DJ Barry Hammond

Prediction - he will be one of five different goalies to make a first team appearance for us across the season.

This would be a strange outcome for the near future considering the club has signed several players for significant transfer fees over the last couple of months. That muted summer transfer budget of £10 million back at the start of the window sounds about right - well you’re not shelling those sums if administration is close. It is also be notable that the reported £8.5 million debt clearance/equity swap (funding injection) by King Power is a lot lower than previous ones; that might suggest the clubs annual operating losses up to the point of last season had become more manageable; but we’ll need the clubs accounts to confirm that.

Side note for suggested lineups for this game - we have an EFL Trophy fixture on the Tuesday after it. Technically, that match against Fulham’s U21’s requires ‘four qualifying outfield players’ to be named in the starting 11. This is often referred to as requiring players that started the previous game, but there are other qualifying criteria - for example a player that didn’t play against Barnsley but played against Fulham could count as a qualifying outfield player if they start against Wigan (the fixture immediately after). Looking at the wider criteria - See 7.4 on page 7: https://images.gc.eflservices.co.uk/EFL+Trophy+Rules+26.27+MASTER+VERSION.pdf - we might not need to perform any serious selection gymnastics to comply; or we could simply choose to eat the £5,000 fine for not complying and just do what we want. But you still may want to briefly consider all this in your suggested team selections.

It’s all to easy to say that when you have absolutely no personally jeopardy involved here. Regardless - you may get your wish soon - there’s a Football League Trophy game on the following Tuesday (22nd).

This is ‘any other guy’ thinking; we had the same thing with posters and the Spanish keeper last season. You’re basing your opinion on the fact he can’t be as bad as McCarthy because you haven’t seen this ‘other guy’ play. Reality is, Franco was Blackpool’s second choice last season, has never played above League One level and has less than 50 league appearances across his career at the age of 29. He’s not going to be a better option.

Victim of what he was asked to do tactically today: in a similar story to that of Alves who was effectively a wingback yesterday. Having to act the foremost central press as a midfielder (he was often found higher than Riis and Cullen without the ball.) can make it very difficult to influence a game because you’re always having to turn and often behind the game.

This is a mistaken observation; because he did change his system to accommodate the opposition today - and on more than one occasion. I believe Martin discussed Alves playing as a “wingback” today, so it’s possible that what was drawn up on the tactics board today was a 3-5-2 rather than his accustomed 4-1-4-1. And I get why this was done; he wanted to match up man-to-man defensively with Stockport’s 3-4-3, whilst maintaining an extra body in midfield when on the offensive. Notice, Stockport had no holding midfielder themselves, so that 3 v 2 central midfield match up when attacking was very advantageous for us - especially for Page, who found pockets of time and space to lay on two goals. But Martin clearly changed things after Stockport came back into the game. He’s instructed Page and Lundstram to simply sit to protect the centre backs; we became a mid to low block; he brought on Burns for Cullen to better secure the left hand side that Stockport were getting some joy down. And we conceded possession to ensure a result - we were at mid 60’s at one point, so to end up at 49% possession indicates a clear shift in approach. Mean, yes defensively we were not good for structural reasons; but equally, in an attacking sense we looked incredibly dangerous - it was only a good save that prevented us scoring from all of our 5 shots on target, suggesting the strength of our chance creation was a lot better than in previous games.

You what? That’s the Keeper’s job all day - and McCarthy was an idiot to give someone like Norwood an inch by positioning himself more aggressively for a cross.

It might not be like that every week. Stockport play a 3-4-3 and Martin had set us up to go with an aggressive high, man to man, press; with Braybrooke taking their middle centre half and Riis / Cullen taking the outside two. But this dragged Page and Lundstram up the pitch with them and left a huge amounts of space behind them and in front of our back four, making it far too easy for Stockport to clip balls into the front 3 and get us on the turn - and when they were able to do that, they looked very dangerous. Now, previously, we’ve pressed with a 4-4-2 shape, so this was obviously a decision Martin went for this game in particular to match up with what Stockport do; and I’d argue it didn’t really work for the reasons mentioned above. But equally, you could say it did because on the flip side we scored four good goals today. It should also be mentioned, to his credit, Martin did change things defensively to close the game out, both in shape and the way we pressed and suddenly Stockport were much less of a threat. We became more compact and from that both Souttar and Thomas looked far more assured - suggesting that the reason didn’t before was more to do with our co-ordinated team defensive effort more than on them individually today.

Yep, back 3 against their forward 3, wingbacks cover the wide men - Burns and Watson addd extra cover. We’ve conceded the ball, but Stockport haven’t looked anywhere near as dangerous since.

He’s on to help shut up shop - he’ll do his defensive duties better than Howell and Cullen.

I think Burns is a sensible change in this situation; Cullen wasn’t covering this right side very well.

Yeah, we’ve finally decided to drop a little more, sit with Page and Lundstram and just be generally a lot more compact. My concern is the left hand side though; Cullen’s covering high and inside too much.

Should be 7-4!

That was idiotic from Cullen - made a great tackle and then just stood and watched the throw in get taken? Track the run until JJ actually gets back in!