gecko

Enough games to prove his style of football wont work at this level with players of our level - perhaps things would be different if we had City's budget for players. But we obviously don't; so why the board and Russell insist on this suicidal manner of play is beyond me. His comments are even more frustrating. You can't spend all of training, teach people to keep possession all the time by slinging it around at the back, and then bemoan mistakes happening at the back. I'm not going to say outright that this squad would be doing any better with another manager - although it's hard to be doing much worse than bottom tbf - but the frailties of this playing style were obvious to everyone during the Champ season. It's even more so this season - he needs to adapt, and fast, or get out.

Wow, I was only going for a little bit of light hearted sarcasm... but if it helps, I too believe that BBD will get nowhere near the Golden Boot for a lot of reasons, some of which you've called out above.

So what you're saying is that BBD will start scoring next game, and therefore is definitely going to (almost) win the Golden Boot this year. Guess we'll be staying up after all.

If only there were some statistic he could use to aggregate how much of a problem it is... maybe goals conceded? 19 in 9 games PL only, or 25 in 12 if you include the EFL Cup. It's getting beyond ridiculous.

Anyone else keep coming here expecting (maybe even hoping) the title has changed? "Confirmed Gone" The jury's still not 100% in for me. however, It is so frustrating that all the frailties we all complained about last season have not been addressed - I don't know how many times I've read people on here saying something like "if that'd been a Prem team, it would have been punished" - low and behold, fast forward over the summer and we're being punished big time for all the needless passing at the back. A couple more games with no improvement will be enough for me to call for his head.

Couldn't agree more. It's Tuesday night, they have the best part of 5 days to recover. And we all know the 1st team need to sort the results out; this was a free hit to build some confidence Instead, we have Nathan Wood...

The Utd game this Saturday? or the away fixture in Jan? ;-)

Surely this is the perfect opportunity to make use Goztepe. It solves three problems in my mind: 1. It strengthen them massively. He's already proven he's more than capable in the Turkish league 2. It gets him off our wage bill 3. And obviously most importantly, it sticks both fingers up at Trabzonspor for being such smug twats, by not only not giving them the player for cheap, but by actively loaning to a club they'll play against this season.

Not to sound too pedantic, but surely an "understudy" would be someone that is: young, inexperienced etc. Tell me why a 19y/o Shea Charles, who has come from one of the best academies in the world and was already capped internationally, isn't a good fit for a Downes understudy on paper? My issue with him, was him being shoe-horned into CD at the start of the season, making numerous match-losing cock-ups. Once he was actually playing midfield I'd say he was far less concerning - ignoring our horrible results w/o Downes - for a youngster who is likely to get much better with a guy like Downes now in the team.

I'm sure it's already been noted by others, but one of the many things that really grinds my gears about Martin is his (apparent) inability to adapt his game plan for the team we're playing. Every team has a weak point, and ours seems to be exploited with regularity. But it never seems like we know anyone else's - we just continue to knock the ball around a bit, then recycle it. We were terrible last night, and I'd suggest that like many other games, we looked piss-poor because Leicester made us look that way. Their press, and the way they counter, is what did all the damage - it's been clear to everyone that we are a bunch of fluffers when put under some actual pressure near the back. The Liecester coaches, as well as many other teams much worse than them (bristol etc) have taken points from us as a result.

It was peak Saints to claw our way back from a massive deficit only a month ago, to within touching distance of the autos, only to piss it all down the toilet on the easiest game of our final four. My bet on how this plays out: 1. we'll beat Leicester, just to get everyone's last scrap of hope up again 2. morale boosting demolition of Stoke 3. we'll hammer Leeds in the first half, missing a host of chances, and then cock it all up at the death I'd love to be confident, but this team is so hot/cold this year.

That Mitchell and Webb look? Snooker sketches

Most people on this forum have/had the opinion that Che is crap anyway (and tbf some of his shooting is woeful). But i don't know why people suddenly think he's skilful enough to just play well instead of crap because the window is open. Agreed; total nonsense.

It's nice to see at least a few level heads on here after last night. Yeah it's frustrating not to pick up all three points, against a team we should have beat; doubly frustrating seeing us not make the most of a rare Leeds loss, but it is what it is. We made more than enough good chances to have won that game comfortably. Arma's shooting boots were obviously left on the bus - he had three big opportunities and blazed two over, and delayed too much on a clean through ball from Che. I know people hate the xG stat, but its at least more contextual than simple "Shots/Shots on Target" ones. What I find really frustrating is that we seem to be creating as many good opportunities per game as the two at the top, but they just aren't translating into the same results. There's some massive outliers in that table; like Leicester letting in just over half what would be expected, and we're underscoring significantly vs what we should be. It certainly explains why we are where we are, and so are Leicester. It also gives me confidence that although I also find the posession stuff a little dull, like many of you lot do, we are at least creating a reasonable amount of chances, even if the 5 minute build up to every single one of them makes it feel like we dont. We've known for ages that AA and Che are somewhat unreliable as finishers, so I suppose it's not much of a surprise that we don't score more. I also saw someone had linked a table earlier on showing our scorers. Pretty sure it was Charlie + Stu both having ~24ish shots for 1 goal each... there's our real problem; an extra few goals from them would do us the world of good and tip the 1-1's into 2-1's instead.

I'm hoping that the Manning thing is just because of rotation in a busy week. I really wanted him to do well here (still do), but he's a defender who seems not to think about defending. There were two absolute cock-ups from him that I remember: - First half, there was a cross rifled across the box (baz made an excellent save from a back-post header). But the guy who put it in had acres of space, you could see Manning crap his pants when he realised he wasn't actually marking anyone and it was supposed to be his man. - The pathetic pass that was given away near the end of the second half. Downes saves the day with a perfect tackle as part of an excellent performance all-round. Here's hoping Bree is back in on Saturday - he's earned it IMO.

I think I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that interview. It's exhausting watching us only have a 1 goal lead all the time. Very odd reaction, but he clearly knows, as well as we do, that our squad should be winning much more comfortably (in terms of goals) than we are. We should have had them dead and buried in the last 10 minutes as they were clearly knackered and giving away easy possession high up the pitch. Was the midfield that made the difference between the two halves for me. We seemed to always get overrun in the middle in the first half, but Flynn and Alcaraz were constantly breaking the lines in the second. Final ball just a little lacking. On the plus side, 10 games unbeaten, no longer letting in goals for fun, and long may it continue.

Wednesday just equalized against Liecester; could end up being a good night after all

I was just thinking the same thing. Not exactly playing for a transfer is he; heard his name once so far when he fouled one of theirs.

I'm looking forward to a repeat of the Leeds game... everyone a bit nervous beforehand over their apparent threat. Quickly calmed by an absolute domination in the first half. It's about time we had a nice comfortable win, where we actually score some of our half-chances like everyone else has done against us so far this season. Holgate gives me the jitters though - here's hoping that he and THB have been working/training together all week given we already knew Bedders would be out.

Sorry to resurrect a post on this clown, but spotted his Masterclass on that freak City result we had - can't say I'm going to waste 25minutes of my time on it, but if anyone else wants to hear how he got us playing with so much front-footedness, then here you go.

I think everyone enjoys winning more than they lose. So yeah, this season's been more enjoyable (so far) than the last few in the prem. Getting our arse handed to us every week sucked. It was great being there when we actually competed well (Poch, Koeman, Puel, the beginning of Hassenhuttl) and the club as a whole seemed to have generally good plan for the future; and before we sold all our best players, and replaced them with garbage. VAR I don't miss even slightly - it's been a breath of fresh air to simply complain about a referee's decision and that be the end of it. I absolutely don't miss arguing millimetres on an offside, or whether something is "clear and obvious", or whether 4 professionals watching on 8 different screens have still somehow ballsed up an offside decision after waiting for 5 minutes make it. I'll be glad if we go back up, as that would implicitly mean that RM has these lads playing well and we may have a chance to push on with some extra finances. (jury's out for now)

It is comparable though. The audio released suggests that this was also a mistake made in good faith. At no point is there any hint that it was biased towards one team over another - nothing about the outcome is any different to a human error on the pitch; except perhaps that 4 people all made the same ballsup. Even if they weren't comparable. What's the solution? Pander to Klopp and replay it, which sets an irreversible precedent? or, do we allow VAR some grace period in-game to bring a restarted game back to rectify a mistake? Or, like all other mistakes that happen in the game, can Klopp just suck it up and put his big boy pants on like everyone else has to?

This has to be a wind-up. I could possibly see an argument for it being a "coming together" - stoke lad runs across Bedders' path, both seemingly with an eye for the ball. But the arms around his waist seem to me like it's Bedders trying to make it look that way whilst also taking the man out. If that happened to one of our strikers we'd definitely be calling that a penalty. Anyway, these bad calls tend to even themselves out over the season, so I'm sure we'll pay for it in a later match.

Yup. This is my biggest gripe with VAR + Offside. The slightest body part being offside isn't offside in my eyes, and not what the rule was originally brought in to stop. I get why the VAR system has to be so black/white about it though, but I'm getting to the point where I now think it's more enjoyable to not have it, and suffer the mistakes instead of seeing a good goal chalked off for a toe being over a line. I think the majority of people would prefer to hear the reasoning behind the decision than not hear it. At least with the audio fans might actually know why a goal was disallowed, which will lessen the anger for some, or will at least provide reasons to their arguments. Rather than no-one knowing why a seemingly good goal was chalked off and just hurling abuse at the officials. People understand that hearing it wont undo a mistake/decision against their team, but it's much easier to accept it and move on if you know the reasons why it was disallowed.

I don't know what you're all moaning about; we're top of the table, baby! https://footystats.org/england/championship/xg Basically our strikers can't finish, and keeper couldn't catch a cold. We've just been really unlucky with the results. (and this post is coming from someone who doesn't think that xG is absolute hogwash)