Why we failed so badly - listen to Benjii

[The Kraken]

5 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

THB maybe but I can’t see there being many willing to pay the £25m+ we’d want for him. Even Dibling is only a maybe, the way he’s played recently.

Disagree with THB. £25m is nothing these days for a young CB who has represented England setups for many years and graduated with a first team bow. I’d even be surprised if he hasn’t already got a move lined up.

Dibling will hinge on price but I imagine many clubs will be sympathetic to how much of a shambles our season is, and that he’s only recently turned 19. Saying that, I’d like to see him do a Grealish and give us a season at Championship level.

We shall see.

Edited Sunday at 17:57 by The Kraken

[aintforever]

12 hours ago, benjii said:

We got promoted with reliance on a highly ingrained, intensively coached system based on the side of football where you have the ball.

Despite the success of getting promoted, we were crap off the ball and conceded an embarrassingly high number of goals.

If you want to succeed in PL and don't have the top players, you make your success largely by what you do when you DON'T have the ball. Poch showed us this. And Ralph, before it ground him down. Bournemouth did this season. And Forest. Forest play very basic football in possession.

[I don't mention Koeman, because we had Pelle, Mane and Tadic - three of the best players in Europe at the time.... those were the days.]

You organise and press aggressively, and fight for everything, giving the opponent no time. Or you sit off, pack the defence and focus on rapid counters.

We haven't had a coherent strategy out of possession since Ralph left. It's extremely important at top level, where the other side won't just surrender you the ball or mess up their attacking positions.

Agree with this. Surely if a club our size is going to copy a playing style it should look at the Leicester side that won the league as an example of how to punch above your weight in this league. They never had a lot of possession and were strong on the counter attack.

We were the perfect storm of shit players playing an open style, probably made worse by the fact that all the other clubs have spent years facing Man City so when we try and do the same thing with Smallbone n co, playing against us was the easiest thing in the world.

 

[Smirking_Saint]

On 04/05/2025 at 08:21, Lighthouse said:

We failed so badly because we got promoted to the Premier League and signed a bunch of mid-table Championship players, there really isn’t much more to it than that. There is no strategy on Earth that’s going to make these players competent at this level.

There is.. to an extent… although I agree we’d never been competitive enough to survive, thats evidenced from the fact all three promoted sides were so bad

But we just needed more pragmatism really, from day one. If we had pragmatism and a decent striker we’d of atleast not embarrassed ourselves imo

I still maintain if we had a decent DoF with the backbone to tell Russell he can play his system but he has to be stronger defensively first, we might even have been ok… although transfer strategy was also horrendous 

[Smirking_Saint]

13 hours ago, aintforever said:

Agree with this. Surely if a club our size is going to copy a playing style it should look at the Leicester side that won the league as an example of how to punch above your weight in this league. They never had a lot of possession and were strong on the counter attack.

We were the perfect storm of shit players playing an open style, probably made worse by the fact that all the other clubs have spent years facing Man City so when we try and do the same thing with Smallbone n co, playing against us was the easiest thing in the world.

 

We also decided it was time we adopted a tactical style that was going out of ‘fashion’

Teams understand how to play against it now unfortunately 

[TheAlehouseBrawlers]

13 hours ago, aintforever said:

Agree with this. Surely if a club our size is going to copy a playing style it should look at the Leicester side that won the league as an example of how to punch above your weight in this league.

 

...or Brentford, a club Ankersen was actually involved with.

[dellboysaint]

Russball was a disaster. Playing out from the back, square passing then, back to the goalie was getting us nowhere. We were so intent on passing the ball to anyone that we lost the desire to go forward and win the ball off the opposition. The competitive streak disappeared as it was just about keeping possession in our own half and waiting for something to happen. McCarthy’s cock up in the first game at Newcastle set the season up.

[Farmer Saint]

We got relegated because of PSR. We got 11 points because "we couldn't do any worse" if we replaced Martin. We'd have at least 3 to 4 points more if we'd kept him.

[Challenger]

I honestly think half of the teams in L2 would have got more than 11 points playing the same fixtures.

[Lighthouse]

48 minutes ago, Challenger said:

I honestly think half of the teams in L2 would have got more than 11 points playing the same fixtures.

You would be wrong in thinking that because it clearly isn't true.

[Saint Billy]

28 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

You would be wrong in thinking that because it clearly isn't true.

I wouldn't be so sure about that.

[S-Clarke]

2 hours ago, Challenger said:

I honestly think half of the teams in L2 would have got more than 11 points playing the same fixtures.

Maybe not half, but I'd suggest there are a few teams littered around L1 and L2 who would have given it more of a shot than we have. The standard of the PL has been really poor this year, so it's entirely possible that lower league teams would have been able to beat some prem sides, and over a course of a season 3 wins and a couple of draws for any competitive professional outfit should be achievable.

[saintant]

3 hours ago, Farmer Saint said:

We got relegated because of PSR. We got 11 points because "we couldn't do any worse" if we replaced Martin. We'd have at least 3 to 4 points more if we'd kept him.

How do you know this?

[Lighthouse]

2 hours ago, Saint Billy said:

I wouldn't be so sure about that.

I would. I will say with near certainty that any League 2 club dropped into the Premier League would achieve single figures in terms of points, probably around half of what we have now.

[CB Fry]

4 hours ago, Farmer Saint said:

We got relegated because of PSR. We got 11 points because "we couldn't do any worse" if we replaced Martin. We'd have at least 3 to 4 points more if we'd kept him.

Jesus wept.

[Holmes_and_Watson]

4 hours ago, Challenger said:

I honestly think half of the teams in L2 would have got more than 11 points playing the same fixtures.

And as SR work their way through all the managers in the lower leagues, one day they'll trip over one of them. 🙂

[OldNick]

nobody seems to have mentioned the January window. We did not strengthen we weakened, never in the history of the PL has a team fighting relegation not strethened but weakened their team intentionally.

Ok, the 2 forwards who left were unlikely to set the world on fire, but at least they would have added options for Juric etc. We have 2/3 forwards (2 of which have been suffering from injuries)

Tantemount to self harm and a madness.

Before people jump on me and say they are crap (no doubt fair) but AA may have hit a couple of goals in the games and perhaps got us a few points.

 

[Oh no Mick Mills]

 

23 hours ago, S-Clarke said:

Maybe not half, but I'd suggest there are a few teams littered around L1 and L2 who would have given it more of a shot than we have. The standard of the PL has been really poor this year, so it's entirely possible that lower league teams would have been able to beat some prem sides, and over a course of a season 3 wins and a couple of draws for any competitive professional outfit should be achievable.

"The standard of the PL has been really poor this year" ...really? 

I think it's been one of the strongest PL ever. 

All three promoted teams are absolutely miles away from the other 17. 

Teams like Spurs and Man Utd are so far down the table because loads of smaller clubs are absolutely superb with quality all over the pitch. 

A poor premier league quality wise is when there's 6 to 8 rubbish teams like they're used to be ...hence why promoted clubs had a chance at survival.  

 

[Saint Fan CaM]

On 05/05/2025 at 16:40, Lighthouse said:

You would be wrong in thinking that because it clearly isn't true.

Possibly not L1 or L2, but I bet most teams in the lower half of the Championship would have gained as many points or more than us this season. Don’t delude yourself - we’ve been utterly dire and I mean in terms of performances, not just results or points gained.

[Lighthouse]

1 hour ago, Saint Fan CaM said:

Possibly not L1 or L2, but I bet most teams in the lower half of the Championship would have gained as many points or more than us this season. Don’t delude yourself - we’ve been utterly dire and I mean in terms of performances, not just results or points gained.

Thank you for telling me not to 'delude myself' whilst claiming that League 2 teams would only 'possibly' do better than us. Even bottom half Championship teams would give their right arm to have a combined strike force of Armstrong, Archer, BBD and Onuachu.

If we're as bad as everyone says we are, then sell our very small clan of PL quality players in summer, then we'll almost certainly finish rock bottom of the Championship next season... but we're not going to do that.

[Farmer Saint]

2 hours ago, OldNick said:

nobody seems to have mentioned the January window. We did not strengthen we weakened, never in the history of the PL has a team fighting relegation not strethened but weakened their team intentionally.

Ok, the 2 forwards who left were unlikely to set the world on fire, but at least they would have added options for Juric etc. We have 2/3 forwards (2 of which have been suffering from injuries)

Tantemount to self harm and a madness.

Before people jump on me and say they are crap (no doubt fair) but AA may have hit a couple of goals in the games and perhaps got us a few points.

 

No money available due to PSR - the Ramsdale transfer took us to the limit - however it would have been wasted money anyway. We were dead and buried last Summer after spending nearly 40% of our small(ish) budget to be worse than the team we had in the Championship.

[Saint Fan CaM]

22 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

Thank you for telling me not to 'delude myself' whilst claiming that League 2 teams would only 'possibly' do better than us. Even bottom half Championship teams would give their right arm to have a combined strike force of Armstrong, Archer, BBD and Onuachu.

If we're as bad as everyone says we are, then sell our very small clan of PL quality players in summer, then we'll almost certainly finish rock bottom of the Championship next season... but we're not going to do that.

Not sure how aware you’ve been of team selections this season, but both Armstrong and BBD were loaned out and I can’t recall Archer and Onuachu playing together. We may have too much about us to finish above ‘rock bottom’ of the league next season, but a mid-table finish is highly possible if the right appointments (and player sales) are not made. Can’t underestimate how crucial the job is.