Nigel Clough; Harrogate Town post match & match highlights

[Dan]

Someone should be shouting for Sweeney to let that go.

[MTFCMusings]

Nigel has to work incredibly hard to get anything out of them. In this instance the phrase is 'the juice isn't worth the squeeze.'


The run was a fluke. What we're seeing at the moment is the natural level of performance for the majority of these wasters.

Nigel can't trust them to self manage their performance. Sad fact, but true.

I don’t agree that the run was a fluke. The numbers back that up.

The fact is for most of the season, goalkeepers or defenders have made silly errors leading to goals, and attackers have consistently failed to convert good chances. Once we got in the run, confidence grew and for a sustained run of games we took our chances and made fewer errors.

Last night was the first time in a long time we have looked really poor for large spells of a game. In the previous four games we have either created good chances and not taken them or been hamstrung by defensive errors.

The starting line up needs freshening up, particularly the back five and the front three. There are options within the squad to allow this to happen. Clough should ensure this happens on Saturday.

Ok, Mr 'numbers back that up', maybe fluke wasn't the right word but it certainly bucked the trend. the 5 game winning run that was curtailed accounts for almost 50% of our points this season. We have played 29 games.

We may not have fluked the victories in the games, but the fact we pulled off 5 wins from 5 games when we had previously only won 2 out of our first 20 games shows it was an anomaly, and maybe we have reverted to type, as Clough says.

The problem here is they need continued micromanaging because all that was good before has evaporated because they can't be trusted to do their basic jobs without being relentlessly reminded and mollycoddled - in my opinion.

We don't go to work and get reminded and trained on how to read and type. There is an expectation that simple jobs will be undertaken to fulfill a greater objective. Seems these lot need the basics hammering home endlessly. And that is why I think he sounded exasperated in the interview.

He also says we came in off the back of 2 decent away games. Draws at Walsall and Colchester, personally I thought we should have won both those games.

I only took issue with your fluke comment, and said the numbers back up that we didn’t fluke those wins. They are very obviously an outlier after a dreadful start, although our overall performances deserved more points than they actually achieved, again down to poor defending and poor finishing.

I disagree that ‘all that was good before has evaporated’, based on one stinking performance. The other performances during the recent run were ok to good despite not yielding the desired number of points. But certainly errors have crept back in slowly, and last night there were unforced errors all over the place, probably down to a number of different factors.

I expected to beat Colchester but to draw with Walsall, however based on the respective performances both results were fair.

[Hon Sec]

According to stats on Sky the last 3 games we had more possession, more shots and more shots on target in all 3 games yet we got no points, scored 2 goals and 7 against. It’s about time we started to hit the target.

[MTFCMusings]

According to stats on Sky the last 3 games we had more possession, more shots and more shots on target in all 3 games yet we got no points, scored 2 goals and 7 against. It’s about time we started to hit the target.

We’ve outshot our opponents in 12/18 league games Clough has been in charge of, according to Soccerbase. 1/2 for Coops, 5/9 for GC. 18/29 for the season. Goes back to what I was saying in my earlier posts. We’ve often won the shot count but now won the game.