Pitch and tactics

As one of the poor souls who witnessed Tuesday’s horror show, I am worried.

I am not in the ‘Martinez Out’ camp by any means. I want the team and the manager to do well and will support him to the hilt. But after seeing how we toiled on what is becoming a big cabbage patch of a pitch, it doesn’t fill me with confidence, particularly with the chubsters due to start playing on it.

When Bruce was in charge we used the pitch to our advantage, where we could play long balls up to a big target man and play the ‘dirty’ side of the game well, scrapping for everything. No one wanted to come and play on our sand pit pitch.

Now, we are set up to play fast, counter attacking football on the ground (I’m sure that’s the theory anyway!). On our pitch, this is going to be more and more difficult.

We need to change our style, particularly at home if we are going to survive. I hope this new striker can hold the ball up and win things against centre halves because we are not going to be able to play any silky football.

We need to go two up front and bypass the midfield more as that is the area of the pitch which is the worst.

The one positive to come out of Tuesday was the ineffectual performances of some of our players. It has been posted on here on a couple of threads, but Koumas and Gomez are a disgrace and should never play for the first team again. Gomez certainly tried to get involved the other night, which is more than can be said of that lazy show pony Koumas, but he is so slow and everytime we need a bit of urgency and pace he slowed the game down playing slow passes into our front men allowing their defenders to step in and nick the ball.

And while I’m on the subject, Scharner should not play in our midfield ever again. He’s a headless chicken and he doesn’t have the technical ability to play in that role. Don’t get me wrong, his workrate and enthusiasm are brilliant and if you put his exhuberance into someone like Robinho what a player you would have!, but how many times does he get in good positions breaking forward only for his touch and control to let him down?

Get him playing at the back or not at all.