FA Cup 4th Round replay

Pertinent point and thats pretty telling indeed Hydy .. I'd say similar for Lee C tho then again i guess his game plan was to just lets go for a Draw at all costs .. i.e. The cost often being 2 extra points.

It does seem Mark was capable of~ Turning The Corner with our side
Hey and lest none of us forget many of these lads are almost B Team boys ..

With a full compliment plus a couple of'Intelligent' Loan signings who knows how far he could've gone with em .. Honest, Full Hearted, Fan Warming Passion goes such a long way .. Shanks surely had it & Lill's with the way he wears his Scarf and Heart on his sleeve minds me so much of him ~

I'm certain MANY (maybe not all) of the players must pick up & feed on this .. maybe Eyre deserves a pat on the back too eh .. ?

True Jacko...it pains me to watch our lads treat the ball like a hot, syphillitic potato when passing to people in space is just basic football. EVERY one of the 92 league clubs should be able to play keepball. Pass & move, pass & move, it's not rocket science.

And we did that last night. If you have the ball then there is precious little the opposition can do apart from tire out whilst chasing it down. Once Scanz scored the second Leicester looked well beaten. They'd exerted so much already that a final push was beyond them. We sured up in defence and midfield and comfortably saw it out.

We could have done this so often this season as we possess some good passers. It pains me that we haven't. It may be a bit of naivity on our part but we're at the stage of the season where we need to learn fast. The players should study last nights match carefully. Classic 'smash n grab' tactics. We're not playing Man United every week.....every team in this division is beatable with the right application.

Manchester United doesn’t play ‘keep-ball’, and Alexander Chapman Ferguson's team happens to be 12 points clear at the top of the Premier League.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence.

Manchester United have more of the ball than their opponents 99% of the time, they also have 4 good goalscorers, a bunch of midfielders and even fullbacks who can deliver a perfect final ball, strong lads at the back who can distribute to players in the same kit....

We don't really tick any of those boxes Uncle Carbunkle, so I would hazard a guess that ball retention is much more important to us than it is to them, yeah?

Good.

Back to my fish and chips.

Fooook in helllllll !!!!!! What game were u watching last night ffs!!!! Keep ball ???? Keep ball !!!!! Town couldn't pass wind last night in the first half they were terrible .

It certainly wasn't perfection Loui, but we made them work. Hard. This against a very good side who already put 9 past us in 3 previous games.

How often have we seen Town get in front and then just allow the oppo to come at us in waves before conceding the inevitable goal??

It wasn't pretty but we had a plan and we stuck to it. Leicester had no answers whatsoever. What a difference 7 weeks can make.

I was bloody furious when I got down there to see the team we'd picked, expected nothing but a heavy loss but the lads really dug their feet in and did the 100 or so folk who'd made the effort proud. It wasn't a good atmosphere by any means but half of the Town fans there were stood up for the 90 minutes and gave it our best, the Leicester youths to our right were good value as well.

Bennett - 7
Woods - 8
Gerrard - 8
Wallace - 7
Dixon - 7
Sinnott - 5
Arfield - 7
Atkinson - 6
Clayton - 7
Scannell - 6
Lee - 6

Norwood - 6
Vaughan - 8
Gobern - 6

Scannell makes me furious, doesn't get into the game nearly enough as he should. As good as his goal was he needs to make more of an effort to effect the game when he hasn't got the ball, instead of just standing around looking uninterested. He's our best defensive player in that he can run the ball out of our half and take the pressure off, as shown at times in the second half yesterday and loads of times against Palace, but he needs to actually try and get the ball more to do it.

Thought Woods and Gerrard had great games, what might not have shown on TV was just how much Gerrard was barking orders at the younger lads in midfield and at the rest of the defence. Unlike captain marvel he also pulled the defence out at every chance which meant we weren't defending on our 6 yard box like usual. Arfield was also brilliant again off the ball but unfortunately gashed up a few good opportunities when he got forward. Sinnott and Atkinson unfortunately were very poor, in particular Sinnott.

The effort of all our players cannot be questioned though, 100% commitment and everyone stuck to their guns very well when we were out of possession.

Champers...

I wouldn't be surprised if Alexander Chapman Ferguson laughs up his sleeve on a regular basis, since so few people appear to have sussed his style of play, despite the fact that his team is regularly featured on television, and DVDs.

Arsène Wenger's Arsenal manage to emulate it on their good days. Michael Laudrup is trying to copy it at Swansea.

Manchester United always have wingers, who tend to cross the ball at the first opportunity. The team's players hit the ball into space, such as inside the full backs, or through balls for forwards to run on to... sometimes (horror upon horrors!) over the top of the defenders.

They are particularly lethal with counter-attacks, where they hit the opposition with pace. Ferguson knows that defenders don't like having to run back towards their own goal. That is when crosses from the wingers are especially dangerous.

I am fully aware that that Manchester United spend outrageous amounts of money to bring certain players to their club, and over-inflated salaries to keep them there. You could say quality costs money... but... the philosophy is free, and available to everybody.

It seems to me that Town fans appear to accept that the players who come to the club are the finished article, and can't be improved. If that's the case then why bother having coaches... or a manager?

When Ray Wilson signed for Town in 1952, he was a wing-half. They moved him to full back, and when he played for England in the 1966 World Cup Final, he was regarded as the best player in the world at that position.

Brian Clough once said, about players he had at his clubs, "I was a great believer in getting out of them what they'd got. I never harped on about what they hadn't got."

Old Big 'Ead won the top division title with Derby County, an unfashionable club with a bunch of players who, in the main, weren't considered to be good enough to play for the 'top' teams. He did something very similar at Nottingham Forest, where he also won back-to-back European Cups.

At one time, Catenaccio was the tactic that was supposed to cure every team's ills. It came, and it went.

Johan Cruyff once said, "Football is simple, but the hardest thing is to play football in a simple way." Ferguson has managed to do it for a heck of a long time at Old Trafford, and I can't imagine he is going to change a winning formula.

Have a special... fish is supposed to be brain food.

Did you watch the 'Special One' last night ?

Jose, you gotta love the guy...much better record than Alex Fergi-Time..

Tonights game should be worth a watch...

we tried to keep hold of the ball yesterday, i think thats the main difference..
at least people were getting closer to whoverer had the ball and gave them options..
scannell wants to run from wide areas for some reason..thats why he looks out of the game so much.. He might be a very strong weapon if we gave him the ball in the opposition half more often, he cant do a "ricky villa" every week..
Not bothered how sinnott and atkinson did football wise, they still ran around and gave us 10 outfield players competeing.. Alan Lee showed what a good target man he can be when you play a ball onto his head/chest rather than a long high hopefull punt into no mans land.. We didnt run away when they got the ball and we kept the ball for good periods, something we failed to do at all when they spanked us the other weel...Lesson Learned?? hope so...