“It felt like we came out for a 0-0 against a frankly very poor Rotherham team.” (opinion)

Views from imps_joe after yesterday’s 1-0 defeat at home against Rotherham United in League One: “What a disaster.

We are in free fall in the moment and the team needs to turn things around. Hard to see where the next win or even goal is coming from at the moment.

For me there was zero positivities from that game at all. I can’t even recall one good quality passage of play all game. Wickens was having a good game until he decided to come for a ball that he didn’t reach resulting in their goal. Simply, you have to make contact with the ball if your decision is to come for that.

McGrandles was ok off the ball but not good enough on it, but he wasn’t the only one. All round the passing was poor, control was poor and even the long balls were poorly directed. We our so reliant on Erahon for control in midfield and when he does eventually lose we will be a significantly weaker team.

I have no idea what we were trying to do to score today. What is our intended style of play? What happened to the fast starts? What happened to the effective press? What happened to the effect set pieces? What happened to our intent? We have no pace and look very isolated in forward areas.

It felt like we came out for a 0-0 against a frankly very poor Rotherham team. Unfortunately they were better than us and got a deserved win. Also worry was our odd substitution selections, Bailey and Moylan were arguably the two players that looked most likely to make something happen.  There are a couple of players that we are persisting with I don’t think are quite good enough. The defence did ok for the most part (though looked shaky) but the creativity and attacking intent was as a blunt as they come. We never looked like scoring and feels like we made no changes to our tactics to try and make a real  impact on the game.

Ref made the game even more frustrating and start stop, which normally I would say plays into Rotherham’s hand, but today probably helped us because of how poor we were on the ball. Ref blew up for any form of contact, but unfortunately missed the push leading up to their goal.

We’ve known it for a few weeks but as each game goes by it reinforces how big of a job we have this January to address the issues we have. We have to bring in an additional centre back. We need more creative players and we need someone who can put the ball in the net. We are still crying out for more pace in the team, something, we have been missing for a good while now and failed to address.

I’ll be there on Saturday praying we can pull something out of the bag.”

More views from the Match Thread:

The Imposter: “Steve Evans may be one for regular hyperbole and producing comments from the stars, but one thing he said yesterday that resonated with me was when he described Skubala as “perplexed”. I’m afraid I have to agree with him. Our manager, along with his coaching staff, just don’t look like they have any idea what to do when the going gets tough, how to get the best out of the players, how to make practical substitutions, etc… And his post-match interviews where he just regurgitates the same cliches and defences (I think even Radio Lincs are going off him as Hortin actually asked him a couple of more pertinent questions).

His substitutions yesterday were bordering on farcical, especially taking off Cadamarteri and Moylan, the latter who had our ONLY two shots on target. When you need a goal, why on earth do you take off your two most likely goalscorers? It was completely baffling. And leaving Makama on for the whole game smacked of favouritism – he was completely out of it that second half.

Someone on this board some time ago alluded to the fact he was taking instructions from analysts on how to play and set the team up. I have thought this for some time, as it’s just not logical how we’ve gone from playing some excellent front-foot football from last season to this campaign, where we just mainly launch it and have no tangible way of playing.

And how have some of our players gone backward so quickly? Prime example being Ethan Hamilton? He looks a completely different player to last season. Where has the lung-busting box-to-box midfielder who has an eye for goal gone? He’s been replaced by a nervous Nerys. Very alarming indeed.

And another thing. Why on earth didn’t one of our players ‘land’ one on Odoffin yesterday or deliver a crunching tackle on him for what he did to Jackson a month ago? We never went anywhere near him all game.”

PortMacImp: “We have been in this situation before in recent seasons where we look tactically clueless, the confidence of the players is sliding and the football being served up is tedious. Kennedy and to an extent Appleton, in the latter stage of his tenure went down the same route.

I am not an advocate of sacking a manager at the first signs of adversity and therefore am quite willing to see how Michael Skubala responds during this transfer window to turn the situation around. We have seen that this team is capable of playing some good football but we lack consistency and it has been a struggle to get ourselves ahead in games, due to a lack of quality in the forwards.

The reality is that we are looking over our shoulders instead of looking at the playoffs so the players need to show some fight and avoid sliding further.”