Got to give it to them tonight.

I think he looks a poorer player with every game I see him. Passing poor, not comfortable on the ball, and easily knocked off it. He can run alongside people all day and be bothersome with a foot in but his limitations are becoming more and more exposed for me.

I don’t think Burton had too hard a task to stop us with the team we put out and the tactics we employed, similar to what Shrews did on Saturday bar one great finish.

I’ve just had a look at their previous results in a bit more detail, lot’s of 1-0’s either way but Fleetwood put 4 past em, P’boro 3 in the cup and both Walsall and Coventry beat them, they’ve not played anybody of note and won other than maybe Southend. (They beat P’Boro before they improved)

Maybe it’s a pointer of where we’re really at and we’ve had our head in the clouds.[/quote]
Festive Spirit kicked in earlier at your house I see!

Personally I’d put it down to it being ‘one of those nights’. In previous promotion seasons we won games we shouldn’t have won and lot some we shouldn’t have lost – so why should this season be any different?

When teams press high then there’s space to be exploited out wide and in the middle. Our players weren’t good enough to take advantage of the space left and problems. Time after time and the ball was lost or given given away (Daniels was a mess 1st half) by Burton players pressing high up field.

Shorts corners ?, again we’ve not a clue and it costs us a goal. 4 shorts corners and 2 went back to the half way line, 1 went into the box , 1 cost us a goal…pointless when there’s 4 big guys in the box. In this Division nothing fancy I say like they did , they got their win on pure graft nothing else.

Grigg & Davis ?, if the ball gets pumped up to them why were they 10-15 yard ?. Both nodded or held up the ball while the other player was miles away or decided to run away from the ball. They need to be nearer to each other to get the flick on’s not half the field apart.

Junior ?, for me the only player who can offer something different benched and please “he weren’t fit” if he makes the bench he should be ready to come on in the 1st to last minute.

Shooting ?, did we have a shot on target ? if we did I can’t remember,

I think one of our players needs to get the Bieber album in house for this Sat,
Justin in the house !
http://www.echo-news.co.uk/sport/14039370.How_Justin_Bieber_is_helping_Blues_get_back_on_track/

I’m not really sure what offends you so much about Perkins, but I’ll give you your dues, you’re persistent with it.[/quote]he doesn’t offend me I don’t think he’s that good yes he runs all day but his passing and the inability to turn for a midfielder is awful. But this is just my opinion maybe he could be better if they put Mcann in the middle because if you watch perkins and power they r too square and leave a massive gap between themselves and our strikers

Couldn’t agree more, JFH got his tactics spot on. GC got his wrong, and didn’t know how to turn it around, against a team with very average players.

That game was crying out for a change at 20minutes, was surprised there were no changes for the second half. The continual passing out from the back against a team who defended from the front was our biggest problem. We sat so deep in the first half, you’d see 15 passes before we even got to the half way line. It was evident players weren’t comfortable with the ball. Corners were terrible, Jacobs couldn’t beat the first man, so then we resorted to taking short ones??

Don’t think we deserved to lose, & Burton are not a team i’d like to see at the DW every week. GC needs a plan ‘B’ in his locker as if teams keep coming here with that mentality it could be a long season.[/quote]

To be honest that’s what surprised me the most last night.
If Caldwell has impressed me anywhere it’s in his ability to see where things aren’t working & change it for the better – he’s done it at half time on numerous occasions so far.
Last night he surprised me by sticking with the exact same starting line up as the one which had laboured to a win against Shrewsbury on Saturday when it was clear that it didn’t work particularly well.
Then on top of that, when it was clearly struggling again against Burton it surprised me that he didn’t mix things up at the start of the second half & waited too long to make changes in the second half itself.

So I think that he’s got plan B,s C’s & D’s, it was just for whatever reason he seemed reluctant to use those last night
It’s hard to be over-critical when the team hasn’t lost for so long but he got it wrong last night & I hope he’s done what he’s done before & learned from those mistakes

Judging from his comments, I’m not sure he did think that but IMO anyone that did was living in cloud cuckoo land.
Last night was one of those occasions where possession mean nothing coz until a couple of scrambled late, almost simultaneous efforts, the team created almost nothing all night. Burton were comfortable & if anything it was Latics would looked the most vulnerable when put under any sort of pressure.
If Caldwell’s game plan had been to get a 0-0 draw then you might have a point but I’m pretty certain that it wasn’t.
He’s said himself what the problems were (bar his original team selection) but last night he just seemed unaware what or reluctant to do about it

burton annoyed me from the off with the ridiculous switch round after they won the toss up

That’s the idea. It’s called gamesmanship, and everyone does it to one extent or another.

I remember when I was in the tunnel one team coming and warming up in teh Latics normal warm-up half of the pitch, despite us saying which end was normal. They (rightly) ignored us. Roy Carroll (our keeper at the time) was hugely put out by this, so their tactic succeeded.