Brief synopsis

[Balham Green]

There’s no “making up my mind” required. They are all issues, as I have stated. I said mentality is an issue “as much as anything”. That’s not saying the other things don’t matter, simply that the mentality on the road, evidenced today, is a huge problem. As soon as the first went in, heads went down and that was it.

But the performance was so bad that I don’t think it mattered what system we set up with. But as a wider issue our away form is very poor and clearly our standard setup is not working, so a rethink is required.

And yes I was watching. Did you see a team that looked full of belief it could come back into the game? A team that looked focussed and composed? I certainly didn’t. You can have all the technical quality in the world, but if you write the game off after going a couple goals behind it’s completely irrelevant.

Agreed. The other thing that concerns me is that Lowe says in his interview that the players are gutted but I'm not sure that can be said for all of them. After Byron 'passed' his clearance to the Fleetwood player on the edge of the box to smash it in he didn't seem that bothered to me. The same can be said about Dom Telford on Monday against Portsmouth: He was caught with his mind in neutral when the player he was meant to be picking up strolled forward and smashed in the slashed clearance from Fornah. After the goal he didn't look too bothered as he was walking back to the halfway line despite Danny Mayor giving him a mouthful. We don't play with any passion or desire. After teams score against them or one of them cocks up they dont seem to be bothered. Its almost a case of 'oh well' lets get back to the halfway line so we can get the game underway again. Complete indifference. Equate that with the Fleetwood centre back after we scored our goal. He showed more passion in that one instance by kicking the upright than any of our lot over the whole 90 mins. I wonder if Lowe is just too pally with them. Familiarity breeds contempt. He needs to remember that he is their boss not their friend. I'm not saying you can't be friends with your boss but sometimes if you get too friendly you cant deliver the bo**@cking thats needed.

To add to that excellent post - just before Moore's 'clearance' Mayor and Edwards made no attempt to stop the cross coming in. Highlights.

Something wasn't right today, the whole team seemed to be affected by something.
Hopefully it's just a one off.

I don't understand how difficult it was to see that we were just not physically strong enough in every situation. Some people seem to have some mystical insight in to the players lack of motivation, not caring, heads going down etc rubbish. None of that is relevant if we have lightweight players who get pushed of the ball easily. This is a big boys league. I like Camara a lot but I see his weight is approx 60 kilos which is 2/3 my weight and I'm not fat!

 

[lyndhurst]

Based on what I saw today Joey Barton should be much shorter odds than Lowe in the future for any manager job in the North West. I think we may have Lowe for longer than we may have thought which I am happy with. It's an ill wind etc.

 

[Balham Green]

Based on what I saw today Joey Barton should be much shorter odds than Lowe in the future for any manager job in the North West. I think we may have Lowe for longer than we may have thought which I am happy with. It's an ill wind etc.

People were saying that a few months before we know what happened to Adams.

 

[Quintrell Green]

I felt Fleetwood were a yard faster than Argyle. Their players were technically sharper. They pressed Argyle swiftly when we had possession, making it difficult for our players to move on the ball successfully. It was apparent that Fleetwood players always seemed to find space to accept a pass without being pressurised and being able to turn and successfully pass to a team members feet. It all sounds simple to say this, but Fleetwood 'had it' today and Argyle did not. It will be interesting to see the fall out from this heavy defeat.

 

[davie nine]

When all the players from one team outperform those of the other team, there is only going to be one outcome. A thrashing. We were very poor and it looked like a Championship side against a National League side or lower.
I agreed with most of the substitutions although I didn’t think Opoku deserved to be replaced. If he was ‘gobbing off’ as someone suggested it probably showed that he cared.
I will suffer the extended highlights tomorrow as it will give us a clue of how we could all play so poorly.
I may even watch the whole game through because I just don’t understand what went so badly wrong.

 

[gaspargomez]

 

[Tom Cobbley]

Now we know how Roger the cabin boy felt.

 

[Larry David]

Men against boys is the comment that sums it up. Ryan Lowe must have been fuming. That said he started with the wrong side and he doesn’t seem able to adapt when other teams have the wood over us which is a worry. Brucie Bonus? I guess? Is that Ryan isn’t ready for a move up to Championship level yet whereas Barton would appear well ahead of him in the pecking order.

 

[Brechin Hedge]

well beaten by an experienced team today.

three thoughts:

-no leader evident on the pitch, who was the captain?

-as good as cooper is at one on ones would we benefit from a more imposing keeper (how important was Palmer last season)

-Covid travel issues seems a factor this season for both away games and teams travelling to Home Park

 

[Gary S]

In a way, I wish I'd been at the game. Not so as to enjoy the cold wind,
Fleetwood cod, or a long and miserable trip home, but so as to have a
wider view of the game to fathom out why we were so incapable of getting
the ball out of our own third. The defensive frailties were in clear view, but
it seems the wing backs and midfield were failing to make themselves available
for a pass to move it through the thirds. It was 20 minutes before I realized Edwards
was on the pitch, and another 40 before I realized he was still on the pitch. Grant's
name was mentioned approximately twice during the 90 minutes. Mayor was
also invisible for long periods of time. I imagine that's why were reduced to Aimson
hitting high balls to our vertically challenged top man.

 

[Dan Ellard]

Problem is, we can't go to a back 4. This squad has been built and developed with the sole principle of playing a back 3.

With Sawyer out injured, who plays left back? Do we shove Watts out there even though he hasn't played there before to my knowledge? We all saw with Carl McHugh what happens when you assume that a left footed centre back can do a job at left back. It was a mess. Conor Grant did well there a few times a couple of years ago, but that might not be a long term solution, and what if he gets injured? Who plays there then?

And who on earth plays at right back?! Scott Wootton played about 20 minutes there a couple of years ago... hardly a long term solution either. I'm sure people will say "just move Edwards and Moore back", but there is a BIG difference to playing in a back 4 to playing wing back in Lowe's system. You have to be better at marking, play narrower out of possession to stop underlapping runs, and therefore be at least reasonable in the air too - which Moore isn't.

Maybe 3-4-3 could work - Camara and Mayor in CM, Jephcott and Hardie either side of Nouble up top. That's an attacking line up though and offers less defensive protection than we had yesterday.

I think we have to stick with 3-5-2. However, as I suggested a while ago, maybe away from home we need to tweak it to play 2 DM's rather than 1. Let Mayor be the link between midfield and attack and play 2 out of Grant, Camara, Fornah and MacLeod alongside each other protecting the back 3.

We also need to figure out a different way of playing when the passing out of the back doesn't work. We were excellent at playing through the Portsmouth press on Monday - yesterday it was terrible. We ended up aimlessly hoofing it for 90 minutes, and that combined with Nouble and Telford being appalling off the ball (and Hardie not much better) meant we created next to nothing.

Fleetwood played us perfectly - they didn't always need to press our back 3, they just cut the supply off to our midfield and forced us to go long. When the passing game isn't working as it wasn't yesterday, we need to play ACCURATE long balls, and have strikers who work the channels far far better than any of yesterday's shower.

Oh, and play George Cooper please Lowe. You can't exactly play the "He's too attacking to play at wing back against a good team" card any more now can you.

Yesterday was genuinely down there performance-wise with the likes of York and Carlisle under Sheridan, and Wembley under Adams. Pitiful.

 

[bringonthemilkman]

Whilst Opoku and Watts have been very good for most of the season, the reason Fulham and Newcastle have let them out on loan is so they can experience
games like yesterday at a different club.
As my ifollow feed was freezing every 2 minutes, my guess is that the experience of some more mature, well drilled Fleetwood opponents told.
Another factor is the travel; fans can spout as much as they like about “they should be used to it by now “ but it remains true that playing at home against a team that has spent 6 or 7 hours on a coach gives a clear advantage...
I think that going 2 behind after 10 minutes brought the above factors to the fore and we just lost the appetite for a fight back.
I do hope a lot of the players have stayed up north before reconvening tomorrow for a much easier journey to Peterborough.... then again, if they knew that was the plan beforehand , and with no family in the stands to impress, they might have taken their eyes off the ball because of that as well.
Let’s see what happens on Tuesday.

 

[EyeOpener]

Whilst Opoku and Watts have been very good for most of the season, the reason Fulham and Newcastle have let them out on loan is so they can experience
games like yesterday at a different club.
As my ifollow feed was freezing every 2 minutes, my guess is that the experience of some more mature, well drilled Fleetwood opponents told.
Another factor is the travel; fans can spout as much as they like about “they should be used to it by now “ but it remains true that playing at home against a team that has spent 6 or 7 hours on a coach gives a clear advantage...
I think that going 2 behind after 10 minutes brought the above factors to the fore and we just lost the appetite for a fight back.
I do hope a lot of the players have stayed up north before reconvening tomorrow for a much easier journey to Peterborough.... then again, if they knew that was the plan beforehand , and with no family in the stands to impress, they might have taken their eyes off the ball because of that as well.
Let’s see what happens on Tuesday.

I completely disagree with this. They would have travelled up the day before, stopped regularly, had a good nights sleep and then had the morning to loosen off if needed. This is a very poor reason to be attributed to that abomination of a performance. I dont think I've ever seen an opposition team play that badly when they've made the reverse journey to Home Park.

 

[mercedes]

Cooper 5
Aimson 2
Opoku 3
Watts 3
Edwards 3
Moore 1
Grant 1
Camara 1
Mayor 2
Telford 1
Nouble 2

Jephcott 5
Wootton 2
Fornah 3
Hardie 3
Canavan 3

 

[Tugboat]

Whilst Opoku and Watts have been very good for most of the season, the reason Fulham and Newcastle have let them out on loan is so they can experience
games like yesterday at a different club.
As my ifollow feed was freezing every 2 minutes, my guess is that the experience of some more mature, well drilled Fleetwood opponents told.
Another factor is the travel; fans can spout as much as they like about “they should be used to it by now “ but it remains true that playing at home against a team that has spent 6 or 7 hours on a coach gives a clear advantage...
I think that going 2 behind after 10 minutes brought the above factors to the fore and we just lost the appetite for a fight back.
I do hope a lot of the players have stayed up north before reconvening tomorrow for a much easier journey to Peterborough.... then again, if they knew that was the plan beforehand , and with no family in the stands to impress, they might have taken their eyes off the ball because of that as well.
Let’s see what happens on Tuesday.

I completely disagree with this. They would have travelled up the day before, stopped regularly, had a good nights sleep and then had the morning to loosen off if needed. This is a very poor reason to be attributed to that abomination of a performance. I dont think I've ever seen an opposition team play that badly when they've made the reverse journey to Home Park.

I agree PP.

We’re desperately looking for some excuses to mitigate that performance.

The whole day was a complete and utter disaster from tactics to performances.

The worrying thing for me is that teams have been building up to this. We’ve had warning signs that if we are pressed high, if our fullbacks or ball playing CDM is stopped we lose all of our forward play.

Lowe can’t be that stubborn or naive to think that we can influence the game with one formation, even with like for like subs or a slight tweak in player position.

We have to have a more robust away tactic to steam the home teams advantage. The worry for me, again is the ability of the defence to go into a 4 man line.

Big problems.