Player Performance Analysis vs Newport County (H) EFL League Two
17/02/26
Need I say more?
Starting Lineup
GK Matt Young
RB Haji Mnoga
RCB Ollie Turton
LCB Brandon Cooper
LB Luke Garbutt
DM Ossama Ashley
DM Matt Butcher
RW Dan Udoh
AM Kelly Nmai
LW Kadeem Harris
FWD Ryan Graydon
Thoughts on the Game
Eh? Why? How?
Or even a “what the fuck was that?” for good measure.
Well, my simple answer is that I have no idea why or how we conceded more goals against the bottom club in League Two than we did against Manchester City last weekend.
Total head wobbler as far as I’m concerned.
And as I don’t enjoy writing anything that resembles a match report, I’ll steer clear of creating a blow-by-blow account of the goals and scoring chances from this match. Instead, I want to focus on how the flow of the game felt from my vantage point in the north stand.
As with any team stuck at the bottom of the table, confidence is likely to be paper-thin. And if they’re rocked by conceding an early goal, there may well come a collapse like a deck of cards.
But that’s not the way this cookie crumbled.
My impression of Newport in the early stages was that they were there for the taking. Their approach seemed to be very similar to the one we used against Man City on Saturday.
They played a VERY conservative style of football.
When they had possession of the ball, they looked to release it forward as quickly as possible, ensuring they didn’t give up easy scoring chances close to their own goalmouth.
Or maybe their players were afraid of making a mistake and wanted to pass the responsibility onto a teammate. Either way, there wasn’t a great deal of fluency to their play until they scored their opening goal in the 13th minute.
Understandably, after this, County’s tails were up.
I will add that I thought Newport also tried to clog up the middle of the pitch last night, just as we did at the Etihad on Saturday. This forced Salford to play down the wings, which gave County’s defence the advantage against Udoh and Graydon. With only 7 of our 27 crossing attempts in this game being successful, the facts are there for all to see.
Going back to the scoreline, even at 2–0, I thought all the game needed (from a Salford fan’s perspective) was for the away side to concede a solitary goal. If that happened, I could well imagine that, having only scored one goal, and picking up one point in their last five games, Newport’s fragility would eventually rise to the surface.
But for whatever reason, we just didn’t pose enough attacking threat to ever look likely to bring that to the fore.
Why The Long Ball?
One of the reasons I think we struggled to put enough pressure on this opposition was our direct style of play. I’ve been saying for a while that we seem to stick with a long-ball approach at home, and reserve our more fluent performances for when we’re on the road.
A major factor behind this seems to be the current state of our pitch. Looking at it last night, the way it’s cut up in areas, and very sandy in others, I can completely understand why Karl Robinson chooses to keep the ball in the air so much when we play at the Peninsula Stadium.
I can’t argue that a pitch such as ours is going to seriously impact any team’s ability to execute a possession-based style of play. But does that mean the only alternative is to keep launching it long to a forward line that aren’t suited to this hoofball service?
By cutting off any avenue other than this one approach, it makes us very predictable, as it becomes easier for any opposition team to counter our tactics as they’re such a known quantity.
So, we end up being caught between a rock and a hard place.
Do we continue to stay with the risk-free direct strategy where the ball hardly touches the floor?
Or do we accept that the pitch will hamper us if we try to play more “football” but still decide to switch things up for a while?
The question I ask myself is, if we changed to playing out from the back more often, would the results and performances be any worse than what we’re already seeing?
Answers on a postcard please for that one!
Team Selection
The first thing I noticed when I saw our lineup announced on Twitter was that there were six changes made from Saturday’s game. From what I could see they were as follows:
- Turton for Dorrington
- Harris for Awe
- Butcher for Grant
- Ashley for Woodburn
- Udoh for Austerfield
- Mnoga for Longelo
As you can see from that list, not all of those changes are like-for-like. Harris replacing Awe suggests there’s going to be some kind of tactical rejig. And Udoh returning to the starting lineup instead of Woodburn also shifts the balance of the team quite a lot.
My take on the way we set up was that our shape against Newport was a 4–2–3–1.
As per this screenshot, I saw this formation on display most of the time we had possession of the ball in our own half.
Kadeem Harris’ role had virtually zero defensive responsibility to it, which meant Garbutt operated as a traditional left back more often than we normally see.
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In midfield, I was struck by the fact that we only selected two central midfielders in the starting lineup, which I sensed would lead to Nmai playing the “Cesay” role shown above.
And as Graydon seemed to be used as a lone striker, Udoh shifted out to the right wing to form a trio in behind the forward line.
The slightly puzzling thing for me was why our two central midfielders sat so deep, as this seemed an overly negative option considering we were playing at home against a team desperately struggling for form.
Maybe this decision was influenced by Josh Austerfield being unavailable for last night’s game, and Ben Woodburn possibly needing to be rested after the exertions of the Man City game.
So, if this lineup was forced on Karl for reasons such as these, I have a level of sympathy for him not having much choice in the matter.
But as I’ve written above, the decision to keep plugging away with a long-ball tactic that’s clearly not working is something I just can’t overlook.
Big to Small
Things are clearly going to change when Zach Awe and Alfie Dorrington are replaced in the back three by Ollie Turton and Luke Garbutt. The main difference is that the average height of our defenders drops considerably compared to the lineup we fielded last weekend.
So why did we not roll out Awe and Dorrington against Newport, as although City beat us 2–0, it felt like we’d happened on a winning formula of sorts?
The first possible reason for the change may be how short the turnaround was between the FA Cup game we played last Saturday afternoon. With Zach and Alfie likely being short of match fitness, it could have been a stretch to ask them to start two games in four days.
So, as with the ingredients in our midfield, maybe our defence last night picked itself for availability reasons, rather than being Karl’s ideal choice of who he wanted to use in the game.
Getting Left Behind
I’m sure opinions will vary on this, but I see our squad as being split between a small bunch of quality players, a group of decent replacements and then a handful of stragglers.
Of late, Ollie Turton is slipping dangerously close to the straggler group, which already contains Butcher, Edwards, Woodburn, Siri, Bird and Longelo. Turton’s performance last night only confirms that in my eyes.
It might be getting old hat as I repeat it so often, but when we rely on certain squad players such as Butcher and Woodburn we either don’t play well, we lose, or do both at the same time.
The screenshots below help paint the picture in more detail.
As you can see with both of these players, the trend shows that in recent weeks, if Butcher or Woodburn start the game, we’re likely to lose.
And although the stats don’t quite demonstrate the same cause and effect with Turton’s appearances, I have to admit that seeing his name amongst the starting eleven is now becoming a cause for concern.
I know I keep talking about that idealised future when all our defenders are fit, and we’ll have more top players in our backline than we can shake a stick at. But at the moment, with Rose and Oluwo both injured, Turton is probably the closest thing we have to a first-choice right centre back.
And that realisation worries me a lot.
Although in many areas of our team last night we looked strong, when you scratch beneath the surface, all that glittered wasn’t gold
So, with Udoh returning to the lineup, you’d hope that, based on his price tag alone, he’d be a positive addition to the group. And unless I’m missing something, that simply wasn’t the case against Newport.
With Ossama Ashley, who’s normally a standout defensive midfielder, this was his first start since he picked up a serious injury last October. A bit of a worry, but hey ho.
I also felt the inclusion of Kadeem Harris was a bit of a risk, as it was the first time he’d been available for selection in close to eight weeks.
Whether it was sensible to include two out-of-form players (Udoh and Butcher), as well as two others working their way back to match fitness (Ashley and Harris) into the same lineup is open to question. The performance and the result on the night suggests we got it badly wrong.
But going back to the theme I raised earlier, maybe the short recovery window between this and our last game, forced Karl Robinson’s hand on this occasion.
And also, maybe the display we gave against City was just a one-off. Maybe the secret to our defensive solidity is not as straightforward as just picking all our tallest defenders and hoping for the best.
But when we go from fielding three specialist centre backs against Man City, to having just one starting the following game, something just doesn’t add up to me.
Surely, you don’t randomly sign a 6'4 defender (Awe) and loan another centre half of the same height (Dorrington) unless you have a plan that’s going to use their size to make the team better. Or maybe there is no connection between these two signings, and we’re happy to persist with Garbutt and Turton as converted full-backs who are regularly played out of position.
I really don’t know what the answer is here, but I’m going to end this segment here as my head is starting to hurt with all these “what if’s” flying around.
Now I’ll move on to a bit of player analysis, starting with:
Ryan Graydon/Dan Udoh
Despite how poorly our whole team played against Newport, I thought Graydon stood out positively as he was always busy and looking for ways to impact the game.
In contrast, Dan Udoh, despite not featuring from the start on Saturday, looked lethargic and ineffective. And in my view, this was the first time it looked as if his work rate dropped below the level I’ve been accustomed to since he joined the club.
I found Dan’s role in the team last night quite bizarre, as his only function seemed to be to tussle with the opposition’s defenders rather than look to do anything productive with the ball.
A pal of mine mentioned that our game plan now seems to be too“Graydon-centric” as almost everything we punt forward seems to be headed somewhere in Ryan’s direction. And as far as I can tell, that’s been the case ever since his first appearance for Salford.
As soon as we get the ball anywhere close to the halfway line, we hit channels balls into wide areas for Graydon to chase down. To be fair, this looked to be a very similar ploy that Fleetwood used to get the best out of him in previous seasons, but I digress.
Playing second fiddle, Udoh is left with only scraps to feed off. And as we can see over the last few games, that’s not really showing him at his best.
I think there’s a little bit of the chicken and the egg here as far as Udoh’s importance to the team goes. Thinking back to when Dan first joined, it seemed obvious that he’d be our main attacking focus for the remainder of the season.
But when you look at his scoreless streak of eight games without a goal from November to late December, it seems the club felt they couldn’t afford to risk only having Udoh as the team’s main provider of goals.
Enter Ryan Graydon, who looked to cure all our problems for a while at least.
But then, when you hear solid information in late January that Salford made two separate bids to buy Aaron Drinan from Swindon, Udoh’s place in the starting lineup looks to be on shaky ground.
And the more I’m seeing from Dan in the last month or two, the more I feel he’s probably lacking the quality we need to push on into becoming real promotion contenders.
Haji Mnoga and Kelly Nmai
Now I’ve not got much new to add about either of these players, but there is a common thread that unites them in my mind.
Both are attempting to create opportunities through ball carrying more regularly than seems sensible.
Either this pair do not have enough teammates in space around them to pass to, or something else is going on. But the result is that Kelly and Haji are attempting to do much in isolation, which I feel is making them easier to defend than if they were to utilise the rest of the team.
My theory with Nmai is that he’s been playing “for the scouts” for a while now, and although he can still have a tremendous impact on games, I don’t think his individualism is helping our overall performances.
With Haji, I actually feel his penchant for dribbling could be at the request of his head coach rather than him following his own instinct. In last night’s game, I think it was very close to thirty minutes before he did anything other than drive forward with the ball down the right wing.
I can’t argue that Mnoga has the combination of skill and athleticism to make this plan work, but with it being used so often, it’s becoming less successful with each passing game.
In fact, a thought’s just occurred to me, as it might be that Karl wants Nmai and Mnoga to carry forward so often because we lack creative passers in central midfield. Jorge Grant is probably the only member of our current squad that’s shown he‘s capable of picking a pass, and putting a teammate through on goal.
Cesay, Woodburn, Ashley, Butcher and Austerfield wouldn’t be my first thought when it comes to creative players, so maybe there’s something in this theory, or maybe there isn’t.
I reckon that’s your lot for this piece, so as always, I hope you’ve enjoyed the article , and many thanks for taking the time to read it.
