gecko

If only it had worked like that last season. I expected us to lose every game under NJ...

I'm absolutely confident that there is no way this RM team would have only let in 8 goals.

It was blatantly obvious from Friday night that Charles is not a CB (not a good one at any rate). If I ever see him starting there again with a fit CB sat on the bench, then Martin's completely lost my support. I reckon the majority of fans could get on board with all the keep-ball and slow build up, even if it led to regular mistakes.... as long as, it actually led to some end product for us. I'm more than happy to ship a few stupid goals if it meant we were much more capable of scoring more than the opposition. That simply isn't the case the last few games.

If you watch the way that Brighton et al manage this, it's not necessarily about the player with the ball being able to "evade" an oncoming press. But more about another team member always being available to receive the out-ball, which more often than not is a reasonably short pass. In the clip of Brighton someone shared earlier, it's pretty rare that any player actually has to skip past an opponent whilst carrying the ball. We did this really poorly against Leicester; the whole back line and the midfield were equally guilty imo. I think it's a little unfair to suggest our back line are so devoid of technical quality. We've just bought THB, someone whose just been groomed in the Pep school of passing so obviously shouldn't be complete toilet at what we're asking him to do. Similarly, Janny B/Jack Stephens who, despite everyone's historical slagging off, aren't the worst players on the ball ever. Yes, they're not the best, but are more than capable of making the short passes required as was evidenced by the passing stats that came out earlier on in the season. KWP is more than capable of receiving a ball and skipping past his man when required. Manning is the biggest question mark for me as I've not seen enough of him yet. My biggest concerns from the weekend are the first two chances in the youtube highlights. 1. For the first goal, Baz passes it to Charles, who already has no-one to distribute it to. Charles is too wide to be able to go back across the box to THB, KWP is in-field for no reason, and Smallbone is marked out of the game already slightly further up the wing. For me, the setup there is totally wrong from the start; we were already screwed after the first pass 2. For the next big chance/cock-up at the back. Charles is way off in the RB position (why?!), and eventually running back to provide an out-ball; was he out of position? if so, why did we start playing already?! Eventually though, it's the wrong pass that's chosen. Baz was free to receive, and a safer ball to Charles was still available. The distance to KWP in the centre, with two Leicester players was just stupid and caused by putting ourselves in that situation unnecessarily. 3. Loads have already mentioned it, but the over-commitment at our corners is just mad. For a team that's not exactly blessed with pace, this is going to bite us in the ass a lot if we carry on. In any event, it's up to RM to figure out what's not working and he needs to do it quickly. Another 4/5 goal drubbing and he'll have completely lost the fanbase I reckon.

I'd wager even we'd be able to break a press that glacial. Ten Haag must've been absolutely fuming at the apathy shown in that clip. The theory of drawing the press is fine by me, it should leave bigger spaces in the rest of the field to exploit. However, something really hasn't clicked yet, as I've not seen us actually exploit space like that in any of the games so far. And the whole inverted-fullback stuff seems to be doing nothing but leaving gaping holes in the defence that every other team seems more than capable of exploiting at pace. RM really does need to earn his dollar-bucks right now

There's always been a pretty good one here - albeit for the Prem: https://understat.com/league/EPL/2022 Sort it by xPTS and we would have been expected to survive. Statistically, last year we let in 10 more goals than we'd have been expected to (against the chances created, on average) - either everyone got consistently lucky (possible) or our defence + keeper are trash (probable) I personally think that everyone's overreacting for now, mostly because 5-0 sounds so bad. In reality, two of their strikes came from outside the box (one heavily deflected). Don't get me wrong the performance was still shocking, and Martin has some defending to work on for sure, as at the moment we're not really doing any. This is still a new team with massive wholesale changes and completely new playing style to boot. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt for a while longer

Quite impressed with how flame-retardant footy shirts are these days

NY Mets are Baseball... Anyway, whether he's been given a proper chance or not, he's clearly not in the managers plans. So get him out the door asap, in the most profitable way for the club possible.

What an excellent announcement to start the day. Just need to get that striker in first, then we can just shut all our windows, right?

I don't recall anyone being particularly excited by Paintsil. Probably still reeling from the last mistake we'd bought from them... tbf though, Championship could be Onuachu's level in the English pyramid. We've not seen him yet so hard to say. I suppose we can infer from RM's decision to not play him, that he's probably still not be good enough. On the striker front, I reckon we'll see a better contribution from the attacking midfield this season anyway. Both Armstrong's, Alcaraz and Tella (and to a lesser extent Edozie) haven't exactly been shot-shy from outside the box or just inside. And we currently seem very capable of working ourselves up to that part of the pitch in the current system. Often requires a bit of good fortune for them to go in, but it feels to me like there'll be a few games this season where we'll get two/three from outside the box and others where we'll get none.

I still reckon there's a chance the Mara could come good in the future The rest of that lot can do one though, along with Lyanco of coure. 10/10 Insane window if that all happened though

I'm just glad we finally have a manager that is enacting some holistic, bluesky thinking it's actually something i quite liked about Stephens - he was one of the only CBs we have that would actually dare carry the ball up to/past the half way line dragging opposing strikers with him at times. Agreed that beating the man opens up a lot more attacking opportunities. It's usually fine as a fullback or AM given their position on the pitch, but as a CB I still think Wood's highlights suggest that he'll be prone to being caught out of position. If the rest of the "system" can compensate for that, then I'm all for it. Otherwise I suspect we'd see a lot of silly/unnecessary concessions

My thoughts on this "highlights" video though... he seems to love taking players on, running out from the back, and there were more than a few occasions where he seemed to collect the ball miles out of the position I'd expect a CB to be. All of which are pretty risky, which probably explains why the Swans shipped an enormous amount of goals last season. I suppose time will tell if he's the right one for us. Obvious perks of being known by the manager, and quick onboarding to the playing style. I can't say I know anything about him though.

oh i don't disagree; i remember him doing very little for us in his short time here so far. But somewhere along the line, prima-donna footballers got it into their heads that the contracts they've signed aren't worth the paper they're written on. Assuming he actually has downed tools, the alternative is that we keep hold of him and he may become a Gnonto @ Leeds. Is it worth sticking a 25m player in the reserves to rot on principle.... probably not imo, even if we had the financial luxury

Agreed. if those pointless arguments can find their way onto another thread somewhere, I'm sure it'll be most appreciated Anyway, on Sulemana, if he's downed tools and the 25m is legitimate. I'd say let him go. We near enough break even, and can bring in someone who actually wants to be here. Shame, as many people probably agree, he could have been awesome... maybe sneak a sell-on clause in to satisfy some on here ;-)

Sky's Transfer centre saying it's 32 upfront, but add-ons meeting the 40m valuation. I guess we'll never know the actual net value we get, especially given the Chelsea profit contract part Still, as others have said, seems pretty good business for a player who we're not certain will return to his pre-injury form especially as it's one of the few areas we're ok in, now that Manning has come in.

Pretty difficult to say that with confidence. We've not actually played any pre-season games against this year's level. Benfica were domestic champs and Champions League QF AZ Alkmaar were Europa League SF Bournemouth are PL Reading are in an absolute mess; they may have technically been Championship last year but their team this year with all the embargoes will struggle in L1 And if they're all doing preseason correctly, like we are, then the teams rotate a lot. I can't have been the only one who thought "WTF" to the starting lineup vs Bournemouth; no way does that lineup start in a competitive match. We're also a club that's had a month to adapt to a complete overhaul of system. On the whole I think we already look better than the dross we saw last year.

I think Stephens has always felt like he's got a serious mistake in him whenever he plays. I don't really like this as an argument against him... all of our CBs had the same issue. He also felt like he had a regular purple-patch in him too; he seemed to be well liked on his stint at bournemouth. What I liked about Stephens is he is the only one of our CBs that I've ever seen carry the ball to/past the half way line, and looking pretty comfortable on the ball, allowing a different distribution further forward.

I do love coming to this thread. seeing there's been 20+ updates since the last time, and thinking "excellent something interesting must've happened" ... then scrolling through 20 posts about circles.

Start as you mean to go on ;-)

Surely only one; in the superposition ;-)

I'd bite anyone's hand off for a dodgy 1-0 win from a VAR cock-up and a 0-0 from tonight and Spurs

An very unexpected and welcome point. It will all be for nothing if we can't back it up against Brentford - that needs to be 3 points and another good performance to put everyone else under much more pressure. One win moves anyone in the bottom 9 a lot of places, so it's going to be a hell of an end to the season.

I can see either side of all of those incidents - all of them could have gone either way, in my opinion, for the reasons you've outlined and the counter argument from others. I think we can agree that we're pretty unlucky that they ALL went against us, and that both our CBs had complete brain-fart moments in one game I'd say Walcott was rightly called offside. Although it looked to me like the Grimsby line was very generous to them, possibly because he was obscured by Walcott - which if the VAR guy only gets one angle to draw lines from, then the system is completely pointless in cases like this.

Difficult to dispute this as the likely outcome. However they were garbage last night against Blackburn, and rightly got beat.