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[tinnyalty]

Come on Brian give us your honest opinion of what's going on with GH at the moment and what you think is the way forward 

We need some wise words 

[Brian Flynn]

I am not as disheartened as the majority of supporters on this forum.The way last night panned out was difficult for all of us to deal with & whilst there are obviously a lot of negatives about us at present that are glaring for all to see, I felt that there were some positives last night.

We started as well as we have started any game this season & really got into Cambridge right from the off.Whatever your view on the team selection & tactics,I do not think that either of them provide the real insight into why we lost the game.We failed to take our early chances & then made some basic defensive errors & at 2-0 there was Everest to climb.The free kick on the half hour mark was symptomatic of our season.Having sprung the offside trap Ryan Shotton & Carlos Logan couldn't seem to communicate at all & the ball rolled  harmlessly to Danny Potter....game over from that point I think.Ironically a similar incident between Joe O'Neill & Warren Peyton cost us very dearly against Oxford when we actually looked capable of winning the game.

Individually I thought that Gareth Whalley had quite a good game & it was good to have Val back ratting around in midfield.Ryan Shotton looks like a decent player & Darren Tinson has been outstanding following a shaky start.Whilst I don't always agree with Graham's tactics & team selection, I don't think that these are the core issues which in my view are:-

1) We create chances but don't take a high enough percentage of them.This happens to a lot of teams but very worryingly we just do not seem to work the keepers & our shots off target/shots on target ratio is our real achilles heel.In ten games I cannot think of a keeper that really has had to earn his corn even when we have created a number of good openings.In fact we probably haven't reached double figures in terms of making keepers make decent saves.

2)With confidence low we are prone to individual mistakes at the back & our opposition are too good not to take advantage.Darren Tinson,Steve Aspinall,Stephen Rose,Richard Acton,Stuart Coburn,Jake Sedgmore & Chris Lane have all made costly errors which have been punished.If we continue to carry on like this we will go down.

I think that Graham has made some errors of judgement in terms of his behaviour e.g. the Exeter incident, standing in the centre circle at half time at Woking on Saturday & cupping his ears to the fans last night, but I still think that he is the best person to manage us this season & I am not a fan of building games up as "must win" matches for any manager....what would the future of Manchester United have been if they hadn't won 1-0 at Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup in January 1990.Ferguson would have gone,there would have been no "Sir Alex" & who knows how many cups would not have ended up in the Old Trafford Trophy cabinet.My estimation is that with Graham in charge we have about a 40% chance of surviving, without him it would be lower (probably 20-30%).This is all hypothetical of course but I am struggling to think of who is going to come in & wave a magic wand around Moss Lane because changing the manager doesn't change the fundamental infrastructure of the Football Club & whilst I am sure that many people would be happy to take on the challenge, I am sure that it wouldn't be too long before the harsh realities of competing at this level with our resources produce a similar situation to what we now face.......it could be even worse of course!!

There is one opportunity that I think we do have that I think could have a positive effect.I would transfer all of the Season's Overnight Travel Budget into strengthening the squad & specifically to get a striker in.If we couldn't get one from non-league then I would try to get a season long loan from a Football League club.The rationale for this is that there is no evidence that staying overnight has any real positive effects on the team's performance & indeed some of our more creditable away results & performances have come on the back of long journeys straight to the opponents ground e.g. Grays & Dagenham & Redbridge the season before last & Forest Green Rovers & Cambridge United last season.

I would estimate that this would release around £10,000 into the playing budget.