Mboto Gorge

I think the phrase is “you can’t polish a turd”

I just find it ridiculous that he even gets picked over McCarthy, who even though Is well past his best now, has historically been a solid premier league level keeper before, has far more experience and confidence, is a better shot stopper and just provides more security in the back line. There’s no way Baz is getting picked over him based on performances and ability. It’s all this pathway shit that this club is obsessed with providing for him based on forking out way too much money on him 4 years ago. And it’s costing us big time

If we don’t sign at least a competent loan keeper until the end of the season, it will say a lot.

At this stage i am wondering just how bad George Long is, to not even be knocking on the door for a place on the bench. Not even a polite tap on the door. He must be epically bad if our national league level first choice keeper is seemingly undroppable for him.

Indeed. Best description of his physical presence in the sticks was on this very site - Like an anorexic Warwick Davis

I didn’t say that didn’t I? Let’s not change what I’ve actually said. Not once have I said we are complete shit, play shit football and have a shit manager, so let’s get that straight for a start. I said all the away performances under Eckert have been dreadful other than Charlton. If you disagree with that, that’s fine. If you’d like to tell me which other away game we played well in, I’m all ears too. I am more worried about the fact we are a non existent entity for pretty much the entire second half of every match under him, and am wondering why this is. Can’t deny that he’s made us far better than previously, be stupid to say otherwise , but the bar was very low there, still credit where it’s due he has improved us from where we were, particularly in an attacking sense and got the best out of almost all of our forward players.

Possibly, a bit harsh yes overall, but there are worrying trends in our performances . For example if we aren’t comfortably ahead by half time or 60 min, we don’t seem to have the fitness, desire, strength, whatever it is, to finish a game strongly. You can’t win enough games to get into the playoffs if you’re only capable of scoring for 2/3rds (at best) of a match and are fading ridiculously badly for the final 20-25 min. It needs sorting and if he wants to be taken seriously long term as manager he needs to start being ruthless. Good start yes, but Still being absolutely woeful, and the ability of our superior players like Scienza , is making him seem better than he is in my opinion . Also doesn’t help that he seems to absolutely love playing out from the back, which is something we were all hoping to move away from after the trauma of the Martin era, but there we go. Admittedly we haven’t made any mistakes leading to goals from it, and we seem to be a bit more sensible about when to clear our lines , but the final part of this game was painful seeing us dawdle out from the back when we needed a goal.

Anyone also noticed that since his monumental fuck up at QPR , when he came wandering out to claim a ball he was never going to get and presented their striker with an open goal, he now refuses to come for anything at all. Nothing. Crosses now get whipped into the 6 yard box line and he’s still rooted to his line. He has the presence of a 15 year old kid in goal, and all of the confidence and authority of one too. Hes been the biggest shit stain on this clubs demise under sport republic and yet here he still is, not doing his job properly . you ask any defender what they want their keeper to do when crosses come in, and they’ll all tell you they want a strong authoritative keeper who will come for as much as he possibly can, and take command. This clown does the exact opposite. I even suspect even he’s a little embarrassed that he’s still our first choice, he knows he’s shit too.

The fact he couldn’t even hold onto a shot that most Sunday league keepers would’ve held, is alarming. Hes just absolute shite. It’s barely believable that he’s playing at this level and absolutely laughable that he’s played in the premier league . His overall goalkeeping attributes, when you look at everything about how he performs, in my mind place him at national league level

Yep hence me asking earlier just what on earth is he saying to them at half time. I get the feeling he’s praising them far too much, and telling them to go out there and keep doing what they’re doing. Would figure. Problem is, it’s resulting in a huge drop off in performance levels and intensity , and a lot of this lot need no second invitation for the opportunity to relax and down tools a bit

This is coming home to roost as a lot of us expected, masked by some decent results at home where our far better players have blown teams away for 20 minutes in each game: Overall there is no real strategy or effective game management. Other than the Charlton game, every single away game under Eckert has been fucking dreadful

I bet the Norwich players and fans couldn’t believe just how easy that final 25 minutes was for them. Sadly, for the vast majority of us , it was very believable and predictable. We’ve seen this movie many times over . Yet you just know if it was us leading, we’d have been hanging on for dear life. Something massively wrong with us in the final quarter of games right now, we are just there for the taking constantly from 70 min onwards

Yep there’s no way we are going to get top 6 this season based on what I’ve seen through patterns in each game and playing horrifically for 50% of many games, even some that we’ve won. Couple that with a manager just starting out who’s been schooled by several managers after half time, and it just ain’t happening; 9th or 10th is most likely . Just nice that we’ve gotten these recent points on the board to take any pressure off at the wrong end of the table

What exactly is he saying to them at half time? We come out a yard slower than the opposition every single fucking game after the break and it’s becoming a huge problem, and because of this the writing was on the wall at half time when we went in 0-0. No surprise at all to see us on the back foot and concede almost immediately from the restart. Does he actually have a plan for the second half in these games or not? If so, what instructions is he actually giving them? It seems to me that he’s probably just at saying “‘more of the same please , keep going lads”, without giving any motivation for them to up their game at all: it’s driving me fucking mad and is a huge worry. There is a huge huge drop off in urgency and pace of our play after the break. He seems to have fuck all in game management , which is hardly a surprise given he’s not managed before.

It’s like the kid with no talent in the play ground who randomly scores a worldly that he couldn’t repeat if he tried it the next 100 times and everyone is in stitches and celebrating with him, to be talked about for the rest of the school year. The key Link here - lack of talent - so when they do something good it’s so rare it gets talked about constantly for months afterwards.