Exiles thread - Huddersfield (H)

[moonwalk19]

Didn’t Graham have lots of injury problems before he came to us? Feel sorry for the lad but if you continue to sign injury prone players you are asking for trouble.

That’s the end of his season for him and the end of his career at Orient.That was a really poor display against a team who were very solid at the back.Did I notice that Galbraith switched to RB for the last 30 mins what a waste.RW played his best team available but did not get his tactics right. Felt sorry for Keeley over the 2 nd goal bad back pass to him.Apart from that I thought he had a good game

[gshaw]

This would be a decent squad in league 2, but I thought the policy was signing players who could compete in the division above?

Not so sure about that, we had the lightweight youth model in KJ times and that put us in a similar position the league below. Feels very much like history repeating itself with the way the summer window went.

[Mistadobalina]

Not a damning game, Huddersfield obviously a decent team and we were very much in it until Graham got injured. Feel for him, was almost an exact replica of his injury of the game Burton game. Innocuous incident where he's clearly hurt himself really badly and you suspect he's finished.

January is huge now. Need at least a striker and a winger of real quality.

[Rich Tea Wellin]

Not a damning game, Huddersfield obviously a decent team and we were very much in it until Graham got injured. Feel for him, was almost an exact replica of his injury of the game Burton game. Innocuous incident where he's clearly hurt himself really badly and you suspect he's finished.

January is huge now. Need at least a striker and a winger of real quality.

Least we’ve got the right man on it who can make a small budget go the extra mile

[cockhat]

What do you mean were Now in trouble, we were already in trouble, with this squad we will be lucky to get out of bottom four, the rest of the season, sadly, we are L2 bound.

If we can get some decent players in January then no reason we can’t survive.

How do you get any player, let alone decent, with no money?
That’s the problem.
We will just end up with a couple of cheap young loanees again, or a crocked player who has been injured all season, who needs games.

We will see. Depends on how much the directors want to stay in this league.

[Stan1972]

We need to be realistic, with our budget, we will always be L2 team, who will yo-yo in and out of L1.
If you look at the table the L1 is very strong down to Wigan in 15th

[gshaw]

We need to be realistic, with our budget, we will always be L2 team, who will yo-yo in and out of L1.
If you look at the table the L1 is very strong down to Wigan in 15th

15/24 isn't a bad budget realistically, just been spent very poorly compared to our rivals

Least we’ve got the right man on it who can make a small budget go the extra mile

Where's Russell Slade when you need him, remove the current DoF parachute the man with no hair in and task him with finding some Kevin Lisbie types

[Top of the JES]

The club just seems a real mess at the minute. Different stories re the budget depending on who you listen too really poor recruitment, RW will blame everybody/thing else as he tends to do when we are poor.

What we really we need right now is strong leadership from the chairman and a radical re think on recruitment before January.

Still time but much work to do.

[WhetstoneO]

Thoughts with Jordan Graham this evening, must be distraught and hope he’s got decent support around him. Kind of makes the result a bit irrelevant right now

[ContrifibulatoryFred]

Wellens has to take some blame here.
His own personal discipline is dreadful and this commutes into the pitch. I also don’t get the coaching during the game tactic. Players who should be concentrating on set pieces are anxiously looking back to the bench to be spoon fed.
I think Wellens has taken us as far as he can.

[MassiveForehead]

Anyone heard from Marshall Taylor this evening? Just asking in case he has any further snide remarks to annoyed fans.

[Bergen]

We`re in trouble. Now SERIOUS trouble.

What do you mean were Now in trouble, we were already in trouble, with this squad we will be lucky to get out of bottom four, the rest of the season, sadly, we are L2 bound.

We have been in trouble for some time, but after this performance it`s looking much worse. By the look of it we don`t have the ability to learn from our mistakes and Graham`s made it a depressive evening. I am more worried than I have been for a long time. That`s all .

[MassiveForehead]

Wellens has to take some blame here.
His own personal discipline is dreadful and this commutes into the pitch. I also don’t get the coaching during the game tactic. Players who should be concentrating on set pieces are anxiously looking back to the bench to be spoon fed.
I think Wellens has taken us as far as he can.

Spoon fed coaching is in vogue. It's what all the best managers do, so that's what everyone tries to do. It works well for Pep most of the time, less well when it's Martin Allen sweating through his chinos with Barnet.

I'm happy for Wellens to be given time, I don't think we'd get anyone better now Ainsworth has gone to Shrewsbury, and I don't mind sticking with him even if we got relegated. He's clearly a very good manager, but the recruitment has been abysmal and I do think we need a bit more physicality through the side.

[gshaw]

Players who should be concentrating on set pieces are anxiously looking back to the bench to be spoon fed.
I think Wellens has taken us as far as he can.

They're looking to McCormack for guidance not Wellens as he's meant to be coaching set pieces. Seems more like McMahon MK2.

Wellens had also taken us on a long unbeaten run and got within a whiff of the playoffs at the start of this year. The recruitment in January was a mess and it seems to have gone downhill from there. Can't pin all that on the manager.

[Mistadobalina]

If you think back to how we were playing this time last year, I don't think we look anywhere near as bad we did we did then. The players are clearly still buying into what Wellens is trying to do and there's enough quality there to get us out of this mess.

That said, Wellens in game management is poor and has only been tested since we've gotten to league 1. His substitutions often screw us and id argue tonight was another example.

[Rich Tea Wellin]

The club just seems a real mess at the minute. Different stories re the budget depending on who you listen too really poor recruitment, RW will blame everybody/thing else as he tends to do when we are poor.

What we really we need right now is strong leadership from the chairman and a radical re think on recruitment before January.

Still time but much work to do.

Considering Nigel has stated our recruitment needs to be better publicly in almost certain there’s some strong changes happening before Jan in the background.

[Hoover Attack]

That’s the end of his season for him and the end of his career at Orient.That was a really poor display against a team who were very solid at the back.Did I notice that Galbraith switched to RB for the last 30 mins what a waste.

That didn’t happen. Galbraith is the one with 22 on the back of his shirt.

[Hoover Attack]

If you think back to how we were playing this time last year, I don't think we look anywhere near as bad we did we did then. The players are clearly still buying into what Wellens is trying to do and there's enough quality there to get us out of this mess.

That said, Wellens in game management is poor and has only been tested since we've gotten to league 1. His substitutions often screw us and id argue tonight was another example.

Which of the changes or subs are you querying from tonight?

All of them made sense based on how the game was going.

[Mistadobalina]

I'm not a fan of making all your subs with a decent chunk of the game still to play. It burnt us in I think the Exeter game last season and happened again last night.

Half time subs he got absolutely right, but I don't think taking James off for Cooper made much sense at the time and left us open to playing with ten men. Not questioning bringing Graham on, we needed more attacking threat.

[Hoover Attack]

So of the 5 subs, you’re happy with 4 of them?

For what it’s worth, I thought Cooper was excellent when he came on and gave us a genuine threat in their box.

[WilliamTell]

So of the 5 subs, you’re happy with 4 of them?

For what it’s worth, I thought Cooper was excellent when he came on and gave us a genuine threat in their box.

Thought Simpson was hopeless, first pass was out of play followed by a further two, then gave away a corner followed by the shambles that led to the second goal . Too many inexperienced players for this league none of which gave a good account of themselves.. I need to find a few stats to back that up with.

[Hoover Attack]

Agreed Simpson had an awful 45 mins.

[WilliamTell]

So of the 5 subs, you’re happy with 4 of them?

For what it’s worth, I thought Cooper was excellent when he came on and gave us a genuine threat in their box.

Thought Simpson was hopeless, first pass was out of play followed by a further two, then gave away a corner followed by the shambles that led to the second goal . Too many inexperienced players for this league none of which gave a good account of themselves.. I need to find a few stats to back that up with.

Stats:
Our problem with our young signings is they have little or no experience let alone in League One before joining us. Hemming has started zero games in League One though he has started games in Scotland, 46 for St Mirren and 54 for Kilmarnock. Keeley has also started zero but played 17 games in the NL for Barnet. Perkins zero. Donely zero. Currie zero but started 87 games in League Two for Wimbledon. Kelman is the one player with experience starting four Championship games for QPR, six for Wigan and 47 for us. Don't blame the kids.
Perkins, his adult career elsewhere: in 2023-24 he played one minute in the Championship, 156' in two games in the EFL Trophy and five minutes in League One for Oxford plus another seven minutes in the FA Cup.

[Hoover Attack]

Really good post that highlights the issue.

Even our ‘experienced’ players don’t have games at this level. TJ played half a season for Wigan on loan in 2020/21, the rest of his football has been at L2 or Scotchland. Happes only L1 season was last year, same for Brown. Galbraith had 1 L1 season for Doncaster on 21/22.

From our starting X1 last night, only Agyei and Beckles have played L1 football consistently for multiple seasons.

[EliotNes]

The last two posts give a good summation of our situation regarding "experienced" players.