awbb

VAR should be used for a clear and obvious errors, and that only.
 

I also think VAR should be challenge based. 20 seconds for opposing manager to request a challenge to the 4th official. At next stoppage, VAR takes a look but only for clear and obvious errors.
 

Today, for example, if Ten Haag challenged the 4th goal, VAR takes a look and says for the offside it is close and therefore not clear and obvious. Officials decision stands. No lines needed, 10 seconds is all it would take.
 

We could get in to how many challenges and whatnot, I like 1. Use it and get it wrong you lose it. Get it right you keep it.

IIRC he left a fairly snarky comment to the club tweet about him going to Peterbrough. I couldn't really blame him!

He’s got to be considered one of the best value signings we’ve ever made. £15k from Lincoln, or something equally ridiculous.

7 hours ago, Southend Blue said:

In fact it's sheer bloody nerves and anxiety for the most part, particularly when you've been part of something that been outside of the aforementioned promotion objective for the best part of 22 years and for the majority of it (we have been so out of touch) looked such an unreachable target, it's almost the club you follow has entered an alternate reality.  

22? 22?

Totally. Revenge for 07/08 too. Well up for that. 

I'll lend my voice to the cautious.

The Championship is utterly abject and ruthless in equal measure. It's incredibly difficult to perform to an average level consistently match by match, let alone well. The stars can align, of course, especially if a team has momentum, as we have seen with Ipswich this season.

Nothing would really surprise me regarding Huddersfield on Saturday. We could be as bad as Blackburn were last night and somehow find ourselves on 60 points at 5pm or play as well as we have in years and somehow contrive to lose. 

Geniunely, I hope Manning has seen that, despite what the analytics might say, our performances will be better when we press when we're out of possession and look to move the ball "vertically" at pace when in possession. That style of football is one that I enjoy watching and if there is any belief that a home crowd can make a difference, an intangible that most statistics, I suspect, will struggle to identify, having your fans enjoying the match will help.

7 minutes ago, ExiledAjax said:

I would. He looked class in Tampa in preseason but the club went and signed bloody Kasey Palmer on loan.

Worse than that. Palmer had already been on loan and been fine (though I had no ideas about allowing my Mrs to dabble in some light NTR, personally).

We signed Palmer for £3.5M that summer.

Madness.

41 minutes ago, mozo said:

It's a reference to a Man U fan vlogger who is known to be a bit of a clown anyway, but excelled himself on his video of himself enduring Utd losing to Chelsea, and it went a bit viral.

Incident in question - the last 3 or so minutes is all anyone need concern themselves with.

This man got upset and swears quite a bit, so don't bother if you are offended by such vulgarity.

It could be worse.

My non-league local side lost 1-0 at home today severely denting their playoff hopes to another team that had lost 6 in a row without scoring once.

I'd say we're phoning this one in from Marbs by the looks of it at the moment.

Delighted as I am with back to back wins there is no enjoyment to be had for the rest of the season since our season is over. 

It's largely dull, but there may be a chance for Manning to show us something against some opponents with something left to play for. There is also a mighty fine hypothetical on the final day...

Sunderland (A): Sammy Szmodics tore them apart in their last game. Their form prior to that has been fairly ropey, but 3 of the previous 4 defeats were to teams with parachute payments. I think that humbling at home will probably sting them into wanting to get a result against us, which may allow us to play to our strengths a bit. Albeit, really, neither team has anything but pride on the line.

Blackburn (H): Depending on how they get on at home to Southampton, they might not be completely free from relegation worries. If that's the case, again, they may need to look for points against us which plays to our strengths. Otherwise, they will almost certainly be happy with a point, with nothing to play for, which is generally a sign that we will phone in a performance and let them score an avoidable goal to take all 3 points. This could be a game to see Manning finally make a difference.

Hudderfield (H): Chances are, they're going to still be fighting for survival (they have Millwall at home and Preston away before us), so if they're desperate for the 3 points we'll find it easier and the match will be more entertaining than if they're going to be happy with a point which would bring Manning under the microscope again.

Norwich (A): Norwich are still likely to be fighting for the playoffs so will almost certainly come out try and beat us. Since we got promoted, we've played 12 times (11 in the league and once in the League Cup, this season), winning 1 of those games and drawing 3. Let's just say, miracles do happen, but getting anything out of this would be astonishing. Could be a Manning masterclass...

Rotherham (H): OK, Rotherham will certainly be down at this point. Could be on the beach (as we certainly will be) or could be fighting for every last scrap of pride available to them. Either way, this is a complete no-win situation for Manning. A win is expected, a draw does no-one any favours and a defeat would undo any good work that he may have achieved between now and then.

Stoke (A): I mean, the dream is surely to send Stoke down on the final day isn't it? At their own place? They've got a bit of a gap at the moment, with a couple of relegation 6 pointers to play (Huddersfield and Plymouth) so there is a delightful outside chance we could be in the position to do it. Such a sweet revenge for Pulis and them doing us in 07/08. The awfulness of watching them on Match of the Day for a decade. Rory Delap's throw ins and kicking Arsenal off the park every time they played them. We choked our chance to do Birmingham City a few years ago, IIRC, so would be pleasant to do it this time! Manning would buy himself a lot of respect from me if he could pull that off, given the chance!

Yesterday, I thought we were realistically about as 'on it' as we could have been, which, compared to the horrible efforts we've dialled in recently, was a relief more than anything.

Yes, Leicester had some great opportunities that Max dealt with (including a shocker of his own devising) but I thought we gave them a game and I don't think, when they factor in our penalty shouts, they can complain about it too much - that's football.

However, when push comes to shove, this performance (and result) is something we've already shown we can do; going toe-to-toe with a team with financial advantages over us and getting something out of it while playing to the strengths we have developed over the last couple of seasons.

Ultimately, the only reasonable metric I can hold LM to, bearing in mind the position we were in when he arrived, is to get us performing and stop us being so passive and/or toothless against teams that we should be better than, that we should be looking to take 3 points from. 

I get it, consistency of performance (let alone result) is a difficult task in The Championship, especially with what feels like our abysmal injury record, but Monday is another opportunity to show me that he has something and can genuinely make a difference.

Just now, redkev said:

Don’t mention the Southampton win ffs 

I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.

1 hour ago, The Original OTIB said:

Robots? Already got one.

404: Entertaining football not found.

11 minutes ago, Tim Monaghan said:

So the fans want to replace LM with Andy King

We talk about the owners never learning

Comedy. 
 

Most fans never wanted to get rid of Pearson and could well imagine the absolute shambles we see unfolding before us, as it’s not that far in to the past that we did something similar, only slightly less egregious.

Removing Manning is very unlikely to happen, but if it was, the cheapest and quickest option is to appoint someone internally and because of the idiotic cull of Pearson and his staff, King is the only creditable option.
 

Also, bear in mind that the title of the thread is to ask King to take the reins until the end of the season, not give him a 4 year contract.

1 minute ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Shame Lee Johnson for all his obsession with tactics, didn't necessarily often choose the right tactics for what he had.

Worst of all worlds..before we get onto the man-management, the tinkering, the duplications, the waste etc.

I was trying to stop myself from getting in to that and limit myself to where we were when NP took over and my understanding of cultural impact he had. 

But, yeah, LJ didn’t (and likely still doesn’t) have the chops to do it the way he wanted to but, god knows, the recruitment did him no favours!

Regarding Culture.
 

For me, Pearson altered the way our players thought and acted on the pitch.

After several years under LJ who was tactically obsessive where he appeared to coach that every phase in a match should trigger a specific action or reaction from each player in the team.

This caused issues in that, due to that and other coaching factors, the players seemed to lose the ability to take responsibility for themselves and their team mates on the pitch and as seeing now, players became scared of making mistakes and ironically made more of them because of it. 

Pearson changed this. He wanted our players to ‘all be leaders’ as the cliche says and made attempts to empower them to do that his focus was on general responsibility (rather than tactical responsibilities).

This was coupled with his desire to sort out the playing squad where there were a several players with attitudes that did not meet his standard (commonly accepted: Bakinson generally, Watkins not fancying training and Wells needing to remind himself how to be a good squad member are examples). This drove professionalism and team ethics. Lastly he made it clear that the disparity in wages was a hinderance to team dynamics and needed to be resolved.

Pearson also made the point that the whole club needed to be united and made more attempts to link the women’s team to the men’s.

The last time a manger changed our culture so drastically, he’d just taken over the mess left by our, now, Technical Director. Make of that what you will.

Manning is similar to Lee Johnson only his fixation is process as opposed to tactics. Ultimately the outcome, at this point, is the same.

It’s a legitimate argument to say that Pearson had achieved his remit and was therefore disposable, but his successor should have been far more attuned to the way our players had been coached to think and act. 

25 minutes ago, Cidre Monita said:

Great post and I totally agree. If the likes of Conway don’t want to sign a new contract then what is the point of us. His mate Scott couldn’t wait to get away….to the mighty Bournemouth! Obviously those two still talk and I imagine have a good laugh at the going’s on at the Gate. It’s hypothetical now of course, but you would think that TC would probably sign a contract if NP was here especially if he’d been backed in the summer with the club showing some ambition. 

I really fear for us next season if we lose the 3 experienced midfielders in addition to TC and possibly Pring and Knight. It sounds like we will be looking to bring in a beanpole foreign striker which should make for really attractive winning football next year!! 

I've not really seen it mentioned here, but, in my opinion, all of the stupid moves this season were down to the Scott sale. I'm not ITK by any means (and fully expect to be put right) but the departure of Alexander and the news that SL stepped in to do the negotiations, suggested to me, at least, that Alexander was put in an untenable position over it and felt he had to resign.

Partly, this may stem from SL's repeated statement that we don't stand in a players way when the PL comes sniffing (or any "bigger" club for that matter) so I can fully imagine a situation where PA played hard ball with Bournemouth (remember the initial bids were reported as being outright rejected with no apparent negotaition at all), using his many years of experience at Palace to determine what was the right deal for City and someone went over his head to SL (someone from Bournemouth, possibly, or Scott's agent, who knows). SL felt obliged to sell (because, you know, ego) and re-issued his decree (probably also referencing that we've been saying for months he's worth £25 million, we can't change now). PA stuck to his guns and that was that.

My point being is that if Alexander remained in the role. 1, we'd almost certainly have got more for Scott (or, because of the injury, kept him) and 2, No way Pearson would have got the boot, not for the nonsense spouted out at the time, anyway.

Ergo: Tins remains in a role he's eminently suited to. SL's ego is in check & JL has no real influence on football operations.

Fair play to Cresswell, what a chin he has! I’ve not seen a footballer take a hook like that and not crumple to the floor in years!

Something to be said for being lucky rather than good I suppose!

Keep it up, Max.

It's great to get 3 wins on the bounce. 

I don't think we'd have seen what we saw yesterday had we not grabbed those 6 points at home from games in which, on other days, we might not have been able to get over the line. Confidence helps so much.

The near impossibility in The Championship is to be able to do that game in and game out. It needs your Manager/Head Coach to get their plan right and have the players execute it. Most of the time, you need the opposition to help you by doing the opposite.

So, it's fair to say, I'm not expecting us to tear teams apart, yet, as much as I would like it! If we put Birmingham in our pocket and give Milwall a kicking at AG on New Year's Day, I might... just might start to get excited.

I'm not ******* bouncing until we've done something, after all. 

Best overhead kick is this marvellous effort.

As others have said, my pulse is not exactly racing for later on.
 

LM is on a hiding to nothing as I don’t believe the squad will be able to get results playing the brand of football that he has been brought into implement in a time frame that gives us any hope of hitting the extremely tough targets that Pearson was removed for allegedly not meeting.
 

Indeed, I suspect we’re going to be in for constipated slogfests as we labour our way, trying to play a style of possession based football similar to that which failed so spectacularly under O’Driscoll.
 

What I would caveat that with, a lot of the football played under Pearson wasn’t exactly edge of your seat stuff, so really, if I’m being fair, it’s purely about results and results alone. The aesthetics can come later.
 

So, of course I’ll support the team and hope he’s a success, not much would bring me greater happiness to be proven wrong with my initial, downbeat, assessment.

1 hour ago, Steve Watts said:

Although a throwback to this would guarantee a purchase from me....

 

I still can't believe Keegan missed that header.