Southend, then - what on earth happened there, exactly?

... a ramble on tactics (again) a sort of general attempt to make some kind of sense of that nonsense, and a wilfully counter-intuitive focus on the bit that wasn't so bad...

That was a hammering. Bearing in mind that Southend had a goal disallowed for offside and two or three other really good opportunities that they failed to take, it's almost possible to argue that we got away lightly by losing 3-0 at home. It's almost possible, but probably not wise to try, because that way lies despair.

Perversely, the first half was more worrying than the second

The second half was vastly less fun than the first, but what happened in the second half was a combination of circumstances. That doesn't excuse the second half, which I'll come to in a second, but I can sort of see how the second half didn't have to be as unremittingly disastrously awful as it was.

So why was the first half more worrying? Because it was a repetition of the same first half we've seen an awful lot this season. Think back to Oxford and Rochdale. The pattern and flow of the first halves of both those games was very similar to yesterday. We cede the initiative in the game to the opposition early on, we end up playing aimless long balls and we end up with a stalemate and work to do at half time. We make more tactical half-time substitutions than is healthy for a team with pretensions to promotion.

The worrying bit is that the management specifically said they didn't want us to start slowly and play it long. But nothing's changed or looking like it's improving. The argument that a newly assembled side needs time to come together is a fair one, but at some point the argument needs to be backed up by signs of progress, or it becomes just an excuse for something more troubling.

And the other worrying bit is that the sort of first half display put in yesterday makes each game a 45 minute match. Every opposition is encouraged, because they go in at half time with something to play for second half. The pressure builds that bit more on us, because it's our job to win at home and we've now added time pressure to that general weight of expectation.

Why is this pattern emerging?

The ceding the initiative thing is odd and I can only suggest that the preparation and pre-match routine isn't being done right. Maybe it's the absence of the manager's pre-match gee-up. But then the same slow start happened at both Chesterfield and Port Vale and he was there for those.

The long ball thing is easier to explain. Sides have worked us out.

Southend did exactly what Oxford did. They dedicated one central defender to mark Odejayi and a defensive midfielder to drop in front of him; effectively sandwiching him to stop him getting the ball at his feet and limiting him to headed flicks. They were happy to let him head it, because there was no one near enough to get the balls that he diverted. By denying him the ability to hold the ball up, no-one could get close to support him.

Pringle was made ineffective, because if he tried to get close to Odejayi early he was marked by the other central defender and if he dropped deep he had no chance of getting anything deflecting off our centre-forward and instead just occupied space that O'Connor (and two other Southend central midfielders) wanted to be in. And because Southend had pace up front and because, with Odejayi isolated, they could get control of the ball swiftly in defence, they could elongate the game.

So, we'd have a defender, chasing back, who needs to make sure he gets to the ball before his man. That means a nudge back to Shearer and a punt forward or a hasty look up and quick pass. Seldom was there a midfielder or winger available, because they'd moved up in support of the last ball whirled in the general direction of Odejayi, meaning the only other option was another long ball forward.

Three games in a row the opposition have done this. Three games in a row we've dropped into this pattern. Three games in a row we've retained the same formation, with the same results.

Second half - an object lesson in getting it wrong

We got away with it against Oxford, because we got a penalty before half time that deflated them a bit and gave us a lift. We didn't get away with it against Southend because they'd probably had the better of the half, been denied a goal (which might have been closer to onside than it looked) and we didn't get a penalty early in the second half when we should have done.

But having not got away with it, we then destroyed our hopes with two mistaken changes. The 4-4-2 that started the second half wasn't ideal, in that it required Pringle to operate as a winger, which he isn't that effective at doing, but it changed the dynamic of the attack. With two players to mark, there wasn't the same freedom on Southend to devote two players to dealing with Odejayi, so we saw him deeper, interplaying with the midfield. Indeed, that was how we built the move that led, ultimately, to what looked rather like a rugby tackle on Odejayi at the far post.

Taking Odejayi off killed that dynamic just as it might have been about to bear some fruit. Nardiello and Denton both want to play on the brink of being offside, facing the opposition goal. Neither want to hold the ball up and bring others into it and neither are equipped for it physically. In order for them to work as a front pair, the ball has to be retained and worked from one end of the pitch to the other.

But Southend, having scored, had dropped a little deeper, so there was no space in a midfield in which we were now outnumbered to work anything. This resulted in the faintly ridiculous spectacle of the back four exchanging half a dozen square passes before launching the ball up to the forwards who could do nothing with it. And as, in desperation, our back line moved higher up the field, so more space opened up behind us and so, with pace we were exploited.

The second substitution was less disastrous, but largely pointless. It meant we were playing 4-4-2 with four central midfielders. Taylor, whose principal talent is blocking things and breaking things up, was shifted to the right wing to accommodate Noble, who's natural game is to sit deep and instigate play with deliberation. It looked disjointed and shambolic, because it was - there was no pattern for that set of players to play to.

Mistakes happen - forget it and move on

There is pressure on the Aldershot game now. Their form suggests that a win ought to be achievable. It now starts to feel like a necessity.

The second half was sufficiently bad yesterday to be written off as an aberration, a combination of mistakes and errors and bad play. And that's the right attitude. But there are two caveats. The first is that the second half doesn't excuse the repetition of the mistakes in the first. The second is that the second half was a worse display than any team that harbours hopes of promotion should ever give. Troubling.

Ten games in; a bit of a stream of consciousness analysis

... a ramble on squad balance and tactics and why it all feels a bit unsatisfactory somehow...

This is not an ordered or worked piece, so don't take it as such, but a dashed off this-is-how-it-looks-to-me-what-do-you-think piece. I'd be interested in everyone else's thoughts - particularly, anyone who's played us and other "pre-season favourites" - how do we stack up?

My concern pre-season was that the squad looked a bit like it had been thrown together almost randomly. It looked a little like we'd basically signed any free agent who was prepared to take our contract offer there and then, rather than being something assembled to fit and play to a preconceived tactical pattern.

(Personally, I suspect quite a bit of the "we can play a number of different ways" talk is to mask the fact we've got a group of players, many of whom are very talented, but who don't obviously fit together into a team. I still can't understand, for example, how we thought we were going to fit Pringle, Noble, O'Connor and Arnason into a single midfield unit, or that it makes sense for one or two of them to be "cover" in a squad that already boasted Taylor and Bradley before we discovered Rose was good.  I have a suspicion that "we need time to gel" might translate a little as "we need to keep meddling with the team until we find one that's greater than the sum of its parts".)

On formations and how teams get out of this division

Anyway, however we got here, we've got to a stage where we're playing one of two formations. The first is a sort of 4-4-1-1 formation, with Odejayi as a lone forward, Pringle in a "free" role and two wide midfielders cutting in and some very talented players sitting on the bench while picking first team regular wages. The second is a more orthodox 4-4-2, in which we force players into roles they're not ideally suited to (see, particularly, Pringle as winger) and exposes the lack of a genuine second striker in the squad.

Theory: there are two ways out of this league. You can do what Swindon did, which is to build a side capable of outplaying everyone else, using expensive signings and a set of formations that aren't generally adopted in the lower leagues, with inverted wingers and false nines and all sorts of other fripperies. Positives of that: you're much better able to cope in the league above, where things are a little more sophisticated and there are some significant wage budgets in play. Negatives: you can only do it successfully if you are genuinely loads better than the rest.

The other way is to have a very simple system and operate it effectively more often than not. Quite a lot of these systems involve getting the ball as quickly as possible into crossing range and driving it across the opposition penalty area. As a rule of thumb, the number of passes used to get the ball into crossing range is inversely proportional to the wage bill of the team in question. Frequently, this sort of approach relies at least as much on physique, organisation and vigour than it does on raw ability. Crawley last year were prime exponents of it. I'd argue that Port Vale might be an example this year. The greatest ever exponent of it was us under Moore the first time. Positives of this approach: it's easier to pull off, especially with a limited budget. Negatives: there's a risk of it getting found out at a higher level, unless (like us under Moore) you manage the magic trick of marrying structure and skill together.

The risk of being neither one thing nor another

Now, to me, our problem is that we're somewhere between these two methods. I couldn't tell you what our "default" approach is. Sometimes we launch it to Odejayi and ferret; sometimes we pass it. I'd like to say that shows we're adaptable, but actually it seems to me that what we do depends on how the opposition start the game. So, when Oxford stuck an auxiliary central defender at the base of their midfield, to basically bottle up Odejayi and eat into Pringle's space, we ended up launching things for Odejayi to chase. (But for a rash challenge by Raynes that gave us a penalty, I think we'd have had all on to get something out of that game: Oxford had our number first half, but the lift we got from the equaliser and the slump it delivered to them changed the balance of the game).

What I would say is that the unwillingness of the players to do a generic slung cross into the box suggests that it's policy to work the ball, that we're aiming for the Swindon thing. Which is fine, but I'm not sure we're quite good enough, overall, to outplay the rest of the league.

Evidence for this? First, look at the proportion of goals we've scored from outside the area. It's really high. This shows two things: that we're opening up space nicely in and around the opposition box; and that we're not making chances inside the penalty area. The first is encouraging, the second worrying. The "Swindon formula" often runs aground on the rocks marked on maps as "playing perpetually in front of the opposition back four" - and we do that a lot, particularly away from home, where we have possession and pressure but not always opportunities.

Second, look how both Rochdale and then Oxford were able to knock us out of our passing stride. Oxford's set up is described above. Rochdale switched a pacy winger to counter Ainsworth, pulling our whole attempted set up out of sync.

On overall squad balance

Theory: midfields win you games, forward lines win you championships. (The idea being that a poacher can nick you a goal in a tight game that you don't deserve otherwise to win). Our midfield squad must be the envy of the rest of the league. Our striker line up? Less so.

We don't have a genuine striker in the entire squad, barring Denton, who's too callow to be relied on. The nearest, Nardiello, has scored a goal every four games over his career and only once hit double figures. A glance at league two's top scorers suggests that an adequate forward ought to have been within our grasp. Having made all the fuss about getting Grabban to decide on his future early (in order to help us build a squad), it seems really odd that we've failed to get anyone in to do what is a crucial job. And I know Tubbs was supposed to be that man, but I genuinely can't believe that he's so amazingly outstanding that he's worth forgoing every other option for.

Defensively, we've two specialist central defenders, covered by our best midfielder and potentially a couple of other midfielders who can fill in. Realistically, they're not going to be dropped outside injury or suspension. Is there a risk of them getting complacent? Is three specialist central defenders really an unaffordable luxury at this level (when 5 first team central midfielders for two places isn't)?

A sort of conclusion

So, there's good news and bad news.

The good is that we're talented. We've got goals from midfield for the first time in a while. Odejayi is the marauding pain that defenders hate to play against that we've not had for years.

The bad is that we're basically a midfield squad with supporting cast. The defence isn't so robust that it'll win us the league by sheer meanness, the forwards not so sharp that we can play badly and win.

Essentially, we've got to play very well, very often. That's tough in a division that bears the very hallmark of inconsistency. We don't have the default pattern of play that allows us to slog out a win without playing that well. When people talk about winning things the hard way, they don't mean this situation usually, but for us that is where we're at - if we're to get promotion, we're going to have to do it by being that much better than that many other teams for that much of the season. Big task.

Part of me wonders whether it might have been cheaper and easier to have bought a set of giants and just clobbered our way out...