Shrewsbury Town match thread - On Wenlock Edge

Theres quite a lot of panic around but we need perspective. After Millwall, we were raving and Millwall fans were calling their players unfit to wear the shirt, amongst many other things. Now we are appalling and Millwall fans are raving.

Can we just all calm down a bit? We have great players and a great manager. We have great owners.

No one knows what goes on behind the scenes regarding Ling. for all we know the price of getting Donley might have been to take their keeper too, but thats guesswork like every other comment on Ling I read on here.

Lets all take a deep breath and move on. The games arent gling to get any easier and they need our support.

Some were raving, others of us a little more cautious about getting too excited about what was in reality an average performance against a poor Millwall team on the night. And there is no panic, just huge disappointment, and rightly so. That’s different. 42 games to go, I very much doubt we will be that bad again. Richie will make sure of that. So onwards and upwards.

Too much hype about how well we performed against the big teams (we weren’t that good, just OK), I wonder if the players believed all the hype and expected a routine win, no such thing in league 1.

As for support. The diehards will continue no matter what. Season cards are sold. But being bottom of the table will affect finances, people won’t go, buy shirts, buy drinks/food and even streaming revenue may drop. The next generation of kids may not come. It’s a big deal being where we are. Needs fixing in the short term or the owners will need to dig deeper to cover additional losses.

I too thought Clare had a decent game and thought I cannot fault the keeper, as someone said it would be nice if he actually stopped a nailed on chance.
If Donnelly is a better option than moncour then I’ve wasted 74 years watching football.
We were reluctant to actually put the ball into the box and we ended up playing possession for possession sake.
We were out fought and outmuscled.

Ok reflecting on this 24 hours on.

It was poor. Really bad. Richie agrees on that front.

I'm not gonna go on about the game itself. Richie in my opinion set them up wrong. Wrong formation, wrong players in the team, wrong players playing in positions.

We are better than that.

I think what I'm gonna concentrate on is what I feel is our big problem.

Hemmings for his iffy start seems ok to me and will get better.

The defence has a lot of experience and with the addition of Currie looks pretty tasty (see what I did there).

In attack we know that in Agyei, Kelman, O'Neill, Graham, Archibald we have proper talent to damage teams. We've seen them do it at this level and we were all keen on it last season. We've lost Ruel and added Perkins.

We don't have a Pigott or a Smith this season. That is fine, we just don't play that way. Agyei will attack a header, but we seldom sling crosses in of that nature unless they're from free kicks when we send the bigger lads up anyway.

It's the midfield. It's easy to say that we miss El-Miz. That's obvious. But it is more than that.

Brown and Galbraith can and have cut it at this level. No problems with either of them. They both look class to be honest and on their day i feel either could play higher.

Pratley does what Pratley does. Hugely experienced and good for matches here and there.

We miss decent experience in the likes of Sanders, Clay. Just really functional players.

Donley. I'm calling it now. Isn't ready for men's football. You could tell yesterday that the players didn't want to give him the ball. It was like playing with 10 men. Players know their stuff and what they are. They know.

And I think this was the problem yesterday, apart from being set up with the wrong players, it was like playing with 10 men.

Richie said that Brown seems caught between a rock and a hard place, because he's doing the work of 2 players, he can't attack and defend on his own.

Obiero on the other hand looks first team ready, but will still have good and bad games along the way. He's one of our own and should be starting.

Warrington I thought would be straight in and raring to take on that tough tackling holding role. He seems capable. But again is very young.

DJ is a strange one for me. Looks capable and very much a Richie signing. What position did he play for Richie at Swindon?

But this midfield needs to be sorted. I feel we have the players but in what order and position?

My current team based on what I've seen, who seems available and Richie's usual formation would be:

Goalkeeper:
Hemmings

Back four:
Sweeney
Beckles
Cooper
Clare

Holding / Deep midfielder:
Warrington

Two in front of him:
Brown
Galbraith

Front three:
DJ on the left
Agyei in the middle
Kelman on the right

Rest of squad:
Happe
Simpson
James
Currie
Theo
Pratley
Perkins
O'Neill
Obiero

Wouldn't entertain:
Donley, rather have Obiero or Welch
Keeley, rather have Howes or Noah Phillips

Agree with Mungo’s detailed assessment and ideas in large part.

Our subs were an absolute disaster yesterday. We were WORSE for them coming on. I wouldn’t have given Pratley any more years, let alone one. He was utterly ineffective.

Donley has no game sense - he just played in his own little world, oblivious to what the game needed.

I met a couple of Leeds fans on the train home who like me live in Lancaster. They said of Sonny Perkins ‘bags of potential, needs to bulk up and develop some game sense’.

I met some Wigan fans on the way down who spoke pretty well of Clare, said he was mainly good for them but did tail off at the end of the season. They did say his commitment was always 100%. He was our best player yesterday along with Hemmings.

I was pretty devastated about the performance and result yesterday. It was the 2nd anniversary of my partner Steve’s death and I thought it was an ideal way to spend the day - he was a massive Gas fan. God knows, I’ve supported the Os for 40 odd years I should know better. Luckily the socialising was good, the weather was fab and Shrewsbury is a pretty and historic town, so not all bad.

From what I have seen, I agree with this assessment.

DJ offers nothing and Charlton fans seemed to think he was not that good. 

I would drop O'Neil as well as he has been poor for a long time after a decent start to his Os career last eason.

I'd like Warrington to be given some game time too.

We need Simpson back and firing on all cylinders along with Graham (if that ever happens).

I see you've included Archibald but not Graham 🤔🤔

👍🏾

Worrying though,don't want to be too many points behind and need six straight wins to catch up to just behind.