saintant

Well he said it because I heard it with my own ears. Not saying he implied or hoped Archer would win everything but he clearly stated that the way to stop Pompey getting into the game was for us to go long early in the match and that is how it unfolded.

I see Wilcox continues to make zero difference to the ongoing demise of Man Utd. Think he talked the talk but can't walk the walk.

You can play on a pitch that resembles one of the greens at Wentworth but it matters not a jot if the players continually launch the ball into orbit - get it down and play football on the deck.

Didn't someone claim this was posted from a fraud account?

Will Still actually told them to do that and I heard him say so during his pre match interview. It's mainly on the manager although maybe the players need to take some blame for blindly following instructions that clearly weren't working.

Spot on. I was surprised when Still said pre match that we intended to play long at the start of the game because it made no sense. He and the team paid for that tactical mishap and we never recovered from the shocking start to the game which resulted and, as he said himself, we wasted the first 45 minutes. This was not what I expected from Will Still and hopefully he's learned a big lesson.

Thought Mads actually dealt fairly well with one of the best wingers in the Championship. His life was made more difficult by the fact that we did not set up to attack enough so Murphy was comfortable to play high up the pitch - we should have been making sure he was needed further back to stem the flow of our forward play but we didn't do that.

Complete and utter over the top bullshit - it wasn't even a foul.

Caspar Jandar showed enough in his short cameo to give us hope he can come straight in and replace Downes. I think he'll work well alongside Charles.

Wingbacks and 3 CBs is not the way to go - look at all the top sides, do any of them do it? Setting up with a back four was absolutely the right thing to do but Still ruined it by allowing our lines to be too deep and too far apart and having zero press on their defenders and midfield. We played right into their hands and that is not good enough.

But if we'd set up properly and attacked them their wingers such as Murphy would have been forced back to help stem the flow. As it was we gave them the freedom of the park by going long and having zero press. It was a masterclass of how not to set up a football side for a big home derby that had been hyped up for months but we totally missed our chance to put them to the sword from the first whistle.

If this is true then he was nowhere near forceful enough. He should have got in Stephens ear and told him in no uncertain terms to sort it out with the players and if not brought a couple of the worst culprits off pretty quickly. He talked about 45 wasted minutes and was spot on but did nothing to change it. He needs to wise up in short order.

Great post and it accurately describes most of what I saw as being wrong from our point of view. I was saying on the match thread our lines were too far apart and we needed to move twenty yards up the pitch - it was pretty obvious and, as you say, if we can spot it you'd think very well paid coaches could. Our only player with the nous to position himself between their lines was Azaz and he was continually ignored by his team mates. It was an abject display from players and coaches and does ring loud alarm bells regarding the tactical awareness of Will Still who, I thought, would be capable of setting us up correctly and also spotting early where things were going wrong and making changes. As an example of performance level in coaching and play for a huge derby match it fell short in every department. Must improve Will.

We are slow but a lot of that is down to the fact that players do not pick up the space between the lines and so the guy in possession is looking for non existent options to make a simple pass. The player is then forced to dwell on the ball and we become ponderous and slow to move forward. It is easily rectified but the players need intensive coaching because most of them just don't seem to get it. The good sides always have players between the lines and fizz the ball to them at pace. We plod around and either hit slow passes or lump it long.

For some reason not considered good enough for us though. I'm sure Downs will prove better value in the long run 🙂

Yes and he is clearly a good footballer. However, all our players should be well versed and capable of picking up pockets of space between the lines and looking to pass to team mates who have done so. Do none of them ever watch good sides and see what they do. Even Pompey players were far better at it than our lot.

This is one of biggest and most basic problems - can we please get a coach in who knows about playing between the lines. The reason we never found him is because the rest of the idiots are not used to and have no clue how to play between the lines. I imagine Azaz was pretty baffled and not a little frustrated to play alongside others with no basic appreciation of how the game is meant to be played. Will Still needs to get this sorted and quickly.

Me too but evidently, if they did, it needs a lot more work.

Not sure any of our players should be trying skills as advanced as a croqueta - few of them can even do the basics from what I'm seeing so keep it very simple lads.

That'll be two in two by your reckoning 🙂

This is indeed a big concern and something that needs to be addressed. Presumably Will and his coaches will be working on it intensively in training this week.

He's probably as pissed off as we are if not more so. He came here thinking and probably being told he was joining a side that will play cohesive attacking football, playing through the lines and down the wings and centre. What he found himself in the middle of today was a complete shitshow of a team that could not pass the ball and resorted to lumping it long to a small centre forward. We'll be hoping he gets better but equally he'll be hoping the team start playing proper football - if not he may as well go in January for the sake of him and us. If we buy players like Azaz let's play in a style that suits his game otherwise we may as well buy cheap rubbish and save our money.

Need a convincing performance in this. The players we have should be very capable of playing good football - a big week of training for Will Still and he must get selection, formation and tactics right - have heard too many excuses already.

Think we should have tried to offload him in the transfer window. Always strikes me as a squad disrupter and he's really pretty average/poor in midfield.

Play like today and most teams will beat us.