Magnum PI
Private Detective
I genuinely don't know where to start with that. I am disgusted. Phil Brown and Phil Brown only cost us 3 points in that match.
Now I will be the first to admit that we were not brilliant in the first half. It was all a bit scrappy and there were a few too many aimless hoofs forward. But we were comfortable and not once did Bury ever look like they were going to threaten. Yet you could see the players immediately start sitting back on the lead. Instead of going for the jugular and opening up a bigger lead against what, up until that point, had been very poor quality opposition, we have a situation where Timlin and Worrall are playing a short corner and trying to hold the ball down there 2 minutes before half-time! I couldn't believe what I was watching.
It got worse after half-time. From the 50th minute, White was watching the ball go out of play by the corner flag for a goal-kick to us and leaving it there for a ball boy to trundle over and return it to Bentley. And then Bentley making a point continually of walking to the opposite side of the goal from where the ball went out to take his goal kick. Timewasting in the 50th minute!
What in the name of sweet Jesus is that idiot saying to them at half-time? Bury are there for the taking, all he had to do was tell them to keep the pressure up and turn the screw after half-time.....but they did the opposite. So now we'll have a situation where some of the more short-sighted fans will start blaming the failure to hold a lead today on the lack of goals or the 4-4-2 system which we began the game with (a system which will come good with Corr and Barnard up top if it is persevered with) when in reality, it is clearly down to something that he is saying to them before the match (“get the first goal and sit on it”) or at half-time (“now you're 1-0 up, take it easy and see the game out”).
It is made all the more infuriating to hear him in his post-match interview saying “we knew Bury would come back into the game second half and we tried to tighten things up a little bit at half-time to counter that”. Sorry, but what sodding aspect of Bury's woeful first half display gave you any sort of impression that they would come back into the game? The only way they were ever going to work their way back into it is if you allowed them to do so with your half-time team talk and tactical tweaks you stupid, inept *******. What football manager worth his salt honestly makes that kind of prediction when 1-0 up and in control after 45 minutes at home against one of the poorest sides we've seen this season? He's made tactical tweaks at half-time to counter something which hasn't happened yet and allowed them to come back into the game. Go for the fecking jugular and try to create a 2-or-3 goal buffer. If Bury still come out, manage to move into the ascendency and put our slender lead under threat despite Southend still throwing men forward and attacking then fair enough, react to it and try to protect it. You can't make changes and base your half-time team talk on something which is showing no signs of happening, but he's done exactly that and plunged his team into a situation where its lead IS under threat.
We may even have been able to hold on despite the tactical tweaks and half-time team talk, but the final nail in the coffin was the decision to haul Barnard off for Weston and switch to a negative 4-5-1 set-up. From the moment that change happened, the ball stopped sticking up front like it had in the first half due to the fact that Corr/Weston (whichever of the 2 chose to be the one player to stay forward at the time) was isolated up top alone and we had lost the energy and the ball-retention skills of Barnard. We put 10 men behind the ball and straight away invited a pressure onto our own goal which was never there before and had shown no signs of appearing. The old man and I turned to each other as soon as that change was made and said “that's it, we'll either cling onto a 1-0 win by the skin of our teeth or it'll finish 1-1,” because as soon as that change is made you know that Phil Brown ain't looking for any more goals. From that point on I pretty much switched off because I knew the equaliser was now going to come. The goal and the free-kick which led to it would never have happened if he had kept things as they were but the Bury pressure, the panic in our defence and the three successive corners that Bury forced, all the result of that substitution and negative change in shape and mentality, told you exactly what was around the corner.
Of course, as anyone could have predicted, the tired excuses came out in the post-match conference and the first words which came out of his mouth were about the referee, the penalty and the fact that they cost us the game. I'm sure many of our less-observant fans will fall for you hiding behind that excuse too but sorry mate, forget the non-penalty because YOU cost us that win and should never have put your players into a position where they needed to be awarded a late penalty to get the 3 points.
As an aside, there have been plenty of stonewall penalties not given and shocking refereeing performances over the years but it's a long long time since I've seen our players react to a decision like that. Is that frustration with their manager boiling over on the pitch? I can't see how the changes he made in the second half, the clear difference they made to the shape and mentality of the team, and the fact that we conceded a goal minutes later will help the players' confidence in El Tango and it already looks like he's lost them a little bit. There certainly seems to be something more deeply and fundamentally wrong than just the “lack of a goalscorer”.
Either way, he's certainly lost my confidence. The old man reckons he's the worst football manager we've had since Dick Bate. He might not be far wrong. The Alvin Martin and Alan Little days may have been dark ones but those two never had the quality available to them that this clueless idiot has. This group of players has the collective quality to be fighting at the top end but they are continually being blunted by a manager who is tactically inept and has no idea how to get the best out of them. I think the players themselves know this too and IMO this frustration is showing in their body language and even more so in their reaction to the non-penalty today. There is a total lack of confidence among, and maybe that is to blame for ridiculous time wasting in the corner before half time and at our own goal kicks after 50 minutes (although I'd say it's more likely Brown's instructions), but it is our own manager who has drained the players of confidence with his negative tactics and formations, his chopping and changing of the starting line-up, and his ludicrous substitutions. He needs to go.
Cut your losses Ron.
Great post. Not an overreaction at all. The tactics get odder and odder. This is our club and this clown is ruining any chance we can get out of this division. Something needs to happen seriously fast. There are plenty of decent managers out there...