Yeah I was wondering why he only made 5 appearances as I remember him scoring in the play offs. I dont see the point of loans unless they are going to play in the 1st team
The fact Palmer is on the bench for York in the National League says it all. Agree, purple patch when he came back into the team last season, but he isn’t as good as McFadzean or Dunkley, who are both coming in for unwarranted criticism about their lack of pace (Palmer no quicker than either of them btw) costing us, but of the 8 league goals we’ve conceded this season, I can think of max 1 goal that you could potentially point to that being a factor and that was the first we conceded vs Crawley at the weekend, but I’d personally say that was more down to a mix up than anything else.
Putting Sheckleford at CB tonight because we literally do not have a 4th CB kind of highlights the complete lack any depth there at all, nevermind quality depth. I'd have kept Palmer if we just weren't going to replace him. The failure to sort CB despite it being an obvious problem for about 4 windows now is a real **** up from the recruitment team tbh.
I did say Palmer had no pace either. I’d be happy to see him still here so we had 2 right sided options in centre of defence. Of course Ash Palmer isn’t better than Chey Dunkley. But somethings not quite working as well as it should is it. Maybe our expectations are raised having such good attacking options.
Shecks only playing there tonight cos it’s the paint pot or whatever it’s called, he’d be nowhere near CB in a league game. Naylor is the 3rd choice CB with Grimes as 4th choice, personally don’t think it’s anywhere near as much an issue as a lot seem to be making out
so, that’s MK guaranteed top 3 and Swindon guaranteed top 3. Only leaves one spot for the other 22 teams to play for. Hardly seems fair.
Chesterfield downgrading their defence in this window is absolutely wild. Waiting for this Canadian lad to sort things out in Jan could well be their undoing in what should be a promotion season.
We haven’t downgraded our defence at all. Don’t read into last night, that back 4 will never ever play a proper game with eachother, especially that central defence partnership of Sheckleford & Grimes. We could handle one injury to our starting back 4 and be fine, but if we were to have two that could then be a problem but I’m sure most clubs at this level would be similar. I actually don’t think our defence has been that bad at all so far this season. Conceded 8 overall, but 3 of them were penalties that weren’t even penalties. So that’s then 5 from open play in 6 games considering we play such an open & attacking style isn’t bad IMO.
Chesterfield downgrading their defence on deadline day is wild then? We've had three injuries to our defence already (Lavelle, Tharme and Rodgers) and have coped. If you've got aspirations of going up and can't take a two player injury hit then you're gonna have problems at some point. Fair enough if you're defence is doing alright now but it sounds to me like it's gonna get stretched.
We didn’t downgrade it on deadline day either? I was talking solely about central defence when I said 2 injuries btw, at full back our depth is pretty decent actually. As I said, if any team in league 2 lost their starting CB pair to injury for any significant period of time that would cause them an issue, we’re no different. Our starting pair is Dunkley & McFadzean, lose one of them and its Dunks/Fadz with Naylor which is still decent, lose two and its Naylor x Grimes which is obviously a drop off in standard. Don’t get me wrong, ideal world I’d love another CB in the building so that Naylor doesn’t have to cover & he can stay in CM, but there must be some reason Cook didn’t go and get another. Whether it’s because we’re gambling on the idea we can make it to Jan as we are before the big Canadian joins or some other reason? Not sure. But I do think had last nights game been played a day before the window closed, we’d have gone and brought someone in as I think Grimes performance was a big eye opener for Cook that he may well & truly be finished this time.
How many times have we thought that though. Just watched goals & he was involved in at least 5 of them. Defending was even worse than I imagined after all comments.
Oh I know, he was absolutely horrendous. I’ve actually defended Grimes on here a lot especially last season as always felt the criticism was over the top, but I can’t defend that last night. He was absolutely miles off it. I think age and lack of game time has caught up with him big time, part way through the game the camera switched to Cook absolutely screaming at him where the words ‘****ing shit’ were repeated a number of times..
To be fair it must be really hard for No2/3 keepers to come in from the cold and play well. The last 2 seasons we have played the No2 keeper in the EFL trophy and they have both been awful and conceded loads (latest was the 4-4 v Spurs U21). Now we are having to play one on Saturday as out No1 will be sitting on the bench for Northern Ireland.
