saintant

It's a real shame because Kamaldeen has the raw materials to be a top player. Maybe he just can't or won't learn the finer parts of the game so he's simply a speed merchant with nothing else in his locker. Mane was raw when we signed him but he was a quick learner and clearly hungry to succeed - I don't see that in Kamaldeen but maybe one day he'll prove most of us wrong and turn up playing scintillating football for a top side but I wouldn't bet on it.

Agree. ABK has bags of potential and is a beast. I've no clue of the truth or otherwise about him being difficult to manage but if he doesn't leave in this window RM needs to sit him down and try to find a way to get him onside so we can benefit from his undoubted talents - not least because our current 3 centre backs haven't started the season particularly well.

You make a good point but it doesn't have to result in presenting the ball on a plate to the opposition. Plenty of teams have no problem with it and many seem to have more than one way of progressing up the pitch from a goal kick. They never look overly rushed or hard pressed by the opposition. It's the likes of us who haven't developed a way of playing out from a goal kick who end up in a blind panic being pressed harder because the opposition know it's a weakness and smell blood so it's self perpetuating.

Exactly how I saw it. I wonder if RM watched it and will learn anything from it 🙂 Liverpool were absolutely superb and it could have been even more embarrassing for Utd.

Two of you have opted for 433 but I think we'd suit 4231 better and it's what most teams play these days including the elite ones. I'm assuming our players would be familiar with it and could adopt to it quite quickly but it won't happen with the current manager. I watch us and we are a mess with no shape or obvious purpose and I'm not even sure what formation we play apart from something concocted by RM that he thinks will conquer football.

Makes you wonder why we were paying Ralph so long after he left doesn't it. You can add Nathan Jones to that too.

Not heard anything. Where are you getting this from?

Spot on.

Haven't come across anyone who has said otherwise. But it doesn't mean fans can't offer their opinions of what went wrong in matches or whether different tactics would work better which is mostly what I'm reading on here.

Eventually they'll feel that his system is hanging them out to dry as they are better players than it makes them look.

Yeah, Charlie Taylor has played centre half so could probably do the job you describe.

I watched Liverpool yesterday and I particularly took note of how they play out from the back. It's usually a low driven pass from the keeper at pace to a full back who is well out towards his flank. He then controls the ball and feeds a midfielder who has dropped to receive the pass and gets on the half turn - again the pass is crisp and covers some distance. It is low risk and retains possession. If avenues blocked off they were quite happy to go long from the goalkeeper. We aren't Liverpool but what they are doing doesn't require some incredible amount of talent just the ability to hit a crisp pass to your man and rely on him controlling it along with a little movement from further upfield. It's not rocket science and they are not reinventing football like our Russ seems to want to do.

From what I've observed of THB he is far happier in a back 4 with two centre backs. As soon as we play a five with an added centre back he seems to be less sure of his responsibilities.

Seems the owners are not learning when it comes to dishing out long contracts to those who have not demonstrated that they deserve them.

I think the one thing I've noticed is that we keep hearing this is the Premier League and we'll get punished - come on, let's get real, the errors we've made would likely get punished at most levels because they are so horrendously amateurish and are being made around our goal. Let's not claim we've conceded those goals because we're playing Premier League opposition - that's nonsense.

Like most of our players I'm convinced he is suffering due to the RM play book.

Most of the passing at the back is far too short and fiddly and results in panic. Watch the pass out from the back style played properly and generally the passes are much longer and hit with pace which opens up space. There is no reason why our players shouldn't be skilled enough to do that. You can't and won't successfully play out from the back with fiddly short passes and the coaches should be putting this right.

You're right but irrespective of where blame lies the manager, coaches and players need to be having a long debrief meeting to discuss what is going wrong and why so that they can do something constructive about it. I'm sure they are having such meetings and I hope some good will come out of them because the first three games have been poor other than brief periods in each.

In the club's defence I'm guessing they moved early to get Sugawara and the thinking behind it was they fully expected KWP to leave.

This squad has yet to be used in a competent way so I doubt anybody knows how good or bad they are right now or whether they are capable of scoring goals. My view is that a different manager would have them playing with less glaring mistakes, more cohesion and shape and ultimately, more goals and points on the board.

That's a great way of putting it 🙂

I read his comment differently to you. I accept that he is not telling them to pass back into trouble - however, they are doing so because they panic in the heat of a match which is a very different environment to the comfort of the Staplewood training pitches. So for me, the passing back at the wrong times is a bi-product of his methods which lead to panic. Unless we find a less stressful of playing these mistakes are going to continue.

I think we will comfortably beat Derby's total even under the current manager but it likely won't be enough to avoid relegation.

Nail on the head - it's more of a panic stricken heat of the moment thing but stems from the way RM insists the team play. He's not telling them to continually pass it back and put us in trouble but it's happening in the heat of the game because of his tactics. Yes, it'll look pretty and effective at Staplewood but not so much at places like the Etihad.

Agree, if you watched Brighton under De Zerbi they often played the ball from the goalkeeper to a centre back. He then played a fast hard pass into their central midfield who got on the half turn - meanwhile their two wide players hugged the touchline and were played in from midfield. It was a constant theme I noticed when watching them. It did of course require their midfield to be comfortable receiving the ball played at pace and getting on the half turn to set them moving into attack.