tajjuk

False, even despite our struggles and the intensity dropping off as the season has gone on, we are still one of the most effective pressing teams in the league. The problem lies in that we can't defend, we are struggling to create goals from other means and collectively the teams effort towards this system has dropped, be it from confidence, fatigue whatever. Ralph's approach works and has been effective, and the team are capable of doing it and doing it well, the problem is for some reason some of them are not buying into (possibly because confidence is low and they are worried about conceding, so naturally start dropping off and pressing less) and when that happens the effectiveness of it diminishes. First and foremost the team needs to defender better, make less mistakes, that allows the rest of them to go press and put teams under pressure, plus we need to be better at breaking down and creating more against low blocks.

You can’t really argue with Mourinho’s record and having seen him on sky a lot recently his knowledge and assessment is spot on, he’s arrogant yes but knows what he is doing. Just read something that 15 of the last 30 England debutants have played under Poch, his development and improvement of players had been amazing, which is why I can’t see him going to a truly massive club like Real or Bayern as they demand instant results not a slow build project

I'd presume with it being done during an international break that they might have someone lined up, otherwise why do it now and not after the recent poor results? Still think it's crazy, so they may end up having a poor transition season, but he's clearly got them punching above their weight for ages and I couldn't see an exodus of players just because of one poor season, beyond the ones already lined up to leave (Erikkson, Toby, and Rose). I am pretty sure West Ham and Everton have consistently out spent them the last 2-3 years but he has delivered top 4 consistently and good cup runs (which are always a bit of a lottery) Would love him back but can see him at another forward thinking club that are more project based, maybe like a Dortmund

The article covered that in 'outliers' where we'd possibly change our approach to reflect the quality of oppositions, for example against Man City our PPDA was like 17 or 18 because we did a very low block. (as in parked the bus). So the averages don't really include those two teams, and for example Spurs have decent players more than capable of playing out of a press but our PPDA was the best whilst Everton were a team ripe to press and most would agree less capable of playing out from a press but our PPDA was pretty much double. As the season has gone on, aside the odd outlier, basically our press has slackened off.

It's still there, I read an article in the Athletic about it. Amazingly even though it has dropped from the start of the season and dropped from last season, based on PPDA (passes per defensive action) which basically measures how many passes a team can put together on average before a tackle, interception or foul. The lower the number the better, and this season we are the 6th best in the Premier League for it., and only Man City and Liverpool have won more balls in the opposition third than us. It's slowly been going down though, probably due to a lack of confidence players on the pitch almost sub consciously and against the managers wishes slip more into a low block. Ralf was seen screaming at the players to press higher and harder against Everton but they just didn't do it, so something is off be it confidence thing, or a worry about counters, or mental/physical fatigue. We had a PPDA 'high' of 6.86 against Spurs, and aside when we played Liverpool, our early season PPDA was in the 8-10 range, but its move to more like the 12-13 range. For whatever reason has caused it we need to get it back, we are also clearly good at it and score goals from it.

Hope he is right and this the start of a complete overhaul of the coaching/back room staff, considering the decline in players, poorness of the youth teams/youth coming through and the general failure of scouting over the last 3/4 years, can anyone in there really hold their head up high? We haven't had many long term injuries/regular injuries to my recollection so maybe the physios and sport science teams can, the rest of them though, scouts, first team coaches, analysts, youth coaches/managers, etc. not so much.

Yes, though as someone said above, we started this run of 'easier' fixtures with a home game against Everton and were very poor. Plus Newcastle have had the 2nd hardest run of fixtures and have nearly the double the points. But have been saying this for a while, our first 13 fixtures saw us play all of last year's top 9 teams, and are four games against 'lesser' teams, 3 of them were away. We'll have to see how the team reacts over the next 6 weeks or so, but I think whether we stay up now hangs on who we get in to oversee transfers and who they can get in January. We need to get 30 -32 points from somewhere, which is 11 wins, but we do have to still play Watford twice, Norwich twice, Villa twice, Newcastle twice, Crystal Palace twice, West Ham twice, plus Brighton, Burnley and Sheff Utd at home. That is a lot of winnable games, but the team still needs to play way better than it currently is.

We all know refs bottle it at the home stadiums of big clubs, VAR was supposed to overcome that so the correct decision was made, but seems to be too scared to do it. Liverpool's luck has been in massively, not only this game but others and the fact they seem to be very lucky with injuries, if they f*ck it up from here it'll be the greatest bottle job in history, everything has gone for them. But at the end of the day a club like City with the millions they have, its p*ss poor planning to end up with such a makeshift back four. They know Stones and Otamendi are both dodgy, they must have realised that Mendy was going to struggle to play ever week and stay fit after such a big injury. Why spend £50 million on another right back to your £50 million right back that pretty much plays every week, but not buy a better left back even though your main left back has struggled for injuries for the last 18 months. Why when your captain and leader played most of the end of the last season where you won almost every game, do you not replace him with a top quality centre-back? Instead relying on 3 main centre-backs, of which only one of them is any good. Man City will have lost the title for the same reason we will probably get relegated, clear and obvious gaps/lack of quality in their back four that pretty much every fan can see but somehow the management/board can't or just ignored.

He was pretty awful against Wolves yesterday from what I saw.

Pellegrini probably, Emery, then maybe Ralf, then Silva and then Farke. In terms of 'excuses' and 'caveats' to the seasons of those teams I'd say that West Ham and Arsenal have the least excuses, we are a bit of a mess all over, Silva is doing ok and Norwich were expected to struggle anyway and have had terrible injuries.

I am also wondering how he interpreted 'Saints have no interest in appointing Preston's head of recruitment Joe Savage as their new director of football.' to mean 'Can’t even manage to attract a small time appointment from a championship club'.

Good to see them both doing well, maybe we can do a swap deal for some of Celtic's up and coming players, like Edouard, Ajer, Julien, Greg Taylor

3 wins I think. All those games are winnable, none of those teams are in good form.

Want to reiterate how crap West Ham are, that is 1 point out of the last 4 games where they have played Palace, Sheff Utd and Newcastle at home and Everton away.

Probably a combination of an easier league and a fresh start giving him more confidences. Honestly don't see how we need either back, so see if we can get much needed funds for both of them to be honest.

I think central mid is a key area of concern generally. They are generally very important to most teams and shapes, but for what Ralf wants to do, especially if he wants to implement his 4-2-2-2 properly (which would also be dependent on at least one good centre-back coming in) the big issue we have is central midfield. Romeu and Hojberg are slightly different flavours of the same player, both can tackle, both are good at intercepting, winning the back, working hard etc. Neither does very much when they get the ball, which often ends up with our front 4 becoming detached from the rest of the team, starved of quality balls, with Hojberg and Romeu unable to find creative passes, often quickly enough, to create chances in the transition. Neither can travel with the ball either, beat a man in midfield, break out of a block with some quick feet from deep to start an attack. JWP does not offer an alternative here either, he is somewhat of an enigma, he is more attacking than those two, can probably find a pass better than those two but is not massively creative either and whilst works very hard is not as good defensively. Armstrong is a move traditional get in the box type attacking centre-mid that doesn't fit the system. Lemina would be perfect for it, but he doesn't want to be here. If you look at Ralf's success at RB Leipzig it was built around A quick little guy and bigger but still mobile target man up front. Two wide attackers/AMCs that kind of operate in the half spaces. A DM that could tackle/intercept that was more defensive of the midfield two. Nabby Keita as the other centre-mid, who was more creative and was able to do the tackling, intercepting, whilst also find passes forward and dribble out of presses and blocks to create attacks and put the opposition on the back foot. We can probably fudge the strikers into something that works using what we have, all our strikers can press, work hard and are decently quick, Ings and Long are ok in the air though a decent more physical target man option is desirable. We have the wide players in Redmond, Boufal and Djenepo to work the system, JWP might even work here as an option, seeing as he whilst he can;t dribble his crossing, passing and work rate would be useful. In Hojberg and Romeu we have DMs that can tackle, intercept and pass ok.] But we are missing that link midfielder. I think finding that should be a priority (along with a centre-back), such players are of course rare and known ones are expensive, but we are basically looking for a Lemina with a better attitude.

Man City 'reserves' is a bit harsh, I mean yeh no De Bruyne or Sterling, but still Aguero, Mahrez, B.Silva, Gabriel Jesus, Walker and Otamendi, those are all first team players and Foden is a pretty good 'reserve'. I mean they brought on two subs that cost a combined £110 million......

If we sack Ralph then I will likely give up supporting the club, we will IMO throw away any potential chance of recovery for the foreseeable future. We won't get anyone better and will end up with a string of Sunderland level managers who will take us down the leagues. Right now is a big point in the history of this club IMO, IF, and it's a massive IF, we stick with the manager, sign him some good support in the form of a DOF/player transfer expert or whatever they call it. Then we should hopefully pick up some points before xmas with the easier fixtures, then they back him in January with at least 3 key signings (CB, DM and full back), then I think we could comfortably stay up this year and hopefully then another summer to rebuild the squad, clear the dross, get player's suitable for his style we could finally look forward to a season of progress. But if they sack him, get some caretaker type manager in then I think we will end up doing a Sunderland. They backed the useless Pellegrino and bought him a useless lump centre-forward for a record fee, if they did that they can back Ralph with the defensive signings the squad needs.

They might be better than us, but from watching them, despite their massive investment they don't look much cop. My point is that we don't really know until we have played everyone. I thought we would do better than avoiding relegation this year, but I have given up hope of that, but to be honest there could be 10 teams involved in relegation this year and unlike most teams, we have only really played two of them and we won those two games, both away. (Yes one was helped by a sending off). The Leicester result was terrible, but we were down to 10 men and whether we stay up will not depend on games against Leicester, Spurs and Liverpool (and we were decent in one of those games). It'll depend on the games against Brighton, Sheff Utd, Watford, Norwich, Everton, Newcastle etc.

We don't need attackers unless we shift someone, Djenepo looks good, Ings is doing all right, Boufal should get played more and has looked good in the games he has got, Redmond is decent enough and I think Adams will come good, plus we have Long and Obafemi kicking about. Centre-back, full backs and centre-mids should be priority. How the hell we find a good centre-back in January is beyond me, but key will be to get the new Director of Football and Chief Scout or whatever they are calling it in so they can make the correct judgements and hopefully can unearth a gem or two. A proper physical DM would be great and someone that can carry the ball in centre-mid would be amazing.

Come on, he's gone off the boil in the last couple fo years (not managed very well) but this a guy with over 90 caps for Germany, was a star performer for Real Madrid, has won the World Cup, and has been consistently one the best goal creators in the league for the last 4-5 years. We'd be delighted unearthing an Ozil. Weren't when we were signing players well, didn't we basically have a transfer committee of like 3 people overseeing tranfers all having their input, getting in two new outside people, together with Ralph's input into player signings sounds like a good idea to me. More fresh faces the better I'd reckon. Also hopefully a good director of Football might quickly weed out the bad eggs in the backroom staff.

Also further question, has Danso actually played centre-back yet? Is it not worth giving Vokins a go at left back presuming Bertrand is now banned for 3 games? He surely can't be worse than playing people out of position there?

Not sure that is true, we were the better team against Utd and would have won without our sending off IMO, we were decent away to Wolves and were the better team (they had 4 shots all game), we were good against Liverpool and should have done more. What gives me hope that we can get out of this is the following - 1. As mentioned above we are only 5 points off 7th, the rest of the league is a much or muchness and I don't think anyone in the bottom half (aside Spurs who have lost their way a little) is that good. 2. It's one game, you don't lose points for losing a game badly, it just 3 points not won, and we are nowhere near adrift. 3. You hope that it is the bottom point for these players, the complete kick up the behind they need AND an awakening call for board/owner, it;s probably wishful thinking but I am hoping that in future years we might look back at this game as a turning point that helped re-start our club, back the manager, get in some new scouting and coaching blood to help him, get players in that fit they style. 4. The fixtures, we have played Liverpool, Spurs, Wolves, Leicester, Man Utd, Chelsea, Burnley away (never an easy fixture) and are soon to play Man City. We still have to play two games vs Watford, Newcastle, Everton, Norwich, Villa, West Ham, Crystal Palace and home games vs Burnley, Brighton and Sheff Utd. That is plenty of winnable games if we get our crap together. IIRC there was some extensive super stats prediction model for this season that had us not winning our first 6 games or something and being bottom by December but ultimately finishing 15th I think, we are actually doing slightly better than that prediction. The team has not been great and that game was a massive low, but fixtures have not been kind either. As I said in another thread, West Ham have 13 points, 5 more than us, however look at their games since losing 5-0 to City on the first day - Brighton (A) draw Watford (A) win Norwich (H) win Villa (A) draw Man Utd (H) win Bournemouth (A) draw Crystal Palace (H) loss Everton (A) loss Sheff Utd (H) draw If we'd had those 9 fixtures would we be happy with 13 pts? I am not sure we would. They have only played two of the top 6 (one of which is the out of form Utd), and haven't played Leicester, played all 3 promoted sides, struggling Watford, struggling Everton.

You feel they could have given a weeks wages....but its something I suppose. I wonder if something will also be done for the fans next home game, like a free drink or something at the least.

Thing is Aurier is in possession of the ball, so how can Mane be fouled if Aurier has the ball and is trying to kick it, if anything its a foul the other way. We basically now have attackers either throwing their body at defenders to get contact or kicking the ball at defenders hands from like 3 yards away and getting pens for it. And VAR never over turns these silly decisions.