Midfield_General

Good first half but we're going to need another goal.

Really cleverly worked corner routine by Norwich for the goal. Edit: Although the marking was appalling.

‘Blind, obsessive devotion to a system that is fundamentally flawed as it leaks goals and has a track record of only ever delivering mid-table obscurity? Yes, that sounds guaranteed to get us promotion, let’s do it!’

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Exactly. Staying in games when you're under pressure for much of the match is called being solid at the back. Winning games when you've had fewer chances and less of the ball is called being clinical. Clearly they're both. We're neither. It's not luck. They do the stuff that matters, while we're fixated on pointless possession which means nothing.

He’s a last 15 mins player. Throw him on as a Hail Mary if we’re losing and getting desperate. Get him to run at tired legs and just try to win a foul/ pen or put them on the back foot to create space for others. He’s had over a year now and plenty of opportunities to show that he’s worth a starting place, and all he’s done is show that he isn’t. Injuries aside he should never in a million years be starting ahead of Fraser, Brooks or Edozie. He’s an expensive mistake who management can’t accept simply isn’t worth anywhere near what they paid for him.

Haha - yeah I know. Getting a bit MLG over here 😜

I understand that Whitey, but that isn't a lottery. A lottery is a situation whose success or outcome is governed entirely by chance, over which none of the participants can exert any influence whatsoever. Regardless of individual incidents, all the hundreds of decisions that are made and conscious things that influence the outcomes of three matches couldn't be further from a lottery. They're high-pressure games of football that are won and lost due to the same factors as any others. The way they are talked about, anyone would think they just drew straws.

The fact is we don’t deserve to go up automatically. The fundamentals have to be being solid at the back, creating lots going forward and then taking a good majority of those chances you create, so that you can win close games by the odd goal and turn draws into wins. We’ve had three key issues all season: A dodgy keeper who isn’t good enough at the basics of goalkeeping and lets in too many you’d expect them to save Generally not being solid enough defensively, and conceding too many goals overall Not having a proper striker who generally takes chances you’d expect them to score We’ve had all season to address this, and we haven’t. When it did look like we’d improved the defence, we then fucked with it when we didn’t need to, and it still didn’t address the goalkeeping problem. End result: too many conceded, too many missed, too many draws not turned into wins, therefore not getting the automatics in a very competitive season. We’ve had more resources than most to address these things, and they’re all pretty obvious to anyone who watches us every week. We’ve just not done it. That’s why we’ve not won enough games and deserve to be where we are. Also stop describing the play-offs as a ‘lottery’. They aren’t. They’re influenced by all the same factors as any other football matches, just with some added pressure.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/68580638

They seem like a bunch of twats tbh but it's worth visiting that thread just for the video of the helicopter and the cow

Encouraging stuff to hear from your agent.

I think we’ll get to the play-off final and then whether we go up or not will entirely depend on who we have to play. I really hope it’s not Hull, because they’ve got Russ-defensive-suicide-ball 100% worked out and they absolutely schooled us as a result. He isn’t going to change how we play, so there’s absolutely no reason why they wouldn’t just do it again, with the same result. Assuming Leicester and Leeds go up automatically, the other play off contenders I think we’d probably beat, if (and it’s a big if) we stop leaking goals. If we don’t sort the defence out sharpish it won’t matter who we play.

Could barely even celebrate the winner because I thought we'd still find a way to fuck it up despite being a man up and a goal up in the fifth minute of injury time. Swear to god, supporting this team will finish me off one day. Absolute torture.

Sulemana was apparently the fastest player at the 2002 World Cup. Still pretty rapid, considering that makes him at least 45 years old

Absolutely love a 13 year thread bump. Love to see it. What’s the record?

Absolutely spot on

Yeah - nasty knee injury. They're not expecting him back until the last few weeks of the season, at best.

Liam Delap. How much were we trying to pay for him - was it £20m?

Very poor holding-up-your-new-team’s-scarf-for-your-unveiling-photoshoot technique. Davis out

Fantastic result in a very tough fixture on paper. Perfect away performance. Excellent performances all over the pitch but Stuey and Smallbone both particularly good. Love it.

I’m going to go ahead and say ‘yes’

25 easy games. More than half the season Jesus christ 🤦‍♂️

What makes even less sense in this regard is that so many of the rules/ processes that are already in place are such a mess. Handball, offside, VAR - they’re all a shitshow and have been for ages. Managers and players are saying they don’t understand them and are begging for them to be simplified or made more consistent. How about sorting those out before bringing in even more stuff to fuck up?