10 minutes ago, Nippy Naylor said:

The annoying thing for me is we have all these attacking players and the manager seems content to set us up to play with the handbrake on it dunner make sense to me but it is what it is ,I hope we don't set up defensively on sat cos we'll get battered 

It looked to me like DM gave the players a bollocking at halftime, it was noticeable none of our subs kicked a ball around at halftime. He made 3 changes and we played quickly for 5 minutes  and then reverted back to what we were doing. I really don’t think that was the managers tactic and was on the players.

After the performance against Swindon I think it’s hard to argue for a change of formation and personnel without hindsight. We didn’t play with a handbrake on Saturday.

First half Heneghan must have lumped 10 50-yard balls up to Stockley. Not a winning tactic.

Typical Vale performance. Let winger cut in and the other team scores.

The way Moore is setting up is taking me back to the way Southgate frustrated the life out of me with England. Cautious, playing with the hand break on all the time, loads of options but bizarrely tries to put square pegs in round holes, too loyal to certain individuals. 

3 minutes ago, MBE said:

It looked to me like DM gave the players a bollocking at halftime, it was noticeable none of our subs kicked a ball around at halftime. He made 3 changes and we played quickly for 5 minutes  and then reverted back to what we were doing. I really don’t think that was the managers tactic and was on the players.

After the performance against Swindon I think it’s hard to argue for a change of formation and personnel without hindsight. We didn’t play with a handbrake on Saturday.

I disagree. We can’t just keep picking the same side / formation every time we win a game (especially after beating such a poor side) we shouldn’t be using a back 5 at home, there is no need. There was no way Hackford deserved to start tonight after Saturday and once again offered nothing. In my opinion we should be picking the side that has the best chance of beating the opposition. Tonight in my opinion we left most of our creative players on the bench to start the likes of hennegan who just was not required in a game like this. 

Well, we got exactly what we deserved tonight. Yet again we have to watch our so called super talented team, take the lead and show next to no ambition to finish teams off. Let's be honest, Saturday wasn't great either and I'm sick of hearing Moore drone on about having to learn from that, when he and his team aren't. 

Are we the only side that opposition teams use negative tactics against, because listening to some people, you'd think so. Colchester must have being trying to play super expansive football while enjoying their 4-0 thumping at Walsall. 

It's not like their goalkeeper had to play a blinder, for all our lump it up possession, he hardly had a save to make and really, neither did Swindles.  Ours had one thing to do tonight and didn't. 

Finally, what was Moore on about with his post match comments about being able to change things, with the versatility of the squad. His changes worked until we scored, afterwhich we selected reverse gear, or was it that all of a sudden, Colchester became too much for us to handle?

Get this team sorted Moore, otherwise, our scraping the odd goal victories aren't going to last.

13 minutes ago, Hitcher said:

1. Amos hasn't exactly covered himself in glory the times we've seen him. Might be a good change though to raise standards. Ripley has started becoming a bit flat footed so agree.

2. Weirdly I thought after their 10 or so minute spell of looking a bit more threatening we had turned the corner and had started to manage the game a bit. What changes would you have made? I thought Tolaj on for Chislett made sense at that time in the game for a bit more physicality up top. Also could argue that our half time subs made us look better. Best I've seen Richards play and tbh he made the difference as they were doubling up on him and he was getting round them.

I will make the same argument about the GK situation as I did a few weeks ago.

Ripley is the only denominator from last seasons porous defence. We have seen Ripley for over 50 games to judge him. 

Amos has had 1 game not enough of a sample to judge him fairly. I would give Amos a run of 5-6 games to see if he can win the shirt. He either does but if he doesn’t it gives Ripley a kick up the backside.

We are conceding far too many goals especially considering the number of chances we concede.

15 minutes ago, rob1983 said:

Can anyone actually remember when Ripley actually made a decent save that won us points?

Nope.

Can you remember Ripley making anything other than a routine save over the past 18 months? I’m struggling.

24 minutes ago, Biddulph_PV said:

I think that game just showed up several frailties in the side:

1) Ripley is a poor shot stopper and I think it’s time for a change 

2) Garrity as a DM. Complete & utter waste.

3) Sang at RB. Again, completely pointless, every move breaks down when it comes to him.

4) No creativity, only score off set plays or defensive cock-ups (tonight’s was both).

5) We don’t have the ability / mentality / physicality to sit back and defend narrow leads. It doesn’t matter who the team is, for some bizarre reason we always find ourselves under the cosh last 20 mins and invariably concede.

6) Questionable line-up & tactics. Couldn’t really work out what we were trying to do 1st half, everything going down the sides but no natural pace / width, so the ball goes backwards, cross from deep, either headed away by their giant CB’s or is too long. Then repeat. To make a triple sub at H/T obviously shows the line up was wrong from the start.

Second half better in a sense, but with more attacking players on bizarrely we go cautious and start inviting them onto us. They bring on big, physical players and we just could not react to it. Despite our so-called abundance of riches, we are still short of that physically imposing person or leader in the middle of the park for me who can take games like this by the scruff of the neck.

I feel really, really angry at how that’s finished - as you can probably tell - because it was so Goddamn obvious it would happen.

That sums it up well. Agree with you but  I'd like to add that Sang drives me absolutely crazy with his 100s of passes BACKWARDS!!!!  Definitely 2 points thrown away tonight. Oh why don't we switch to Wednesday nights? Tuesday are now a massive monkey on our back.

18 minutes ago, rob1983 said:

Cam anyone actually remember when Ripley actually made a decent save that won us points?

No

My biggest problem with Darren Moore tonight is that we started Hackford when he showed nothing on Saturday and then he brings on Richards who I’ve seen very little impact from. 
Meanwhile….. Paton, our own contracted player, with goals in him, sits on the bench. 
 

Paton was hung out to dry by Moore and his tactics in the first four games and it seems now that he’s out of favour over loan players up top who, in my opinion, aren’t better than him. 
 

Time to unleash Paton on Saturday, along with Tolaj, along Stockley. 
 

Come on Darren. Let’s see what the three can do. 
I don’t want to see Hackford or Richards starting over any of those three. 

For me, the jury is still out on Moore. I’ll probably feel better if we smash Notts County but all I can see there is a loss. If you break down the last three games, we’ve been pretty poor for 75% of them (and yes,I did think we were poor vs Swindon at times but thankfully they were much worse) and we haven’t scored a well-worked goal or kept a clean sheet in any of them. This remember is against sides predicted to struggle. So something ain’t working.

We let them play too much after we scored. A winning team takes the initiative, it doesn’t give them the ball and let them create stuff. I commented pre match that I felt Colchester would lapse us back to Mooreball and so it proved. Ripley should have done better than Parry a shot at him to the opposition but we were under the cosh as soon as we scored. 

1-0 up crowd behind the players then for some unknown reason we let a team who spent more time feigning injury, look like a half decent team and us look a big ragged and changes should have been made tactically to make sure they couldn't build up a head of  steam, maybe trying going forwards be a start .

Another game unbeaten but crikey Vale when you score ,go forwards it's our strength not defending .

Starting team all  wrong and I'd like know what tactical changes Cowley made as it worked for them and put us on the back foot annoyingly as we went 1 up 

Tuesday night games really piss me of .

Ripley has cost us 2 points there and let the other 10 players down as they were blocking shots and doing pretty good defensively before thst cock up 

Edited October 1, 20241 yr by Dipepa delight

2 minutes ago, Biddulph_PV said:

For me, the jury is still out on Moore. I’ll probably feel better if we smash Notts County but all I can see there is a loss. If you break down the last three games, we’ve been pretty poor for 75% of them (and yes,I did think we were poor vs Swindon at times but thankfully they were much worse) and we haven’t scored a well-worked goal or kept a clean sheet in any of them. This remember is against sides predicted to struggle. So something ain’t working.

He could get found out if the injuries rack up. We have a quality squad and it should be certainly doing better than limping to a draw at home v Colchester. I remember watching this when we had Aspin in charge and a team of non league footballers in the last days of Smurfwaite and it wasn’t far off the standard this evening.