gun by nature for some of the passes today that he blasted around the pitch with scant regard for the poor schmuck having to try and control the ball. He has settled into the holding role in our new middle three and glues things together well. Silly and harsh booking.

Mutch 9 Superb. He ran at players and past players. He kept the ball simple, he made the difficult passes. He had the strike of the game brilliantly saved. He even got forward to challenge for high balls. Where has this guy been?

Bellamy 7 All we were singing was “All we are singing is give us a goal” when he turned to the Ninian and urged we should all calm down. It turns out we were right. We were squandering chances and it was going to cost us. We don't score enough and for all his impressive play, Bellamy is part of that. He had chances in the first half and should have put one away.

Mason 6 Moved well and tried hard to make a difference but he doesn't quite have either the pace or the presence to be threat on his own up front.

Heidi 3 Please, please, please let this be his last game for us. You can ignore his three misses if you wish but you can't ignore his efforts when Barnsley had the ball. You literally can't ignore those efforts because you can't ignore something that never existed in the first place. With the midfield (except Whitts) sweating blood and the defence eating Barnsley elbows with their ears, Heidi stood and watched ,lumbering around the field with the speed and agility of the Graf Zeppelin. Barnsley found time to work the ball forward from the back from the moment he lolled onto the field.

Whitts 5 If Heidi can't run any more, Whitts seems to think running is for less gifted players. He tried urging his team mates forward at one point but his floppy arm wave just made it look like he'd farted.

Conway 5 Four times Barnsley's right back found himself on the edge of our are totally unmarked. Four fekkin times! Where on earth was super defensive winger Conway? He's normally better off the bench than when he starts but tonight he didn't seem to get his mind into gear.

Malky - He fucked this right up tonight. Everything was going well until he sucked the urgency out of his team with two dreadful substitutions.

The notable lack of humour that these threads are normally full of indeed makes me worry.

I should clarify that I have a vomiting bug and this distracted me heavily from the game, so only the referees watch incident was really notable for me. I'd fallen asleep whe Turners goal went in but that was nothing put of the ordinary because I'd probably only seen 5 minutes of the game up until that point anyway. I checked the stats, saw we had 70% posession and six times as many shots as Barnsley had, and decided to pass out happy in the knowledge we were almost certainly safely promoted.

How wrong I was. Malky's defensive attitude according to most people here reared its ugly head again. You'd think with three quarters of the posession and only a very good Steele goalkeeping performance preventing multiple goals than any football team in our position would decide to have a little fun and see if they can make it a cricket score. Alas not Malky, who chose to bring his favourites on again and cross his fingers.

I echo gloves' reaction that the loss of two points is probably irrelevant in th long run, but I have to repeat my concern that the premiership would tear us a new one if the tactics don't change. Every single match I recall hearing 'opposition pressure mounting' and I genuinely believe that's down to Malky dropping the team back and inviting this pressure every time. In a game where we're overwhelming the opposition just like yesterday, you might as well carry on doing what you are doing as the lack of posession gives them no attacking threat whatsoever.

Often the difference seen between the premiership and championship is less chances are overall made due to better defences, but those chances are put away much more clinically by world class strikers. If we take the same gameplan of nicking a goal and then sitting back and inviting the other team to attack, I worry about our survival chances.

Red614 wrote:The notable lack of humour that these threads are normally full of indeed makes me worry.

I should clarify that I have a vomiting bug and this distracted me heavily from the game, so only the referees watch incident was really notable for me. I'd fallen asleep whe Turners goal went in but that was nothing put of the ordinary because I'd probably only seen 5 minutes of the game up until that point anyway. I checked the stats, saw we had 70% posession and six times as many shots as Barnsley had, and decided to pass out happy in the knowledge we were almost certainly safely promoted.

How wrong I was. Malky's defensive attitude according to most people here reared its ugly head again. You'd think with three quarters of the posession and only a very good Steele goalkeeping performance preventing multiple goals than any football team in our position would decide to have a little fun and see if they can make it a cricket score. Alas not Malky, who chose to bring his favourites on again and cross his fingers.

I echo gloves' reaction that the loss of two points is probably irrelevant in th long run, but I have to repeat my concern that the premiership would tear us a new one if the tactics don't change. Every single match I recall hearing 'opposition pressure mounting' and I genuinely believe that's down to Malky dropping the team back and inviting this pressure every time. In a game where we're overwhelming the opposition just like yesterday, you might as well carry on doing what you are doing as the lack of posession gives them no attacking threat whatsoever.

Often the difference seen between the premiership and championship is less chances are overall made due to better defences, but those chances are put away much more clinically by world class strikers. If we take the same gameplan of nicking a goal and then sitting back and inviting the other team to attack, I worry about our survival chances.

^^

Team spirit can take you far in the PL (see Norwich), but as you say we certainly can't get away with snatching a goal and sitting on the lead.

Excellent ratings as ever, Kamuza!

I'm increasingly impressed with Barnett, boy, can he head a ball! Best performance I've seen from Mutch, he was outstanding. Heidar.....well, I've defended him in the past, but last night was shockingly indefensible. Hopefully Campbell is fit for Saturday.

Excelllent work, as always K......

I enjoy reading you ratings mate and i rarely disagree with your ratings.
I thought you were generous giving helger a 3 mind as i would have given him a 1 as i comepletely fail to see whath he offers to the team! He is dreadful and looks like 50 year old guy on a running machine

thehumblegringo wrote:I enjoy reading you ratings mate and i rarely disagree with your ratings.
I thought you were generous giving helger a 3 mind as i would have given him a 1 as i comepletely fail to see whath he offers to the team! He is dreadful and looks like 50 year old guy on a running machine

It's a shame about Helguson. He was a real handful in the early part of the season, but it is almost as if age has suddenly caught up with him and even he must be wondering if it isn't time to call it a day after the chances he missed last night.

As I said, it's very sad, as he seems a genuinely nice chap and had done his best in what is clearly at this point, a season too far!

I think Helguson may have lost his birth certificate and turn out to be 55 years old rather than 35, like Taribo West.

TDA wrote:

thehumblegringo wrote:I enjoy reading you ratings mate and i rarely disagree with your ratings.
I thought you were generous giving helger a 3 mind as i would have given him a 1 as i comepletely fail to see whath he offers to the team! He is dreadful and looks like 50 year old guy on a running machine

It's a shame about Helguson. He was a real handful in the early part of the season, but it is almost as if age has suddenly caught up with him and even he must be wondering if it isn't time to call it a day after the chances he missed last night.

As I said, it's very sad, as he seems a genuinely nice chap and had done his best in what is clearly at this point, a season too far!

I have thought the same about Smith. He has come in for some criticism lately and not surprisingly as he has failed to deliver enough to show he should be in the starting line up or even coming off the bench. However early season i was very impressed with him. He seemed to be a very intelligent player who could make up for a lack of pace by his cleverness on the ball and his ability to link the play. Sadly after his spell out with injury that old Smith never came back again. I thought i saw signs of it in the opening minutes last night but it was short lived.

Both Smith and Helguson have had their moments this year but the truth is that both of them are struggling now even at this level. Considering at prem level you can't just have huge squads but must stick to the nominated 25 i can't really see any place for them at the club next season if we go up.

Certain players have bags of ability and are an absolute waste of space aka jay bothroyd, adel taraabt etc.
It's impossible to criticise Helger because he clearly gives a s**t. His goal against Hull was the bravest goal i havee ever seen!
If i am honest i haven't thought much of him all season. It just seems a season too far and the blame for yesterday has got to lay at malky's door. Helger is only gonna do what's asked of him but i think it was clear to everyone that Rudy is now the better option. He's big, strong, agile and quite quick and i guarantee you that 99% of defenders would be happier to see helger come onthan see rudy come on.
I truly believe if Rudy had come on we would have won that game last night aswe could have hit the channels and asked rudy to put the defenders under pressure instead of just surrendering possession time and time again

I agree Rudy would have been the better option. To be honest i think they should have started with him. Barnsley weren't the biggest team i have seen and it was obvious that they were going to come here to defend and leave very little space to get in behind the defense.

The team was therefore unable to put Mason in behind the defense and he got nowhere trying to win any of the long balls played up to him. At least Rudy would have won more than his fair share in the air and given Barnsley something more to think about.

Totally agree that we would've hung on if Rudy had played instead of HH. It struck me as a sentimental decision to play HH, as reward for his efforts early season or in training.
Malky places a lot of emphasis on fitness work and while that means someone like Taylor or Gunns can run all day maybe it burns out older players. Smith, HH even late twenties Whitts have all faded badly this year.

Flair you go fella... cracking as ever....


I think we could position Barnett just outside Dover as our North Korean missile defense system... anything flying over the heading machine would be nodded back into France... double win..

Valley Trash wrote:Flair you go fella... cracking as ever....


I think we could position Barnett just outside Dover as our North Korean missile defense system... anything flying over the heading machine would be nodded back into France... double win..

Malky did say today that he's got a great group of players and he'd go to war with them any day of the week........
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/22091956

Valley Trash wrote:Flair you go fella... cracking as ever....


I think we could position Barnett just outside Dover as our North Korean missile defense system... anything flying over the heading machine would be nodded back into France... double win..

Got to honest, I am struggling to remember a defender who headed the ball so far. It is a real art form and I wonder whether we could develop to our advantage that within the opposition penalty area.