MellowYellow wrote: ↑17 Feb 2018, 18:36
If there is anything to take away from the match it is to admire a master class of tactical awareness by a top manager. Dagenham's manager John Still with 40 years of non-league management experience had the making of Ower's set-up from the off. Our 5-3-2 defensive counter attack never got off the ground from minute one. Still's just employed a 3-5-2 formation to stifle the midfield and dominate the match. With 25 minutes to go and 1-0 down, Ower's commits to a suicide formation with an attacking 4-2-4. You could see John Still's rubbing his hands with delight, already 1-0 up, he sends instructions to his team to sit back and counter attack. We were lucky it was only 0-3, in the last quarter of the game, Dagenham could have easily put 5 passed us.
Don't blame the players on this one, they play to position and managers instructions. We were tactically outmanoeuvred. It was not the players who were incompetent but our manager for not finding the much needed counter formation to match the Dagenham's set up, right from the start. Unless you are an 'Ower's can do no wrong supporter', then you can point the finger directly at our manager for this display.
Owers reaction: "we got what we deserved". Yes we did Mr Owers - thanks!
Sums it up perfectly and that is exactly what we witnessed this afternoon, Owers was completely outsmarted... again.
Dagenham were well organised and knew exactly how to counter everything we threw at them so we just resorted to our old ways and playing hoofball by the second half, once that happens you can pretty much write off the rest of the game.
Why Reid was started ahead of Keating i'll never know, he had a couple of good runs but never knows how to finish it and generally looked like he didn't give a shit.
On a positive note, Sokolik looked promising and we have a game on Tuesday to bounce back to try and save our momentum.
