Sarfend (a) The Shrimply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time Thread

[BeesKnees99]

Quite funny to see Southend fans branding us “bang average” and “not that good tbh”. Saltiness has never been so sweet. Return fixture should be a cracker.


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[Beeboardwarrior]

Quite funny to see Southend fans branding us “bang average” and “not that good tbh”. Saltiness has never been so sweet. Return fixture should be a cracker.


Sounds like they share your opinions.

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[ninestein]

Great away performance, a little bit lucky with the offside maybe, but the result stands as it does. Onwards and upwards

[Shrimperama]

Bit of a tough one to take today.

Thought your boys started really well and got a quick goal. After that it was pretty much all us with your boys not offering anything going forward. Think you had 2 shots on target all game and one of those was a penalty.

Had we had any of our strikers fit for the game we probably would have taken the points. Rumour has it our 18 month embargo ends tomorrow with signings coming in. Unfortunately it wasn't soon enough and we had to play a 19 year old loanee and vilhette who was god awful. We ended up with a 19 year old centre half up front and it showed. Hopefully it will be more of a level playing field soon and we can actually fill a bench.


As for the game. You were fortunate today. The ref and lino's were very poor.

I honestly didn't see the so call stamp by Gus Scott Morris. He isn't a dirty player by nature. Didn't have a good view of the elbow on him either. But plenty did and felt he was lucky not to walk.

As for our goal. He's onside, plain and simple and you got away with one.

I was bang in line to the build up to the penalty and your player who crossed the ball was a clear two yards offside when receiving it.

I'd expect the game to be equally close when we visit Saturday.

Had we actually been able to compete on a level playing field from day 1 and didn't have a 10 point deduction I'd expect we'd both be challenging for the top 3. But that wasnt to be.

Next season we will be contenders. Whether you will be in this league who knows. You will have to play better than today to go up.

[11bee717]

Both Elbow and Stamp are reds

[CrawleyBee]

Gutsy professional performance, wasn’t pretty, but apart from the offside goal they didn’t do all that much for all their huff and puff. We looked solid defensively which was nice to see. Bring on Saturday, will be another tough game, but we can do it!

[djhdjh]

Bit of a tough one to take today.

Thought your boys started really well and got a quick goal. After that it was pretty much all us with your boys not offering anything going forward. Think you had 2 shots on target all game and one of those was a penalty.

Had we had any of our strikers fit for the game we probably would have taken the points. Rumour has it our 18 month embargo ends tomorrow with signings coming in. Unfortunately it wasn't soon enough and we had to play a 19 year old loanee and vilhette who was god awful. We ended up with a 19 year old centre half up front and it showed. Hopefully it will be more of a level playing field soon and we can actually fill a bench.


As for the game. You were fortunate today. The ref and lino's were very poor.

I honestly didn't see the so call stamp by Gus Scott Morris. He isn't a dirty player by nature. Didn't have a good view of the elbow on him either. But plenty did and felt he was lucky not to walk.

As for our goal. He's onside, plain and simple and you got away with one.

I was bang in line to the build up to the penalty and your player who crossed the ball was a clear two yards offside when receiving it.

I'd expect the game to be equally close when we visit Saturday.

Had we actually been able to compete on a level playing field from day 1 and didn't have a 10 point deduction I'd expect we'd both be challenging for the top 3. But that wasnt to be.

Next season we will be contenders. Whether you will be in this league who knows. You will have to play better than today to go up.

[Jdk103]

Bit of a tough one to take today.

Thought your boys started really well and got a quick goal. After that it was pretty much all us with your boys not offering anything going forward. Think you had 2 shots on target all game and one of those was a penalty.

Had we had any of our strikers fit for the game we probably would have taken the points. Rumour has it our 18 month embargo ends tomorrow with signings coming in. Unfortunately it wasn't soon enough and we had to play a 19 year old loanee and vilhette who was god awful. We ended up with a 19 year old centre half up front and it showed. Hopefully it will be more of a level playing field soon and we can actually fill a bench.


As for the game. You were fortunate today. The ref and lino's were very poor.

I honestly didn't see the so call stamp by Gus Scott Morris. He isn't a dirty player by nature. Didn't have a good view of the elbow on him either. But plenty did and felt he was lucky not to walk.

As for our goal. He's onside, plain and simple and you got away with one.

I was bang in line to the build up to the penalty and your player who crossed the ball was a clear two yards offside when receiving it.

I'd expect the game to be equally close when we visit Saturday.

Had we actually been able to compete on a level playing field from day 1 and didn't have a 10 point deduction I'd expect we'd both be challenging for the top 3. But that wasnt to be.

Next season we will be contenders. Whether you will be in this league who knows. You will have to play better than today to go up.

Cheer up mate might never happen

[MCB]

Thing is, we don't have to play better than today to go up. Just keep repeating that away from home, thrash whoever we play at home. Rinse and repeat.

[john dockers shorts]

Bit of a tough one to take today.

Thought your boys started really well and got a quick goal. After that it was pretty much all us with your boys not offering anything going forward. Think you had 2 shots on target all game and one of those was a penalty.

Had we had any of our strikers fit for the game we probably would have taken the points. Rumour has it our 18 month embargo ends tomorrow with signings coming in. Unfortunately it wasn't soon enough and we had to play a 19 year old loanee and vilhette who was god awful. We ended up with a 19 year old centre half up front and it showed. Hopefully it will be more of a level playing field soon and we can actually fill a bench.


As for the game. You were fortunate today. The ref and lino's were very poor.

I honestly didn't see the so call stamp by Gus Scott Morris. He isn't a dirty player by nature. Didn't have a good view of the elbow on him either. But plenty did and felt he was lucky not to walk.

As for our goal. He's onside, plain and simple and you got away with one.

I was bang in line to the build up to the penalty and your player who crossed the ball was a clear two yards offside when receiving it.

I'd expect the game to be equally close when we visit Saturday.

Had we actually been able to compete on a level playing field from day 1 and didn't have a 10 point deduction I'd expect we'd both be challenging for the top 3. But that wasnt to be.

Next season we will be contenders. Whether you will be in this league who knows. You will have to play better than today to go up.

Southend were all fart no poo! Had a lot of ball didn't do much with it.

A very professional and solid performance today.

Managed the opposition well.

[beew]

Bit of a tough one to take today.

Thought your boys started really well and got a quick goal. After that it was pretty much all us with your boys not offering anything going forward. Think you had 2 shots on target all game and one of those was a penalty.

Had we had any of our strikers fit for the game we probably would have taken the points. Rumour has it our 18 month embargo ends tomorrow with signings coming in. Unfortunately it wasn't soon enough and we had to play a 19 year old loanee and vilhette who was god awful. We ended up with a 19 year old centre half up front and it showed. Hopefully it will be more of a level playing field soon and we can actually fill a bench.


As for the game. You were fortunate today. The ref and lino's were very poor.

I honestly didn't see the so call stamp by Gus Scott Morris. He isn't a dirty player by nature. Didn't have a good view of the elbow on him either. But plenty did and felt he was lucky not to walk.

As for our goal. He's onside, plain and simple and you got away with one.

I was bang in line to the build up to the penalty and your player who crossed the ball was a clear two yards offside when receiving it.

I'd expect the game to be equally close when we visit Saturday.

Had we actually been able to compete on a level playing field from day 1 and didn't have a 10 point deduction I'd expect we'd both be challenging for the top 3. But that wasnt to be.

Next season we will be contenders. Whether you will be in this league who knows. You will have to play better than today to go up.

The stamp was deliberate, as you could see on TV GSM putting force into it. Had he got the red it deserved then the elbow wouldn't have happened, as the player would of been off the pitch. Having said that Kanu was stupid for raising his arm and on another day could of been sent off.

The offside goal was onside, and should have stood

[Doyley]

Stamp was red card, elbow wasn’t, off side goal was on side. But we have had the other side of luck this season, at chesterfield we could have been 3-0 up at half time

[Roy57]

To say they were all huff and no wind, is bit unfair, they had a young defender up front, if they had any quality up front then they would of caused us far more problems, DB insists us playing a high defensive line is how we will set up, if we are loosing I can understand this, but when we are winning I feel this is playing Russian roulette, today the gun did not go off, but we will not always be so lucky. Prior to Wood game out midfield have been poor, and today even thou not as bad for many it was clear they would not reach the heights of the wood performance, but at this stage it's maybe more important the result than the performance. Hopefully return game we won't need decisions to full in our favour and we create and put chances away when we get them.

[Jimbokav1971]

I thought we were a tiny bit lucky today, but not in the way that some have suggested.

To start off with I was surprised that DB changed a side that won 6-0, and the reason is probably that we have some players who can't play 3 games in 8 days.

Laurie scared the life out of me in terms of his unwillingness to come off his line, but he also made some big big saves. The issue for me isn't that LW isn't coming out as we would like. It't that his colleagues appear to be expecting him to come out and are playing as if he will.... and he's not. Maybe it's just a confidence related blip. Certainly nothing wrong with his shot-stopping.

Kanu in for Coker was the other change, but we know that Coker is only just returning from injury and asking him to play 2 lots of 90 in 4 days isn't very sensible if you want to keep him fit. The other consideration is that GSM is a hell of an athlete and I wouldn't have fancied him running at Coker all game. The battle between Kanu & GSM was a good one, (GSM coming out on top), but I was particularly concerned after Kanu withdrawn at HT, (and relieved), that we didn't have a plan for dealing with GSM as Pritch/Coker weren't physically capable of tracking his rund. In fact we didn't try to track him at all, and instead just defended the central areas he attacked, (with a little luck and some good play). GSM might be a little ****, but he's also a very good player. I thought GSM should 100% should have been shown a straight red for the stamp, and the Kanu decision probably could have gone either way, but we couldn't have complained if it has been red. That being said, if she sends GSM off then the Kanu foul doesn't happen because GSM is no longer on the pitch. Speaking particularly about Coker, I've seen others comment that Coker delivers more crosses than Idris, but in case you haven't noticed, he seems exempt from the DB strict policy of only crossing from the byline, (and with very good reason). If Coker could only cross from the byline he would never cross, and he's very good at crossing. He is allowed to cross from deeper than the penalty area. Nobody else is. Idris in particular is not allowed to do that, (for obvious reasons).

RHJ was very good and his sheer athletic ability is such a threat. The ease with which he went by his man in the box was beautiful to see and he deserved the luck for the positivity of the run. He scared the bejaysus out of the opposition.

Okimo rotated out for Stevens seems to have been an inspired decision as Stevens was actually very good and gave a particularly gritty defensive performance that was just what we needed. I liked that he was quite "static" and just sat it and remained narrower than Okimo/Potter often play. There was none of this attacking wide channels. He just wasn;t interested in that and that's exactly what we needed for this game. We need defensive attitudes like his in an attacking side like ours. I really liked his performance a lot today. I can completely understand why DB likes him.

Thought that was Oluwo's best game for a while, (since his injury). Also think DC moving centrally is starting to click and in hindsight I wonder why that wasn't the original plan at the start of the season. Is DC our best player? I think he's amazing.

I've been critical of Hartigan in recent weeks but thought he was much improved. The change in him looking to pass forward early gives everyone so much more time because it just gives the press something else to think about and gives Nicke's markers a decision to make as to whether they close him as he comes short or back off expecting something in behind. It was too easy before because there was never a choice to make. I saw Harts press really hard today and actually win challenges. He was properly at it today without the ball and while I appreciate it's not his strength, it's something we need to see more of. He was really good today.

Gorman was good early, (and I love Gorman), but a couple of times Wes ran off him, (Wes will run off a LOT of people because the number of runs he makes and the intensity of them is ridiculous and extremely hard to defend with). You basically have to pass him on and that's really dangerous. Thought Wes was the best of the 3 Ex Bees today, (particularly in the 1st half where he identified space in behin RHJ and use it intelligently). It was interesting to see the way Gorman changed how he communicated with the Ref today. He was significantly more polite than the snarling sweary little ****house that we're used to, and at 1 point I even saw him wait for her to finish speaking, with his hand raised for permission to speak, (while dealing with the Kanu/GSM aftermath). I think Gorman is very clever and generally pretty good at managing refs.

Pritch, (even without the penalty), was phenomenal. The ground he covered was ridiculous and I would love to find out his distance covered stats for the game. He covered an enormous amount of ground and he was really good.

I thought Brunt started well but faded as Sarfend came into the game more. He showed good intensity though and worked hard. When we play with 2 full backs rather than a winger and 1 full back, it allows Pritch and Brunt a platform to play and influence the game far more than when Idris plays and we're exposed at times at the back. I think the Stevens inclusion behind Idris is DB's attempt to balance that. While Idris wasn;t amazing in the 1st half, at the very least he was causing GSM to defend. While he was defending against Idris he was unable to run at Stevens, so in that respect Idris sort of did his job. I appreciate that DB had to take him off, (and was spot on to do so at HT), but in terms of what Idris actually did in the 1st half, I suspect that DB might be far more pleased with the Idris 45 mins than we are. We want to see him beat someone and ping one in the top corner or slide Nicke in but I really don't think that's what it was about today. A big part of his role was occupying GSM who is such a threat for them. Job done in 1st 45 as far as I'm concerned.

Nicke is hot at the moment and you could see how frustrated he was that he pulled a half chance across the goal when through wide right. They centre-backs couldn't live with him physically, (strength or speed). and it was men against boys when we got the approach play right. Loved the way he saw the GK coming and absolutely made sure that the GK had to go right through him. Smart and brave.

I think it might feel like we got a little lucky today because they had lots of the ball but I think you need that if you're going to go away and get a result and I think he might suggest that it was a good plan and good implementation of a good plan than luck. I much prefer DB switching things up like this than just playing the same XI again just because they were good in the previous game. It drives standards and doesn't allow players to rest on their laurels. If we win on Saturday this will have been an enormous Christmas conceding the circumstances.

[Jimbokav1971]

I would also ass that I don't think the female ref was bad at all.
She could have sent GSM off but chose not to. I think that was a mistake, but possibly her only one and easy to miss in the moment.
She could have also sent Idris off, however that was less clear-cut, (and he needs to manage himself MUCH better because he's only going to get more of this if he reacts like this in live TV games). Everyone will see him as an easy target now and it's even more reason to kick him. Once gain he got booked and his opposite man didn't. The penny needs to drop soon for him because it's impacting his career.
All in all I thought the ref was decent and nowhere near some of the appalling ref's we've had at this level.
The male lino's...... not so much.