Midfield_General

Ipswich 2 down (Or Everton 2 up)

This prick is going to send one of ours off at the first opportunity so we need to sub out some of the players on a yellow. I'd swap Fernandes for Lallana and Manning for Taylor second half. Also we need a third goal, because if they score next I've got a horrible feeling we will crumble.

He's been one of our best players in the first half

And not a single bad foul yet - genuinely one of the worst refereeing performances I’ve seen. Gave a yellow for nothing in the 3rd minute and has painted himself into a corner. Absolutely diabolical

No way are we finishing this with 11 men

Yes - it was his run that played in Manning for the cross for Archer to finish

KWP is five foot eight. Surely we're not playing him at centre half. Has to be the other way around.

Roll up, roll up, for the formation and team selection tombola. Is that a 5-4-1? At home, against Leicester, in a game we absolutely need to win? If Manning is playing as a third centre half, why him and not Taylor who actually is a centre half and is on the bench? Cornet, BBD, Wood and Edwards not even making the squad. If I was Dragan I would be asking serious questions about how my money was spent in the summer. On paper that looks like an absolute mess, but they've had two weeks to prepare for this one so I'm guessing they will be well-drilled and organised in yet another new combination of formation and personnel. Let's see shall we.

West Ham collapsing against Spurs the way Spurs did against Brighton. Conceded 3 in 15 mins and the inside of a post away from 4

Totally. It seems absurd that we as simple fans can see basic things like that but the management can't. It's ridiculous. But then even without taking into account the goals given away through the suicidal passing at the back, this is also the same management that pissed away winnable fixtures by playing a revolutionary U-shape with two centre forwards hugging the touchline and no-one at all playing in the middle (Forest at home), and no centre-forwards on the pitch at all with five on the bench (Bournemouth away). So yeah. I'm less and less surprised by it now.

Or we could try not making an already hard league much fucking harder by not passing it to the opposition in own penalty area multiple times every game under the guise of 'philosophy'. It doesn't need an outstanding manager to identify that, and doesn't need an outstanding team to execute it. It's basic common sense which is the key ingredient missing from our management.

Tadic in as player-manager, running the midfield with Lallana at a combined age of 157. There’s experience for you.

Nah. There are plenty of criticisms that can justifiably be levelled at RM but not using Alcaraz or Sulemana aren’t among them. Alcaraz showed some flashes of promise but couldn’t keep hold of the ball, wasn’t a great passer, regularly played the team into trouble and had an extremely suspect temperament. He looked bang average even at Championship level when he did play and did nothing at Juventus. There’s a reason he’s gone back to South America - not one club in Europe wanted him, even at £18m let alone £40m. Sulemana is just shite. He’s had so many chances at both Premier League and Championship level and just has no end product or football brain. He was also given lots of game time pre-season and did absolutely nothing. I’m not a Martin defender by any means but neither of those players should be anywhere near a Premier League first team.

Also won his first match 2-0 at home to Wigan in the FA Cup quarter final, went toe-to-toe away at Arsenal, eventually going down 3-2 (after going 1-0 up and then equalising for 2-2), and again at home to Chelsea, losing 3-2 after going 2-0 up. Ultimately Hughes was a limited manager, but he was also a common sense manager and a pragmatist, had an immediate positive impact, and got the most out of the resources he was given to grind out the results he needed to keep us up.

Onuachu Archer Dibling Lallana Downes Fernandes KWP THB Bednarek Sugawara Ramsdale Cut out the suicidal passing in and around our own box. Move the ball from front to back directly and quickly. Get the ball into Fernandes and Lallana as quickly as possible, with them playing on the half-turn looking for the forward pass or through ball. Use Onuachu as the hold-up man, with Archer and Dibling playing off him looking to run into space in behind, or getting wide to put crosses on his head. When Lallana gets tired, put Aribo or Les alongside Downes and push Fernandes further up. Cornet and Fraser as fresh legs later on. Smash that little rat Vardy at the first opportunity. Don't do anything silly. 2-0 Saints and the start of our relentless march to 18th.

Orhan Erdemir: giving hope to 61-year-old men the world over

The most thin-skinned man on the planet, pathologically unable to take criticism or just ignore it, decides to become a football manager - a job where you basically very publicly take shit for a living. So strange. Now he's not our problem I find him utterly fascinating. I kind of want to draw them in the Cup at St Mary's just to see how he deals with it.

Yeah, Archer's goal was the absolute opposite of what they usually appear to be coached to do. It was basically an example of how much more effective the players we have at our disposal could be if they were set up and encouraged to play more directly, more often. Spotting space in behind a high line that hasn't had time to set, and playing a quick, long pass in behind for a rapid forward to run onto and slot. We hardly ever see that, even though Archer, Dibling, Cornet, Armstrong, Fraser (and maybe even Sulemana when he's fit) could thrive on that sort of approach, and Fernandes and Lallana are more than capable of supplying those sorts of passes. Btw, how good was Fernandes in that moment? Working hard to track back, a great tackle to win the ball from behind his man without a foul, and then an absolutely perfectly spotted and weighted pass to exactly where Archer wanted it. Beautiful. Great control, run and finish from Archer too. A really lovely goal all round. Feels like a glimpse of how much more dangerous we could be if we played on the counter-attack more.

Yep, the way he was talking on Sky before the Bournemouth game he has definitely got his eye on it. Whether he would get it or not is another matter, but he was definitely putting himself in the frame, and he'd probably get an interview at least. Also if Carsley shits the bed against either Greece or Finland in the next few days then the conversation might open back up about the England job, which he specifically said he would love to do. Either way, if he stays in club football then I think he wants an underachieving team with decent resources who are looking up, rather than a relegation fight. I think that would rule us and Wolves out, although it sounds like they're backing O'Neil for now anyway. If the Everton takeover goes through I could absolutely see him there, being given all that lovely new investment money to spend and the attraction of a brand spanking new stadium. Or West Ham, if they end up canning Lopetegui.

I don’t have any problem at all with corporate hospitality or the club finding new revenue streams however they can. High-end experiences for big-spending clients can be very lucrative, and if people or companies want to pay for them then absolutely fair play to them. I’ve been to plenty myself as part of my work. Spurs, Man City, Arsenal, West Ham all do excellent high-end packages, and I’m sure Everton will be great too. It’s not the way I like to watch football personally, but I can see why people like it if they’re more casual fans or they’re looking to entertain clients and they’ve got the money. What I find very amusing though is the disparity in this specific example between how they’ve described it in the sales copy, and then what it looks like in the visuals. If you’re going to go in hard with the superlatives in sales speak like that, promising unparalleled luxury and lavish opulence for £300 a ticket then great, but then you have to deliver, otherwise you just look ridiculous. It’s like those Winter Wonderland or Willy Wonka experiences where people get sold this magical vision and then when they get there they find out that their £300 family ticket has bought them a border collie with antlers stuck on it and a pissed-off-looking elf smoking a roll-up in a car park. When you over-sell and under-deliver you’re asking for trouble. And as far as the Knightwood Lounge goes, they either need to rein it in with the copy, or they need to hire better interior designers because £300 a ticket is a lot of money and just putting a neon sign that says CHAMPAGNE behind the bar in what looks like the phone charging bit of Stansted is going to lead to a lot of very pissed off clients.

All that drumroll in the description about rare exclusivity and a one-of-a-kind lavish environment and then you look at the photos they've mocked up and it's basically a fucking Costa 🤣 🤣 🤣 Nothing says 'opulence' like high chairs, fluorescent strip lighting and a lovely bit of laminate flooring. I've seen a Spoons more lavish than that

There's also a proven psychological aspect where people are much more likely to buy in and take responsibility for something they feel they have been able to have input into. Basically, if someone says 'Here's the way we're doing it, get on with it', it's very easy to feel distanced from it, so when it goes wrong you can feel that it's not your fault because it was never your idea in the first place. You don't take responsibility for it. Whereas if someone invites you in, says 'I'm thinking we approach this like this, but I'd love to know what you think', and you feel like they're listening to you, you're much more invested in that because you feel like it's something you've contributed to. You want it to work more, and you're less likely to psychologically disown it. The principle is called 'teamship' - it was a big part of the ethos of the England rugby team in the early 2000s, including when they won the World Cup under Woodward. (Maybe we should get him back in...) I'd be amazed if our players feel properly bought into a system that is clearly forced on them whether they want it or not, which means they are made out to be losers every week, and which regularly makes them individually look like idiots. Especially when, like after the Bournemouth game, they get thrown under the bus afterwards by the person enforcing it on them. I'd imagine if you asked most of our players whether they'd want to try a different way of playing, they'd bite your hand off. They all want to win as much as we do, and they're the ones with the cameras on them when the current system fails (again).

I heard an interesting thing about Hurzeler at Brighton too. He has a way he wants to play and has introduced that to the players this season, but he also regularly invites feedback from the players, asking them how they feel about it, whether there’s anything that they would change about it etc. Basically using the system as the basic idea but then continually evolving it in line with what the actual players on the pitch are comfortable doing, and feel works for them.

Yeah, something like that. Not many teams are going to sit deep against a side like us that they perceive to be crap, so that should mean that there's usually going to be space in behind that we should be able to exploit if we're set up right to do it. This is what I'd like to see given a proper run of games: Onuachu Archer Dibling Lallana Fernandes Downes (Then when Lallana runs out of steam, push Fernandes into that more advanced role and put Aribo or Les alongside Downes) Archer and Dibling both want to be running into space with the ball at their feet, so have Onuachu provide a focal point, holding the ball up to let them both run off him, and get Lallana and Fernandes focusing on getting their heads up and providing more penetrative through balls like the peach from Fernandes for our goal yesterday.

I think you’re right re Potter who has turned down Ajax and has got his eye on bigger clubs than us (based on his chat on Sky on Monday night I think he thinks he’d have a shot at the Man Utd job). Why do you think Moyes would be out of reach though, out of interest?