saintant

It's a good description of the players problems. RMs system and tactics is overloading the players mentally to the point where massive mistakes will inevitably occur in every game. We need a new manager to come in and drill the team to play a more simple and effective style that is easier to implement and reduces the catastrophic errors. Unfortunately, RM continues to live off small scraps of decent play but these small scraps are not enough to lead to the victories we need. Like many on here I am convinced a different manager and approach would get far more out of these same players but I fear SR will decide to stick with RM until it is too late. The next batch of games include some winnable fixtures and we just cannot afford to waste these chances by leaving RM to carry on doing what patently isn't and will not work for us.

We pretty much know what AA can do because he's had plenty of games to show us. A lot of us just want to see Tall Paul given a decent run in the team so that we can judge him based on more than the odd cameo appearance here and there. Do we know what RMs view of his contribution today was? Has he even mentioned him post match?

The way RM wants his teams to play strangles the life out of any creativity, it stops us playing with any freedom and the squad is suffering because of this rigid belief that we have to pass the fucking ball to death. It is boring to watch, uninspiring and results in soft goals being conceded time and time again. Nothing will change while RM is in charge and those thinking he will get results if we just persevere are just fooling themselves - it aint going to happen.

Every game is the Russell Martin X1 charity match.

You forgot to add that he's a player who has never been given much game time, has been continually ignored by Russ even though others are not performing, who has rarely been used to his strengths even in the few minutes he's played, has scored many great goals in his career and is a striker who none of us including you, RM and the tea lady know whether he can do a job at this level or not.

Spot on - Martin makes us easy to play and score against. He just doesn't learn and never will. Get rid.

It's the RM way and he'll never change.

3-1 becoming our go to score this season.

Doubt we'll see much more of Tall Paul with Russell picking the team.

Unfortunately RM will come out with the usual platitudes after this game - the thing the owners should be drawing from it is that we are nowhere near as bad as RM's coaching and tactics make us look.

If today proves anything it's that he should be doing better with this set of players - I'm convinced another manager would have us winning games.

Doesn't fit in with the way Russ is reinventing football. He won't start the next game.

Why hasn't Tall Paul started games? Questions need to be asked of RM.

We should finish them off in the second half.

I suspect Russ is working his ticket.

Has anyone ever heard a player at any club say their manager is a hopeless coach? When asked the question or even in general conversation they will always praise the coach.

Anything below the 9-0 record will be acceptable 🙂

This theory is fine as long as you are happy to fuck off most of your fan base.

Ankerson will back Russ because he was his choice and, after the debacle of Jones, he has little credit left in the bank of Dragan.

You're probably right but he will be given more slack if we get somewhere close to staying up - if we get a low points total he'll probably be gone before the season ends and certainly couldn't expect to carry on next season.

If the squad are not as fit as they could be that is inexcusable. Fitness is so important and even more so at Premier League level where even the elite teams insist their players are in the best possible physical condition. If we are not on a par (I'm not saying this is the case just responding to the claim in the message) then that is on RM and his fitness coach and is a damning indictment. The one thing we can match every other team on is fitness. The problem is, if we are not fit enough, that will be down to poor pre-season conditioning and it is very hard to rectify any shortcomings whilst playing games every week.

I wasn't even considering the financial implications but do you think the fans will accept RM carrying on if we are relegated with a record or very low points total?

Seems counter intuitive but we need to seriously reduce the amount of possession we have.

As I've said on another thread I don't see this as viable. Unless we go down with some respect and get a reasonable points tally (seems unlikely) I don't think the fans/season ticket holders will accept RM being given the green light to carry on.

Agree. Before the game on Monday Graham Potter talked of the contrasting styles and described Bournemouth as a team that plays vertically which is to say they mainly play the ball forwards and look to progress towards the opponents goal in vertical lines at pace. We, on the other hand, look to play mainly horizontally and backwards slowly which is clearly madness seeing as the aim is to attack your opponents goal to create chances and score. I've had enough of Russball - the stats show that we have loads of possession which has led to us scoring three goals! We are currently going about the game in the wrong way and making the game look very difficult. As the Bournemouth manager said ahead of the game when asked whether he was concerned that we might have more possession, he'd rather have more chances than possession and so it proved - we had 60% possession leading to 9 shots with 3 on target and they had 40% possession which led to 14 shots with 6 on target. We're going about this arse about face.