Player ratings.

[Glenthorne]

What's happened to them

[DonaldRocks]

What's happened to them

Gone to Boco Island on a Thomas Cook package!

[The Mindsweep]

JMD 4 very poor
Wilkinson 7 never stopped but no support

The rest somewhere in between

[Forty-Niner]

Plenty of effort but organisation and quality lacking.
Brill 4
Ling 6
Coulson 6
Ekpiteta 5
Widdowson 5
Marsh 6
Wright 5
JMD 5
Dennis 5
Wilkinson 7
Subs
Clay 5
Harrold 5
Alabi 4

[Bergen]

Brophy 5.

I agree with most of that. Wilkinson did well.

[F*ck The Poor & Fat]

Plenty of effort but organisation and quality lacking.
Brill 4
Ling 6
Coulson 6
Ekpiteta 5
Widdowson 5
Marsh 6
Wright 5
JMD 5
Dennis 5
Wilkinson 7
Subs
Clay 5
Harrold 5
Alabi 4

Familiar story.

[Cheshunto]

What's happened to them

Ross is doing the player ratings now.

[Howling Mad Murdock]

Great a clickbait thread at a crisis time like this.

[Disoriented]

Great a clickbait thread at a crisis time like this.

Crisis? What crisis?

[Howling Mad Murdock]

Great a clickbait thread at a crisis time like this.

Crisis? What crisis?

Brexit.

[Disoriented]

Great a clickbait thread at a crisis time like this.

Crisis? What crisis?

Brexit.

[Loyal_Supporter]

Plenty of effort but organisation and quality lacking.
Brill 4
Ling 6
Coulson 6
Ekpiteta 5
Widdowson 5
Marsh 6
Wright 5
JMD 5
Dennis 5
Wilkinson 7
Subs
Clay 5
Harrold 5
Alabi 4

You forgot Brophy. I'd give him a 6.
I agree with the rest apart from Widdowson. He was a 4 I reckon.

[RedDwarf 1881]

Crisis? What crisis?

Brexit.

[Disoriented]

Plenty of effort but organisation and quality lacking.
Brill 4
Ling 6
Coulson 6
Ekpiteta 5
Widdowson 5
Marsh 6
Wright 5
JMD 5
Dennis 5
Wilkinson 7
Subs
Clay 5
Harrold 5
Alabi 4

You forgot Brophy. I'd give him a 6.
I agree with the rest apart from Widdowson. He was a 4 I reckon.

Easy to forget Brophy - he was awful.

[Loyal_Supporter]

Plenty of effort but organisation and quality lacking.
Brill 4
Ling 6
Coulson 6
Ekpiteta 5
Widdowson 5
Marsh 6
Wright 5
JMD 5
Dennis 5
Wilkinson 7
Subs
Clay 5
Harrold 5
Alabi 4

You forgot Brophy. I'd give him a 6.
I agree with the rest apart from Widdowson. He was a 4 I reckon.

Easy to forget Brophy - he was awful.

There were worse than him.

[Forty-Niner]

Sorry about Brophy. As you say easy to forget. I meant to rate him a 4.

[WGC O]

Brophy didn’t look fit - Wilkinson did well - first half performance generally was disgraceful - improved in second half but no cutting edge -

[Top of the JES]

Brill 6 Could do nothing with either goal - Couple of very good stops - poor kicking.
Ling 6 Got little help from JMD. Second half a couple of decent runs forward.
Coulson 5 Looks a yard off the pace this season, bailed out by other defenders covering behind him more than once.
Ekpiteta 6 For me better of the two centre backs today, distribution found wanting a couple of times, needs to adjust quickly.
Widdowson 4 Poor, hesitant in defence and always looks to pass backwards on his forward forays.
Marsh 6 Never stops running, our best midfield player at the moment, great effort today.
Wright 5 JE's last signing but it shouldn't exclude him from getting the hook, lucky to stay on IMHO.
JMD 4 Did the square root of F all today, very skilfull but doesn't fancy a scrap if we need it and we did today.
Dennis 6 Playing as a second striker but far too deep at times, got into some great positions second half but poor finishing.
Wilkinson 7 Battled really well. got a real pasting from Colchester's centre backs and little protection from the Ref.
Brophy 4 Completely ineffective and anonymous tracking back, expected much better from him.

Subs:
Clay 5 Huffed and Puffed but rarely affected the play.
Harrold 5 Came on but largely invisible and didn't influence out attack.
Alabi 4 Would much rather see Ruel keeping him is hold Soitiriou back, came on made a couple of simple touches, scuffed an added time chance across goal

Embleton 4 He can't get the best out of the players, A lovely man but management is a step too fat at the moment.

[Ronnie Hotdogs]

Too many people are being sucked in by those hiding and giving them 6s.

Our defence is getting all the grief but the problem is our midfield. It’s sh*t. They do f*** all. There’s bugger all protection offered to the back 4. They don’t make themselves available and demand the ball off the defence when we’re in possssion. They’re never first to second balls.

Marsh can do one and clear off back to Spurs. Brophy needs to play in a more advanced position, he can’t play midfield. Wright, what is the point? At least clay tried to raise the tempo with and without the ball. What is the point,

[BIGRON]

Amazing !! We play games and late subs come on and in the ratings they score N/A , today Alibi comes on at 87mins and gets rated 4 and is slagged off , his late shot took a deflection and wearn't a bad effort FFS get of his back .

[Ronnie Hotdogs]

That shot from Alabi was a joke.

[O my gawd]

Plenty of effort but organisation and quality lacking.
Brill 4
Ling 6
Coulson 6
Ekpiteta 5
Widdowson 5
Marsh 6
Wright 5
JMD 5
Dennis 5
Wilkinson 7
Subs
Clay 5
Harrold 5
Alabi 4

You forgot Brophy. I'd give him a 6.
I agree with the rest apart from Widdowson. He was a 4 I reckon.

Easy to forget Brophy - he was awful.

Dis, I didn't even think he was that good. Wilkinson & Marsh were worth 7's, Ling was a 6, everyone else 3s, 4,s & 5s.
Colchester are definitely no better than us either

[Article_50]

How much do they get for turning up?

[Disoriented]

You forgot Brophy. I'd give him a 6.
I agree with the rest apart from Widdowson. He was a 4 I reckon.

Easy to forget Brophy - he was awful.

Dis, I didn't even think he was that good. Wilkinson & Marsh were worth 7's, Ling was a 6, everyone else 3s, 4,s & 5s.
Colchester are definitely no better than us either

Have to agree - they weren’t that impressive. In fact, we looked much better than them in the second half.

[gshaw]

It is noticeable that there are three ex dagenham players in this team

I don't know if all three Ling / Jmd / wilkinson ever played in DR at the same time in league 2 as DR do go up and down between the two divisions.

I remember DR going quite well at times in div 2 under Still and I don't think DR were conceding two goals every match- even the year they went down.

The point may have some relevance - that these three are decent players hence that why we signed them further Ling was a regular England C right back so he is a good player generally

I also think the difference in l2 and last season is being overblown and the gap is much closer - hence players were signed believing they would be capable of league two.

On the radio it said by dave and his co presenter that the first goal was scored by a player who played at Weymouth last year and he was going well in league two this year and Weymouth are further down the football ladder - so it's not correct all this talk about the difference by our staff and players. I wish they would all stop this and focus on the team without that comment as all it does is reinforce mental negativity in a compound way.

If we were doing better with a few more points all this talk about stepping up would not be even highlighted as it is and I notice players and management over the last moth of so as the results have gone poor have highlighted the alleged difference but I do recall an interview with ML where he specifically said that he was going to look at recordings to see the standard of league two and that was after we got promoted " to see what was there" or words to that effect

Our preparation each game is more that just tactics and fitness

In any job you need to go to work believing in who you are and the colleagues you work with are capable in that environment for success in your own job to occur - best way is to get team talks pre and post match with no reference with league two comparing to last year league 2 we all know that we as team when performing correctly are capable by this group.

I guess that's where the successful managers and clubs are different they attack the preparations in a more holistic successful way - very basic if you think about it really

There is definitely a step up, Ling has made that mistake once in his career already when we got promoted to L1 and seems to be history repeating itself.

At tinpot NL level you've got part-time sides who haven't got the nous or the fitness to compete, you've got poor strikers who who miss easy one on ones (we got away with some real let-offs at times last season) but back in the EFL you get punished.

Based on Embleton and Coulson's interview where they both confessed to being surprised by the step up in quality it appears Ling didn't share the result of his viewings

It's all very well saying "if we had a few more wins" but that's a moot point. We're not getting them because of the errors and being punished by teams who are better drilled, fitter and more ruthless.

The other crux of the situation is we took a good NL squad, removed its two best assets, didn't fix the issues (CM and quality ST cover) then put them in a division above with inexperienced manager. One of the two would make life difficult, putting both together leads us to where we are now, in a relegation dogfight

It could well be Embleton is bearing the brunt of decisions made by Ling but seeing as we don't know exactly who is deciding what the interim manager will have to take the flak.