Midfield_General

Interesting when he was talking about that the three striker options he called out were Archer, Armstrong and Stewart, saying they all like to play in a similar way which is to peel off the last man. Also quite bluntly said “I’m not blind, I can see pumping it up to Archer in the air won’t work” or words to that effect, which was at least good to hear. So I take two things from that: 1. He obviously does want the ball played along the ground and into space behind, so he needs to get the players to start responding to that and properly coached not to do the hoof they were doing on Sunday, and… 2. Damion Downs wasn’t mentioned. I think he is very firmly 4th choice CF at the moment and if we play 4-2-3-1 again on Saturday I doubt he’ll even make the bench again. I don’t think Still fancies him now he’s seen him, and if Quarshie is also left out of the squad again then that is not a great indictment of our summer recruitment in two key positions.

Interested to see how that terrified, Buddy the Elf looking motherfucker they brought on to replace him gets on over the next 12 weeks against teams who actually take shots against him. We should have been raining down on him from every angle and distance.

Yeah, he doesn't play for us anymore, and even when he did, he was strangely not that strong or great in the air despite being 6 foot 8 or whatever he was. Plus we hardly ever seemed to put any crosses in for him. Why is it seemingly so hard for us to apply the basic common sense principles: - If we're going to play long balls forward in the air and/ or lots of aerial crosses: need to do it to a big strong CF who can win a battle and a header. - If we're going to play through balls and play off the shoulder: need to do it along the ground to someone quick with good feet who can run in behind and finish. Last season we played Tall Paul then never crossed it to him, and this season we've played teeny tiny Adam Armstrong or Cam Archer and then hoofed long high balls and crosses up to them. Your average non-league manager would coach their team to play to these obvious basic strengths, yet we've had a succession of managers who don't seem to be able to do it. It's bizarre.

What concerns me is that after something like £68m net spend in the last window we don't have a single striker who can provide a proper physical presence and bully defenders. Not one. It's going to make us very one-dimensional and easy to play against, because from the off teams are going to know what we're going to try and do, and we're not going to have any way of switching it up if it's not working. Said it before but the money spent on Downs should have been spent on a more physically imposing, target man type who can beat people up, back in and win a header or physical battle. Even if they were cheap and weren't considered a starter, it would mean we could change it up and cause a bit of havoc off the bench if we needed to. You need options. But all our strikers are either dwarves or wispy weaklings who get brushed off the ball and offer nothing in the air. I think neglecting to bring in any sort of strong physical presence up front is our single biggest mistake of the window, and it's going to cost us.

More likely to be Jander IMO as Still clearly wasn’t too bothered about what he’s seen of Aribo so far if he was ready to ship him out. Might see him later in the season though if he’s still here once injuries and suspension start to kick in. Which wouldn’t be a disaster as I think he’s a perfectly decent player at this level and can at least hold the ball and pick a pass. I just think he’s a bit languid and maybe doesn’t appear to run enough for the high-energy approach that Still says he wants, hence in a massive squad that needed reducing he was one he was prepared to lose. Also one of the bigger earners by all accounts which was probably another factor.

Yeah the time wasting at the beginning was part of their game plan but was more about killing the atmosphere than playing for a 0-0 for the whole game. First thing you do if you’re away in a derby with a noisy, highly charged home crowd is try to kill that atmosphere and level things up. Don’t concede early, and if you time waste and slow everything down it slowly sucks the life out of the home crowd and everything calms down. Then you build on that. Which is exactly what they did for the first half, and it worked, ably assisted by how crap we were and unable to string two passes together.

Che was far from perfect but scored 16 for us in the last season he played in the Championship. Do you honestly think Downs is getting 16 for us this season, based on what we’ve seen so far and him not even making the bench at the weekend?

Yeah, Martin was 3 managers ago. For all his faults, there’s only so long you can blame the man. Time to move on.

Yeah either Downes or Charles need to be more willing or able to carry the ball or make a forward pass, and Azaz in particular needs to be more willing to drop deeper and show for it more to give them an option. Hopefully Jander is more of a ball-carrier/ string puller from deep, and is shown to be good enough to replace one of Downes/Charles over the coming weeks - ideally Downes as he's been way off the pace for ages now.

Relax lads, it's nothing tactical, it's just anxiety in the players and the unhelpful environment created by the fans. Change always comes with pain, but if you trust the process and show love it's so, so worth it.

Spot on. I've got no problem at all with using a big, strong centre forward as a focal point for headers, hold-up play and crosses, but it's pretty obvious you can't play those tactics with 5 foot 9 Cam Archer or 2 foot 1 Adam Armstrong, yet that appears to be what he's trying to do at the minute, which is really concerning because it's so screamingly obvious it's a complete waste of time. My worry though is that he thought he would be able to play like that with 6 foot 4 Damion Downs as the striker, but now he's had time to have a proper look at him, he's realised that he's nowhere near ready and is now trying to force fit that system to players completely unsuited to it. Though having said that, surely you'd start Stewart as the next one if that's how you want to play, as he does at least have height even if he looks like a strong breeze would knock him over. He's meant to be highly tactically adaptable and good at being pragmatic to get the best out of the attributes of the players available, so now we need to see that in action, starting at Hull. If Archer is starting, get the ball down and play through balls to him along the ground so he can run into space and play off the shoulder like he wants to.

Sheffield United to re-appoint Wilder. That's embarrassing. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/sep/14/sheffield-united-to-reappoint-chris-wilder-as-manager-after-sacking-ruben-selles

Today was worrying. I really want him to succeed but that was a shambles. The 4-2-3-1 and team selection was what most people wanted to see, but when we had the ball our players looked like they had absolutely no idea what they were supposed to do with it, and it's hard to look past coaching for that. After making such a big deal about signing creative players and wingers, we didn't seem to want to give them the ball to feet which was absolutely baffling. We looked panicky and uncomposed whenever we got pressed even slightly, and ended up just hoofing it to no-one. What's the point playing three creative players behind a smallish forward who likes to play off the shoulder, if you're just going to do that? I was expecting Azaz in particular as the number 10 to be demanding to be given the ball so he could make things happen, but he didn't really seem to want it and hardly seemed to be showing for it at all. When we needed someone to be receiving the ball, playing with their head up and pulling the strings, he was largely invisible, and every time he did get it he just quickly laid it off. Having said that, most of the time it was just sailing over his head with another hoof to nothing, so it was far from his fault, I just expected him to demand the ball and try to dictate the play a lot more. For most of the game though it was just impossible to tell what the game plan was meant to be. If the plan was to go long and hit the centre forward to get players running off him, then why select Archer to do that job when he's so unsuited to it? And why talk before the game about looking to find space in behind if you're just going to launch it into the stratosphere every time you've got it? Even then, we got given the total gift of their keeper going off injured and an untried and un-warmed-up reserve coming on. He looked like he was absolutely shitting himself, was clearly nervous and couldn't even kick straight, so the instruction should have been to rain shots in on him from every angle and distance and follow everything in, and swing every cross under his crossbar to force an error. Instead, we didn't test him properly once. I don't think we even made him come for a cross. It was pathetic. Tactically it was an absolute mess all over, and it was concerning. Pompey were well-organised, pressed well and fought hard, but they are a limited team without a lot of quality, and even with our squad of players worth many multiples what theirs is we couldn't impose ourselves on them at all because we didn't look like we had a plan. We're going to have to play a lot of ugly, compact teams like that, and we're going to need to see a lot more guile, composure and clarity of approach if we're going to be able to rise above them as it looks like we should on paper. It's early days, and I like him as a bloke, but for a manager who came with a fair bit of fanfare about his tactical acumen, he really hasn't showed it yet, and he needs to start pronto. We've spent a fortune and it's his squad now - there are no excuses for looking that disjointed and confused from here on in. He needs to raise his game.

I think we can stop blaming Martin now don’t you? We’ve had 3 managers since then

Tactically, this is disgusting