egg

Eric

He's a CB finding his way into English footy, playing him out of position in midfield is not a great idea. That said, I think he has it in his locker to play LB. He drifts into that position and made a lovely little run down the left side against Leeds. If any of our defenders were to play out of position I'd say Bertrand could do a job there.

Addiction

It's irrelevant. The goal was ruled out. Move on.

I'm not convinced, but I like the way his teams play, and the Howe / Tindall duo is a good one. He's also available and the players may just need a different approach to give them a lift. I agree that something isn't right at the moment, and if we don't get a turnaround soon, change will be hard to argue against.

I agree. He is very limited. Has a lot of heart and energy, but so did Long. Judging Ralph on his inability to get Adams firing is a bit daft.

Hardly the elephant in the room for me. Adams is not great truth be told. It's Ings who is out of tune.

Blimey!! That would be weird. Especially if Tindall is back with him. Hopefully it won't come to that though - get something from Everton, beat Sheffield United, don't get disgraced against City, and it'll look very different.

If we lose the next 3, I think Eddie will be getting a call. I don't think he's any better, quite the opposite in fact, but no points before Brighton and I think he's in trouble.

Yep. Add to that continuing to play a high energy game with players who are struggling to cope with the demands of it.

I'm not sure where the lack of gratitude from the poster is. There's an honesty though which is possibly correct. The theory to our tactics is fairly "shallow" . It's press, win it, give it simple, break, pass back if no options. Repeat. We've simplified the on field roles to FB, CB, 6, 10, CF. We've adopted that across the club. It's not a deep and complex plan. It's starting to look "unsustainable". We've had some horrendous results. It's no exaggeration that Leeds could and should have had 5+ second half goals, and that's with 11 men in the pitch. No var issues. No dodgy decisions. Just us being undone. That's no improvement on a 9 nil with 9 men on the pitch, indeed it's arguably more inept. At least one factor in our decline is that system. Sure, we have a small squad, but the job of the manager is to tailor his system / tactics to his players. Ralph hasn't. He just plays on with his pressing game, in his favoured/only style, regardless of his players. That's resulted in what we're seeing on the pitch. If you think what's happening is sustainable we'll have to agree to differ because it looks pretty unsustainable to me.

Quite, and it deserves focus. It that's the example shown by our captain, its no surprise that the rest of the team hide when the going gets tough.

Forget the excuses. Confidence and motivation comes from the manager, and then from the senior players showing the way. Ralph appears to have lost the ability to keep his players playing, and there is no obvious on field leadership. To be fair to the players, they're not helped by Ralph being unable to adapt to the changes other teams make. It's easy to blame VAR, contracts, injuries, lack of signings, bad luck etc, but our run is down to more than that. We've fallen away badly and much of the blame lies with Ralph and the players.

Yep. And all in one half. With 11 players. No dodgy decisions. No excuses this time. We really are in a mess.

Nobody will be fit enough to play anytime soon so it's pointless. People need to be realistic and accept that we have to go with what we have.

He's been below his early season levels for sure, but he's been better than Romeu and probably our best player still. Other than Chauke or Jankewitz, we literally have no other fit centre midfielders so his form is irrelevant as he plays by default.

Not for me. First half we were better. Second half we were awful. It's no exaggeration that they could have scored 5 or 6. In one half.

Not when we're in the mess that we're in at the moment. Confidence gets shot by losing. Kids don't need that. We need JWP in the middle, Armstrong as a 10 where he brings something to the attack, and our roundest round peg in the RB hole. Personally I'd play Stephens or Ramsey there, Bednarek isn't the answer.

Yep, but our chickens always come home to roost second half. You started it 😁

We aren't playing in the Scottish league. Our former youth player couldn't get a game in the national league but is playing up there. I'd look good in that league. And I'm old. And fat.

Chauke and Jankewitz. One is untested. The other failed his test.

As others have said, other teams adapt to us, but Ralph seems unable to do anything about it.

Find from where?!?! We've got what we've got. And it's shit.

Shocking football all round by us there. Djenepo shouldn't have had to track the man and didn't have much choice but to bring him down. McCarthy should have had that.

Relaid I think and appears not to have settled. It's a shocker.