Rovers, Oxford and the Ref

What's the point with keeping the ball if you don't actually do anything with it, goal threat wise?

With preseason he's played something like 10 games and just as the Barnet game when he looked like scoring/scored.

If our front 3 remains Easter, Taylor & Harrison it's going to be another low scoring season.

i think last season mansell and brown were dangerous with free kicks in shooting positions and scored some goals ,i would like to see them on the ball instead of lines from now on.

I worry that playing Lines and Gosling in the middle could leave us a bit opened up. Maybe Saturday would be a good game to try it though seeing as we are at home and the impetus will be on us to attack. I still think we need another wingback though ideally albeit Sinclair will be alright short term for Saturday.

Easter won't get more chances than is at the moment if he doesn't run in behind. And he doesn't appear to have the legs for it.

I want to be proven wrong but strikers need to put themselves in the right positions to get goals. Easter's default movement/pattern of play is to drop deep off the defender, hold the ball up (which he does quite well, in fairness) and distribute it back into midfield. It inevitably ends up in wide areas where we rarely get to the byline (which is part the problem with a 3-5-2 type system - the wing backs have to travel a long way to get there and there is not often an overlap to get them there).

Easter's movement after that does not show enough of a cutting edge. It was the same at Yeovil, the same at Luton, same at Orient and more of the same yesterday. Those matches could have trebled in length and I don't think we would have seen him score in any of those games.

Hopefully something will change or he will eventually make it to 100% fitness, whatever % he currently says he is.

We have scored only 5 goals in 6 games so far - and that includes three against a very poor Barnet side. I know it is early early days, but only two teams have scored less than us - Newport & Accrington. It is concerning.

I suppose the question is where's JE's pace gone, in the match when he was injured last season his pace was frightening, unless the CB's were particularly slow, this season he seems incapable of sprinting, is he trying to protect his knee, not 100% fit or has his injury just robbed him of his pace?

So basically what a few of us have been saying, we have to somehow get a cutting edge into our game.

"Well for all Bristol’s possession they did not create that many clear cut chances and when they did have chances their finishing wasn’t first class. There were a couple of second half headers that were placed right into Slocombe’s grateful midriff and also a couple of wild hacks that nearly cleared the stands."

The only real attempt on goal was surely Lines free kick, I can't recall thier goalie making any other decent saves? Likewise against Northampton from memory we onlyhad two decent chances, the Taylor miss created by a Northampton back pass and Harrison's attempt to lob the goalie.