Chester FC V AFC Fylde MATCH THREAD

Dec 17, 2017 9:11:22 GMT Harry Lime said:

That was a decent performance yesterday.

We looked organised, if limited, for the full 120 minutes. Although Fylde had most of the possession, we had the best chances. Most of those came from 85 minutes onwards.

The keeper looked really good again. Except for the bad mistake for their second goal. Hopefully that's a one-off. Made a good one on one save after the mistake to redeem himself. He looks the best we've had this season.

Jones, Astles and Anderson looked fairly solid.

Hall-Thompson looks class going forward, and Gough did ok.

Midfield never really got going. Shaw wasn't involved. Dawson ran his nuts off, played some good balls, but gave it away a lot. James looked lost. As a unit we couldn't move the ball through midfield at all, and relied on long balls to chase.

Hannah looked a lot sharper and had a bit of the ball. Akintunde worked hard but little end result.

Not sure why Gough went off. Putting Halls on to replace him. Hall-Thompson moved to left back. James to right back and Halls in the middle. Shaw then went off with Turnbull coming on. Not sure about a back three and a deep midfielder, if the wing backs don't get forward much either. Leaves us with a back six at times.

Udoh came in for Akintunde. Ran around a bit, but he doesn't really look ready.

We did create chances from 85 minutes onwards, despite the back six. So even though we lost a lot of possession and sat really deep. You could argue it sort of worked.

We need to be realistic though. An important fact on yesterday's game is that we while played our strongest side, Fylde made 8 changes from the team that started at Wigan midweek. 3 of their side started that game, 6 were subs and 2 weren't even in the squad.
That does put things into perspective.

We must take the positives from yesterday as there were signs of improvement and the team at least showed some character, with the penalty shoot being superb. The back three look really solid and overall the goalkeeper was good. Prior to the subs, defensively we were well organised, albeit very limited going forward and chronically lacking creativity. For the most part the front two had little service as we sat deep again, and other than Hall- Johnson there is very little pace or width in this team. With the introduction of Halls into midfield, and the resulting/unnecessary changes in formation we lost shape and became very unbalanced with large gaps on the left hand side and congestion on the right. Halls was totally ineffective , drifting around and seemingly wanting to play at right back just like last week. With turnbull coming we didn’t really function with a midfield at all for the last 15 minutes and retreated to the edge of our box waiting for their inevitable equaliser. The starting eleven was practically our strongest team, minus Mahon (is he still injured as he’s covered a lot on ground on the touchline the last 2 games ? ) and the introduction of a pair McCarthy’s journeymen summer signings showed just how poor this squad is. Bignot has found a defensive system which works but only if we have the first choice players on the pitch. Given that the defence is now unrecognisable from the shambles which started the season, it will be interesting to see what Bignot can do to improve the very weak Midfield, as this will be critical in achieving survival this season . Halifax will be a real test next week and be true indicator of the progress which has been made, and certainly somewhere where we need to be picking-up a point.