Midfield_General

Our old pal Nathan is tearing it up at Charlton. Hired off the back of 12 matches without a win under Appleton, after an initial defeat his record since then is DDDWDWWDDDW. He's steered them away from relegation into the comfort of mid-table and the fans love him. He could have just stayed in Merthyr and married some Welsh bird but no, he wanted better than that. And now he's got it. Come on Rasmus, do the right thing. It's time to bring our boy home to take the helm for a front-footed, aggressive run at the play-offs.

Kelvin got found out in the Prem but in the Championship he was sound and won us a lot of points. Then the Leeds game was just extraordinary by any keeper’s standards. Rarely, at any level, do you see a keeper win a key game like that basically on his own.

After playing a key role in our relegation, and now our laboured attempts to get back up, he’s probably on track to be voted their favourite player of the century. I know a skate and he thinks the fact we keep persisting with ‘Agent Bazunu’ is hilarious.

“We just need to improve in both boxes.” We’re in April and we still just need to improve at everything that actually matters in a football match then. Cool.

Who's calling the shots and making that decision now though, with Wilcox out of the picture? Presumably it's back to Rasmus again for decisions like that, identifying and hiring the new DOF etc. Christ.

Martin's never been able to coach a defence. Every side he's managed has let in a lot of goals. MK Dons fans said it, Swansea fans said it, and it was there in black and white for anyone to see. We hired a manager who's incapable of building a solid defensive unit and - surprise - we've shipped too many goals all season, with no sign of him either being interested in addressing it, or knowing how to. He wears his complete tactical inflexibility as a badge of honour and tells anyone who will listen that he won't change how he sets up his teams, so what on earth did anyone expect?

Best Possession Percentages Not Converted Into Points Best Pointless Meddling With A Defence Best Inability To Save Anything Best Invention Of A Made-Up Position For Jack Stephens We’ve swept the board!

It's odd that even off the back of that one game, other club's supporters can see what some of ours, and our manager, still can't after almost two years. Bizarre.

It’s also one of the reasons you have a manager and their team of staff - to help the players psychologically and help them deal with pressure. That’s if they know how to handle it themselves, of course.

Fucking hell, that's priceless 🤣

The transfers engineered by recruitment guru Joe Shields, had just who joined from Man City, and who fucked off again pretty much straightaway afterwards? I'd suggest that Joe probably did some pretty good business himself around that time. *Cough* kickback *Cough* (Allegedly)

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.