Holmes_and_Watson

Alcaraz also working back really hard. We are working hard for this level of control. Good to see.

Glad that wasn;t pulled back when Alcaraz went down. Lovely work from Stu!

Could it be?! Yes it is! The second!

AA tracking back! Great stuff. We are pining around some really good passes. We've tested them through the middle and out wide with some passes from deep. All those possession passes giving us confidence and control.

Excellent move to get it to Alcaraz, who had compsure to pass to our goal machine!

Lovely, Lovely goal!

Passing move broke down. but some nice movement. I thought Stu was going to shoot. Really good pass from Manning too.

We seem to be camped out a bit further up than usual. Passing it around well into their half.

Amazing dummy from Alcaraz to get us a corner!

Foul given,. but had time to do better with that header there.

Some early more direct passing out ot the right, to bring in KWP. Not long ball, but with no smallbone, we don;t have quite the same set up for linking play again.

COYR!

Brown

I wonder about the expiry dates on the yoghurts in Martin's fridge. 🙂

£8million rising to £10million, if his legs stay attached. So, £8 million. 🙂 May have an impact on any Adams interest? We won't want to lose anyone else up front.

Sadly, our unbeaten run has to come to an end. But not in this fixture! 2-1 to us, and their goal is a really annoying one, when we don't get back quickly enough.

Certainly. The interview ran itself. The interviewer gives Jones some room, as it's a tight space to be digging your managerial grave in. But some questions could have been added, like... "How big a challenge is balancing front footedness with aggression, to get out of relegation places?" "While playing against 10 is clearly harder, today Brentford's 11 also caused problems. How do you stop complacency being an issue against teams with higher numbers of players?" "You've said that you don't see your players out there. Do you agree with Le Tissier, that they've been abducted by aliens and replaced by reptilian clones?" "When you say you've accommodated certain things, do you mean the squad are living in your house? Is that to make them more aggressive, if not front footed?"

Ungrateful

That was what the back end of the interview did descend into. A number of reminders to the manager of how great the interviewer thought he was. I mentioned that sort of thing in my earlier post, and it's also annoying. What's the point if the manager will get a free pass? An interviewer should be able to ask questions that are a range between open ended to get the manager's thoughts/feelings through to specific points of the game. Nothing wrong with some critical assessment either. But poorly worded questions that didn't reflect the game or our form are lazy. Martin did manage to get some of his thoughts across. But not helped by Blackmore switching between defensive, fawning and referring Martin to what he, as interviewer really meant, so they finished as pals.

You're right. It would have to be one or the other, as you only get a couple of minutes. It would be tough to cover all City's goals that made the first half "abysmal" and cover the way we completely failed to get back into it, let alone win, in the "ponderous" second. 🙂

I'd have gone with the daring option of something that happened in the match, rather than implying something that didn't. 🙂

"saves" "shots" so old school. Surely superceded by tracking the attacker's xEGWCT* against Baz's xROLAHTSA** *Expected Goals when clean through. ** Expected racing out like a hare to stop attacker. ...oh look, my taxi.. 🙂

Thanks

Meh. Blackmore said something along the lines of Saints changing things around to stop City's chances. Martin took "chances" to indicate we were under pressure and had to change to stop them. He was just stating that City had one shot on target, and two chances all game. it's not as though he felt we were under pressure. Blackmore followed it up by saying that City should have scored with one of them. Martin's tone didn't change, but that won't have helped. Martin could have taken that defensive follow up, and challenged that too. Blackmore then made statement that after Saturday, how important it was to get back to winning ways. Not a question. Martin reminded him that we got a point on Saturday and we're unbeaten in 10. Having blundered his question on City having chances, Blackmore praised Baz as having such a good game. Martin reminded him that it was from few City chances, as per the first question, while still praising Baz. Blackmore then fawned for much of the rest of it. From his comments, Martin sees the same things we do, and is frustrated that we're not further ahead and had to rely on KWP quality strike. All the work put into improving it, he felt was being undermined by a couple of clumsy questions that needed a second to come up with, and little knowledge. Blackmore's lazy approach to it, expecting a clichéd back and forth, and then desperately trying to make his original points more agreeable to his interviewee was annoying. I don't listen to enough press conferences to know if it's common, but I've heard lazy questioners become very brittle when challenged back. Mainly as there's so little thought going into the questions, they have no follow up. Martin had praise for the team, and the changes they were asked to make. Singled out players for praise too. Frustrated from Saturday, when he felt he couldn't influence things. Frustrated about our final third, and getting out of sight. I'd be more bothered if he wasn't frustrated.

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