Torquay United v Chelmsford

[UnitedinDevon]

The case in point on gender - look at the lines men - both terrible

One who disallowed the goal is incompetent bowed to pressure from the players without raising the flag

One of the pop was useless, missed clear fouls and then talked the ref into booking Carson near the end for nothing

Cooke did pick up his 5th booking, believe he can play Tuesday but not Saturday

[PL21gull]

It will certainly be interesting to see us play without Cooke - the problem with having a big target man is overplaying in the air, as we have done all season, which has enabled opponents to play football on the ground and walk through us (as shown again yesterday).
Why are we not learning from fruitless hoofball - it would be interesting to see the stats for i. how often Cooke wins an aerial battle and ii. (more importantly) how often we gain possession from his headers; the result must be that in the vast majority of cases we lose possession....so why persist with a tactic which has a low percentage outcome?
Another big weakness is at throws-in; at least with Mussa in midfield and with the very impressive Young wanting the ball, the thrower should normally be able to throw it to feet, but oh so often we take an age to throw the ball, allow the opposition to mark up, and then either lob it hopefully in the air or go backwards, and backwards, and back to the keeper who then hoofs it upfield so that we can mostly lose possession.
It really isn't rocket science, so COYY please play with more purpose, with more control, and play forwards on the deck. And try not to sit so deeply that we just panic at the back and hack the ball anywhere in trying to protect a slender lead.

[Taelee73]

Whichever game Cooke starts his ban, I have a sneaking suspicion we’ll play it on the ground for maybe 4 minutes, then start hoofing it up to the two tiny strikers for the rest of the match. Just a wild guess.

Ref was poor, end of story. There was a passage of play where we were on the edge of their 18 yard box and she was just outside our 18 yard box. She’d gambled the ball would be hoofed back, which to be fair it fairly quickly was, however she was a long way behind the play. The linesman on the Bench side was also terrible, getting it from both management teams, I think he just bottled it with the disallowed goal tbh.

Chelmsford weren’t great, let’s not pretend they were, 2-0 down they pushed 4 players up front and we didn’t cope with it or have the guile to exploit what they were doing.

Oscar was a league 1 player? The play in this league is too fast for him then, he doesn’t seem to have the experience that Moxey has of knowing where to be to save having to be running around constantly. Unfortunately at the moment he’s a weak link.

People saying we’re not good enough, this is the first season they’ve all played together, some players will work and some won’t. This season should be seen as one of building, people expecting instant promotion are clueless, as great as it would be. Wotton has seemingly started the improvement to this quickly assembled squad with Young, who on that one game looks excellent.

[Skillsy]

Just had a very close look at the disallowed goal. I was also at the game.

When Dreyer struck the shot Cooke was in an offside position, but he was clearly not in the line of the goalkeeper so was not interfering with play. On this basis it shouldn't have been disallowed, unless it took a nick off Cooke in which case it was the correct decision. I cannot tell from the pictures whether it touched Cooke, or not.....it looks close but I cannot be certain either way.