S-Clarke

What is wrong with that bunch? Why have they taken all those comments by Ralph (in that opening post) as personal attacks at them? What was wrong about saying 'there are one or two clubs out performing at the start for a short term' - he was spot on, about us more than anything! How was that a dig at Everton? Where are they now exactly? Oh yeah, they dropped off. Chips on their shoulder or what.

We always seem to leave a glaring gap in the team. Some years it's been CB, other years CM, now full back. Not sure why we have these brain farts sometimes. It's a real toss of a coin and this time it's failed us as the first choice is injured.

No, not at all, he's not 100% faultless. Not saying he is! No one is, everyone needs to take some of the blame for this absolute abomination of a season. He has made weird choices sometimes without question. But a lot of the time his hands have been tied.

That sums up our current depth right there. Not good enough throughout the club. Academy has dropped down multiple levels, even they're being bum-fucked by 7 goals in games. Feels like the entire club is imploding at the moment and there is just no quality coming through.

Feel like I'm repeating myself, but how can he change things? He as a very small opportunity to react or alter games as the squad isn't there, add injuries to it and it's even worse. Some games he doesn't even bother making subs, because what's the point? You'd argue that he needs to bin his entire approach and just go back to basics for the rest of this season, then use the summer to build a squad sustainable for this style of football, but I don't think he'd do that (nor do I think it's the right thing to do). My hunch is that he'll walk in the summer and he'll be managing in the Champions League in a couple of years whilst we're languishing with Paul Cook at the bottom half of the Champ playing 'get it long' 'get it in the box' style football. I don't think we realise what a good manager he is. He had this rabble finishing 3rd in the league over a year-based-season FFS. That's genius.

Are they being toned down again in the summer transfer update?

The main difference between Wotte/Port/Pellegrino/Hughes is that we didn't even have good times under those, it was all bad. They'd never shown anything. It was all rubbish. There was no philosophy, nothing. I think most fans appreciate that Ralph managed to get this squad overachieving for large parts of this season and last season, he's shown he is steadfast on a philosophy which I believe is the right one - might not look like it now, but it's much more suited to this league than Puel's was. That's why I'm not calling for his head, he's shown that he has a plan and with a better array of players that plan would be working much better. There is a fine line between winning and losing. Not bringing in a full back and then losing your first choice full back for two spells is kinda illustrative of that line, but also the clubs incredibly complacent stupidity. I just hope we can plug those gaps in the squad during the summer.

Sheff U A Brighton H Burnley H WBA A Palace H I'm looking at 7 points min from those games. That's less than half the available points, so still not amazing form - but that's not too much to ask is it? I've even factored in some horror show defeats within that lot. That'll take us to 37 points by the start of May. So, it goes to show we still have quite a bit of margin for error until you can say we are in a real relegation battle. If by the end of that block of fixtures we are on 30-32 points, then yes, we are in a relegation battle proper for the final month of the season as we'd be sat on 16 games without a win. I reckon we'll finish mid 40's point wise. We have Fulham H, Leeds H too - get another 3-6 points from May's available 15 (again, still not great form) and we'd be mid 40's. Feels a long way off saying that now, but we can't go on being this bad for ever. All teams have spells like this and they manage to get over it eventually and sneak a couple of wins via someone's backside. (usually against us, TBF - maybe we can play ourselves?)

Where has it come from that he's our highest paid manager?

Fair enough. I just think the make up is all wrong to be honest. Take some of the players out and put them into other teams, they'd probably looked decent - as individually I think they're talented, but the makeup has been wrong since Puel came in and we lost the likes of Pelle/Fonte/Morgan/Mane/Wanyama etc. We didn't get the same sorts through the door in terms of their replacements. (Not just quality, but personalities). We looked at individual quality/are they good at passing etc and ignored every other factor. It's the same core we had under Puel, Pellegrino, Hughes and now Ralph. We've had our two worse results under this lot. Something stinks.

I had a quick look on Transfermkt - not really anyone of note available. Only player that stands out for me is Rafinha. RB/WB who played for Bayern etc. Released by Olympiacos in Feb. No idea if he's injured.

We lost control of the game as soon as they scored. (all of the second half). We panicked, stretched it more and ended up leaving lots of gaps. It was very harem-scarem for a while, until they finally put us out of our misery. We just seem to lose our heads when we get a set back, through a combination of certain players vanishing and certain players panicking with the ball and making the wrong decisions etc. There's a big mental hole in our squad.

Yeah, I mentioned that game a couple of weeks ago, It stuck out to me for those same reasons. We were on a bad run - 5 without a win, 4 defeats in a row I think it was. Loads of injuries/suspensions etc. Think we were without Morgan, Wanyama, Tadic, Mane to name a few. Everyone expected the worst. Did alright though, but we had a squad back then. We could lose those key players and still have the know to get the win - having players like Fonte at the back helped.

Free transfer emergency time? Surely an option to look at now?

It wasn't a 3-0 game, but how quickly our heads dropped once again is the overriding issue for me. We controlled the game for periods, without having much threat, but once we had some bits go against us we collapsed. As per usual.

But only when you have the tools to fight back with. It would have been like fighting back on the trenches with Nerf guns or water pistols, is it worth the hassle of even trying that when you know the outcome? I can't help but feel sorry for Ralph and how he's been totally hamstrung here. He's not blameless at all, but christ he's got a bad spin.

Someone much better than Redmond, Moussa or Minamino in that role. JWP isn't great at the moment, but none of those players could play his role. Not even close.

The only one I can see is Jankewitz on the bench. The others (Armstrong/Moussa/Minamino/Redmond) are attacking midfielders/wingers and should never be anywhere near the centre of midfield in a pivot role. They'd have been gobbled up.

Just to swing some positivity out there. We've got to win at Goodison at some point, haven't we? We've got to win again at some point, haven't we? The stars are aligning for something. Return to form at Goodison...when you least expect it.

I think it's for experience. Ramsay has looked like a fish out of water whenever I've seen him. Doesn't look like he's anywhere near this level quality wise. I wouldn't even say he's a wing back either, that's stretching it. He can play right sided centre back or defensive right back at a push. So he's equally a pretty dreadful option.

But then we'd have had even less of a midfield. There wasn't any real fix for today, he couldn't have changed much from the bench without having a natural full back there. The good news is that we've got it all to go again on Monday.

It's as simple as not having cover for him and those stats bare that out in black and white. Criminal really. We have to either rip apart our midfield, change our entire team shape, or move centre back partnerships around to fill his gap. He's important for us, one of our 'must not lose' types due to his importance to our style...but that's not to say another fully capable wing back style player couldn't do a job there. We just don't have that option. Christ, even Martina would do a job for us there.

Good post and very sound observations. I don't think any fans want us to go spending, spending, spending...we just need to stop being clever with our squad management. The ultimate dream for a club like us is that our academy/b team provides the depth, but it's clear to me that the quality isn't there...so we need to ditch that stupid idea for the next 5 years and actually build the squad out a tiny bit.

Who'd have gone to right wing back? The space out wide for Raphinia and Costa would have been scary had we gone 3 at the back, they'd have been on us even more. It wouldn't have fixed anything.

I think we rely on our full backs a lot, so with KWP out..our width is gone pretty much, to Tella's credit he was the only one providing it today. I think KWP is one of our biggest misses to be honest. Moving Bednarek out of the centre hasn't helped either, as it's confused the partnership which we had in there. We still had experienced players out there, but it's very much a square pegs kinda setup because we don't have the depth.