Beveree Chat

Of course, the main thing about a players' collective is getting used to calling each other "Brother" - Brother Alan, Brother Paul, Brother Charlie, and so on.

Although I do hear that the young folk are in the habit of calling each other "bro", so it might not be too much of a stretch.

Well, that was much more fun. Who needs a manager at all? Long live the players’ collective 🤣.

I’m like Tony, not a fan of the back five. Unless you play with a very high defensive line, it gives the opposition way too much space.

But that didn’t seem to matter last night. As a 19th century ...

I for one would be very sad to see Jules go. He seems a decent chap, and he was handed a very difficult job. Having to assemble a completely new squad each year must have been a nightmare.

That being said, there's a pattern emerging. We start the season really well, playing some very good football ...

That was me missing Mr Tuck too. This is the strange thing. Under Julian, we’ve started both seasons playing smart football. And in both seasons we’ve descended to lumping it forward and losing it.

if you’re low on confidence, play it simple and keep moving. We’re just giving it away constantly ...

And another thing. On the rare occasion we did try to pass it short, players would pass and then watch, instead of moving into space for another pass or creating space. Unfathomable.

Very poor. I just don’t get it. Let me give you an example. During one part of the match, they had a back five. We put three forwards up against them and pummelled long balls towards them, with no joy - instead of thinking, hey, they’ve left the midfield empty, we should exploit that by progressing ...

Oh boy, I think we are in trouble. The days of Alfie Tuck putting his foot on the ball and feeding runners seem to be long gone, yet that was only a couple of months ago.

Now we sit deep, and as soon as we win the ball back pump it forward as quickly as possible. It’s Mel Gwinnett 2.0. Except that ...

Poor first half. These long balls are ultra-long so they’re not going to be accurate.

And what’s with doing EVERYTHING really quickly? Again, we don’t have the passing accuracy to be a counter attacking team.

When we’ve played well this year it’s been linking up in combinations. Play to our ...

Agree with TW10. Had a couple of successes with long balls early on so kept doing that, but they clocked it, adjusted, and yet we kept doing it. Sitting back to absorb the pressure again just gave them a lot of room and time. Soul had a couple of good runs at their centre backs, (hello, Luiz) but ...

In my humble opinion, if you’re going to play with three centre backs in a game like that, one of them has to have the confidence to move into midfield.

Sam was playing so high up it only left Harry and Alfie in the middle. So when they wanted to counter, boom, lots of room.

So yeah, we often had ...

Looking forward to that.

Curious game that one. Like Tony said, for long stretches there was this massive gap in midfield. We seemed a little obsessed with putting pressure on their centre backs with long balls. And down the channels. Worked sometimes, I suppose, but seemed to lead to those large gaps in the middle. Not a ...