Mckenzie, Doherty & Gary Holt

[henners 0]

I was at the match yesterday and i gotta say that Mckenzie was our man of the match for the second half. He did run for everything and he won a great percentage of the headers he went for. He is a far classier player than Doherty ever will be and should be given a go. He has proven he is a finisher. His goals to starts ratio last season was awesome in my view. Although we have only just purchased Doherty everyone can clearly see he does not cut it as a striker. He cant finish and he has no pace and can we afford to have someone up there just to hold it up, i mean he cant do that very well. We have to have in this league 2 strikers who look and are likely to score goals every game and he does not and is not. Although i have not seen him play defense, I have heard this is his more comfortable position so he should be used as backup for our centrebacks who are both playing well at the moment.

With regards to Gary Holt. Yeah he has been a great player over the last few seasons but i agree with one of the other more recent posts that he should not be a mainstay on the teamsheet when he is not playing well. We have got many midfielders at the club and they all deserve to be given an opportunity at this level. Im talking about people like Mulryne and Helveg who is a better midfielder than he is defender. Safri has come in and in my view was our man of the match in the Villa and Bristol Rovers matches and one of our better performers in the first half yesterday. I dont know what he did wrong over Holt and Francis to be removed yesterday but I guess Worthy thought so.

[susie b 0]

I can''t help but wonder if Safri was singled out as he was dispossessed just prior to their first goal, but, to be fair to him, there was so little space to manoeuvre just in front of the box, because of the diamond formation, that it was almost like an accident waiting to happen anyway.

[Creative Midfielder 1,996]

Come on Susie, I dont particularily want to have a pop at Safri but that was a very basic bad mistake, and it wasnt his first by any means.I''m really baffled by the way everyone has turned on Holt and seems to think playing Safri instead would be a great idea. Gary had a shaky start to the season and has improved, so far Safri has just been shaky. Maybe he''ll come good but at the moment no way should he be starting.

[susie b 0]

I''m not sure what you mean by ''come on Susie'' etc., creative midfielder.  I wasn''t exactly disagreeing with you or the first poster on here - it was a mistake, and a bad one for us in that it resulted in a goal, as I said.  I was merely trying to suggest that the formation may have contributed to the mistake for the reasons I stated and I was speculating as to whether that mistake cost him his place in the second half.  Please don''t read anything into my post that simply wasn''t there.

 I hope you noticed that I didn''t mention Gary Holt at all.  For what it''s worth I think he has gradually upped his performance level over the past few weeks.  Whether that will be good enough ultimately remains to be seen, but he, as with all of them, is still very much in the process of getting used to Prem life which is very different to that in Div. 1, I''m sure you would agree.  Trouble is, we don''t have the luxury of having that time as we need points on the board sooner rather than later.

[henners 0]

Just for the record I thought yesterday Holt did actually play ok. It is just that it seems he can play badly for a few games consecutevly and still get picked when other players through loss of form get dropped and suffer a period on the sidelines. I cannot see how anyone can say Safri has not been impressive since his breakthrough. Apart from yesterdays mistake leading to the goal he has shown what a classy, inflappable player he is and has in my view been very comfortable in the middle. I would love to see us revert back to the 4-4-2 with him and Damo getting the central starting berths.