Swindon Town v Gillingham Official Matchday Thread

[Colin Todd]

Hall is the classiest defender we've had for a long time. Remember he's young and still learning - which is one of the reasons that Ward staying was so important. I'll make a bold prediction and say that Hall will play for England one day.

;D;D???

[RedRag]

Yasr Kasim was my MOM - broke up play and helped us counter quickly. 

Nathan Thompson had a storming game but perhaps through exhaustion lacked composure in dangerous positions (until his glorious run for the goal) and let Kedwell, a good, journeyman striker, score a very soft header from the throw - Wes could perhaps have claimed that one?

JayMac was solid defensively and put in some decent crosses even if he was a little leaden and one footed.  A good swap to move Byrne to midfield so perhaps a little credit to Cooper for that.

[Bob's Orange]

Just back so my two-penneth.

I was quite pleased with the way we played on Saturday. We passed the ball well and looked quite bright. Many have said Luongo didn't play well, I thought he was excellent in the first half an hour and then faded in the second half for some reason. Kasim seems a useful purchase, always looking for the ball and keeping things simple, whilst hunting down the opposition players to win it back, he's going to be suspended a lot this season! Pritchard I was disappointed with, seemed to try and do too much. Not convinced by him. Mason came on and you could see he is a classy players with a great piece of play in front of us in the DRS. He is going to be a good player.

Byrne is probably better suited playing higher up the field and N.Thompson impresses me more and more, Paul who? Harley was busy and probably deserved man of the match for the excellent cross for the second goal alone. Akinfenwa caused Ward all sorts of problems but when he went off, Ward won everything in the air. Good to see Maceveley back and he did ok.

Ranger won a lot of headers on the air and retained posession well. He had one half chance in the box where his touch let him down and he was clearly knackered at the end but he is going to be very useful in this formation. Gillingham had done their homework and Wes wasn't able to pass the ball out short from goal kicks and so Ranger was realistically our only out ball

For me, the way we play football now is very pleasing on the eye, whether it can bring sucess here is debatable. In fact, I thought we played too much, surely into injury time it would be worth putting a few balls into the box, however we continued to pass it around whilst the Gills defence we happy to let us have it without us doing anything at all. Also, I think our tempo is too slow, we don't have any pace in the side and when we did have a chance of a counter attack to make it 3-1, Luongo held onto the ball too long and the pass to Mason was probably not perfect and he ended up blazing over the bar.

And so a work in progress that for me requires some work still. I think we might struggle away from home and so we need to get good results at the CG. Crewe at home on Saturday could be a brilliant game the way both sides play.