Barnsley 0-1 Rochdale

That game was not right in anyway, the atmosphere was inexistent, the formation was inappropriate and the players were just lazy. It made for a horrible spectacle.

Previously, Rochdale’s boss had declared that the competition was ‘irrelevant’. Robins had declared the opposite, so how did it end up at 1-0 to Rochdale?!?

There is no single reason, but if I had to pick one it would be the tactics. It doesn’t take Mourinho to tell that Robins made a huge error yesterday, and worst of all, it was a fundamental one.

The formation was a 4-2-3-1. Butterfield started out of position, as a wide player. In some ways that strange tactic actually worked, but it also meant we only had two players (Lovre and Dickinson) getting into the box.

M.R. is trying to build a team that plays good, dominant football, and he is using a 4-2-3-1 formation to do that. Fair enough. However, yesterday he allowed this to stand between him and one of the two rules of management, that is to be tactically flexible in order to meet the needs of the game. Yesterday was a game Oakwell expected to win, and so playing Dickinson as a lone forward was an insane decision. We weren’t going to score.

Now, this formation isn’t useless. We spent the first half with 4 central midfielders on the pitch, and as a result totally dominated. Rochdale barely had the ball, and Butterfield ruled the game, despite spending the entire half out of position (can you blame him?!?). The trouble was, as soon as we approached the box, we found Dickinson coming deep to be a post man, Lovre getting involved in build up play and Hammill hugging the touch line. And even when the midfielders did decide to take a risk and throw themselves in, we were under instructions to only put in the lowest risk crosses, symbolised by having such poor options on the right hand side.

That was the story of the first half. We dominated, but were restricted to long shots and blunt passing moves. For their part, Rochdale did everything by the book, and when they hit us with a quick attack usually found Shackell and Foster to be fragmented with no organisation or marking, reflected in Rochdale having the best shot of the half; a header which should have acted as a warning. We ignored it, and came to regret that later.

I don’t have a perfect memory, so I can’t remember my exact words at half time. Instead, I’m going to paraphrase it. “We will eventually win, because Rochdale aren’t going to score. We are dominant, but need more bite to get the goals. I would take off Colace (who is starting to look tired after a good start) for Hume, and play Butterfield in central midfield.”

I was wrong about the first sentence, but totally right about the rest. 5 minutes into the second half, and Robins came to the conclusion that we need to attack more. Good. Then, in his infinite wisdom, he took off our best player, and only reliable passer, Butterfield, for Devaney, keeping Doyle and Colace in place even though we were meant to be scoring, and also taking off Lovre for Hume , keeping Doyle and Colace in place even though we were meant to be scoring. Basically, the decision of what our substitutions would be had been made long before the start of the game, as had the decision to keep Doyle and Colace together.

It all went wrong from there. The passing collapsed, we tried to become more direct, but Hammill was the only player able to get at Rochdale. The rest were just tame. Hume may as well have stayed on the bench. 6 minutes later, Rochdale threw an accurate but simple ball into our box, Shackell and Foster both decided that Anthony Elding would mark himself, and the forward delivered a slow header towards the corner. Steele reached it easily, but didn’t feel like pushing it out, or catching it, so instead opened his hands nicely, tallying up his second goal of the season.

The booing began…..

I expected us to be throwing men forwards straight away, throwing balls into the box, going for the goals. And, I think we wanted to, but without any passer in central midfield (Doyle as a deep lying playmaker. Haha.) it became depressingly useless. At times, Hammill was a one man attack and I mean that in the worst possible way.

Rochdale’s defense looked good, but we didn’t give them a lot to do, did we? One great chance, when McEveley burst through a weak challenge into the box, before ramming a ball into Dickinson’s feet. The chance was, rather unsurprisingly, sliced.

In stoppage time some urgency finally was invented, but only just. In fact, post the goal Rochdale had two clear cut scoring chances, both better than anything we made all game.

It made for an awful spectacle, and the booing following the whistle was unsurprising…I may even have joined in myself.

Robins claimed to care, but did he really? I mean, it was in essence a first team, but we did play that 4-2-3-1. Robins is keen to make that formation work, and so he played it. Almost like the team was meant to be practising the formation for another occasion, rather than playing hard to win this game.

And, whether M.R. cared or not, the players as a unit really didn’t look up for it. There was no cohesion, either, and communication seemed to be an issue.

Robins afterwards stood by his formation, saying this:

It is very easy to go back to the way the majority of teams play the game but we do not want to do that. There was criticism last season about the way we played the game and we have tried to change that this summer. We need results too although I am trying to change the way we play football as well.

Basically, he is trying to make the 4-2-3-1, which worked so well in pre-season and made such good football, work now. He remains defiant that we will do this the right way, and I stand by him in that. Our manager finished “We want to play the game in the right way and I am going to try to do that”.

Rochdale for their part seemed like a very tough side, who won’t be messed with this season. We didn’t really test their defence, but there were no slips. I was also impressed with their support, so good luck to them.

Ratings

Steele: 4 – Nothing to do, but still got it wrong.

Trippier: 6

Foster: 5 – The two centre backs have to sort it out, or get out.

Shackell: 5 – The two centre backs have to sort it out, or get out.

McEveley: 7

Colace: 6 – A good first half hour, but then became tired. He’ll get there.

Doyle: 5 – Doyle is an issue of his own totally, and where he goes from here is hard to see. This issue will, among others, be included in an article tomorrow.

Hammill: 8 – Some real class, but spent the last 40 minutes being lonely.

Lovre: 6 – Did nothing.

Butterfield: MOTM 8 – Played out of position, and played amazingly. It tells that we lost possesion (the only thing we had) once he was stupidly taken off.

Dickinson: 6 – I thought he did a lot well, but he will be blamed for our deficiency up front. I’m not convinced that was all his fault. He did miss our best chance, but this performance can’t be reasonably blamed on Dickinson.

Hume: N/A – Who?

Now, like Saturday, I’ve done a lot of criticising here, especially of Robins. There are a lot of Reds fans talking about this like an apocalypse. It’s not.

Just look at the attendance. Only 4,000 turned up. The Ponty was as empty as we’ll see it and there was literally not a single home chant. We got a better crowd than that for a friendly against Wednesday. So, don’t blame the players for not taking it all seriously. Fans didn’t either.

I’m not going to say ‘It’s only the League Cup’ because, well, that’s a crap excuse. But we’re not alone. Morecambe 2-0 Coventry, Bradford 2-1 Notts Forest, Southend 3-2 Bristol City, QPR 1-3 Port Vale, Crewe 1-0 Derby, Doncaster 1-2 Accrington. In fact, we are just one of a crowd.

So, please cut back on these broad statements of failure, based on an inevitable and unlucky loss at QPR and an unimportant loss to Rochdale. It’s been bad, but you’ve got to be pretty narrow minded or ignorant to think that this means ‘we will struggle’ or that we have ‘a bunch of misfits’.

I agree with Robins. “We have to be strong mentally now and go out on Saturday and win the game. We have got off to the worst possible start this season but we can only change that ourselves.”

Category: Match Reports