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The Fullback Blues

Dougie Freedman has come in for a lot of mostly justified criticism over this painful season, and the latest batch of jeers aimed in his direction have been due to his tinkering of the team, especially with the back four.

Some of Freedman's recent changes have been completely feasible i.e replacing the injured Matt Mills and resting the recently recovered David Wheater. But some have had absolutely no logic whats so ever i.e dropping Zat Knight after one of his best displays in a Bolton shirt and shoe-horning in the clearly unfit and not very good Alan Hutton, seemingly just to make the loan move for the Scot seem justified. After arguably our best, and definitely most enjoyable form of the season, in which we earned 10 points out of twelve, scored eleven goals and conceded a mere one, it feels like we've taken two steps forward, and ended up thirty yards back.

That's due to the hopeless defending that's been displayed in the last two games, not just from the defence, but from the midfield as well, the first forty five minutes against Yeovil were genuinely painful to watch because of it. The midfield offered absolutely no protection to the defence and they were easily exploited, on two occasions it resulted in a goal.

For Yeovil's first goal on Saturday nobody was tracking the runner who overlapped the advancing Dawson, which left Baptise caught in two minds whether to close down Dawson or not, he didn't and it result in the completely unmarked Miller steering home. For the second goal, absolutely no one was picking up Dawson on the edge of the area, the supposedly holding midfielders Medo and Spearing weren't even in the frame when Dawson took a touch, steadied himself, then hit his low shot into the corner.

Believe it or not, defending of this vein continued through out the half: Hutton and the especially bad Baptise, were often caught hopelessly out of position, the latter failed on umpteen occasions to deal with the pace of Dawson (which eventually lead to his sending off), the gap in the midfield left us vulnerable to high balls from the Yeovil defence and there just wasn't enough pressure on the Yeovil players. I have nightmares about what the score would have been if it wasn't for Zat Knight.

In the second half the defence and midfield sured up and we were far less exposed, this due to the somewhat ironic fact that Freedman tinkered with the formation at half time. Instead of the flat 442, we switched to a 4132 with Spearing sitting deep and actually offering the defence some protection, and it bloody well worked. We managed to get a much more secure grip on the ball and we were able to actually move it forward and attack on the Yeovil goal. It resulted in us equalising and coming so close to winning.

However, their was still one gaping hole in our defence, that being Baptiste's left side. I feel slightly sympathetic towards him because he is playing out of position playing at fullback anyway, let alone left back. But it's little excuse for his performance, which as we all know, ended with a red card as he was beaten once again.

After the equaliser Freedman brought on Wheater to hold out for the point, with Ream going to left back, and it has to be said, we actually looked more secure with the trio of Knight, Wheater and Ream, who all played against Blackburn and Leeds, back together again.

So I guess the overarching meaning of this post is that some tinkering is good, and necessary from time to time, but consistency in the line up is vital for the team gelling as a unit and achieving better results. Oh, and we could really do with a new fullback.




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