RATINGS

[Sturny]

2 minutes ago, Esmond Million's Bung said:

For clarity I think Pack and Brownhill are extremely talented footballers and we will do well to hold on to Brownhill as he matures he is a real talent and Pack is our best captain since Louis.

However we are now into the 3rd season of Pack, Smith and Brownhill as our centre midfield options and all too often for my liking they have nights like last night, where nobody takes responsibility to make sure that the defence are adequately protected, it is left to chance far too often and that is clearly not good enough, short of my idea of fitting them both with electric shock collars, then I believe we need a new face somebody who can organise.

Hoping Smith comes back from his injury like the player he was half of last season. 

[Esmond Million's Bung]

9 minutes ago, Sturny said:

Harsh rating indeed. His passing was good as always but he couldn't compete aerially vs their midfield 

His passing wasn't the issue, his wanderings were the problem for most of the night, as has been pointed out 3 of their goals came directly from the distribution of their keeper, distribution that totally took our centre midfield pairing out of the whole equation and had both full backs playing catch up and failing, don't you think think that is too much to be just a coincidence? or perhaps a tactic because somebody spotted that neither had dropped back to cover at least on the halfway line and leaving the central area wide open as a consequence?

Hence my hard rating.

[Esmond Million's Bung]

18 minutes ago, JonDolman said:

Who do we bring in that is better than the 3 main midfielders we have? I think they are all top championship players. Smith is excellent at tackling and covering, and maybe we missed him last night. But like i said earlier, we were playing very attacking as a side which inevitably leaves gaps. They can't be everywhere. If we maybe left out Taylor last night and played another midfielder and went 4141/433, then I think then we have an extra body to deal with their 3 man midfield. Barnes was always going to be the hardest player to pick up. Our centre backs had 2 top strikers to deal with, and Pack and Brownhill had Livermore and Barry to press, as well as dealing with Barnes who is a bloody good player in the space behind the strikers. It was an attacking gamble that on another day might have worked as we created loads of chances. But we were always going to look vulnerable defensively imo.

I don't get paid too make those types of decisions.

Yes they are all top championship players but you seem to be missing the point, even when Smith plays the same thing is still likely to occur because they all to often lack organisation and discipline to keep their shape, they cannot keep being taken out of the game by a quick roll, throw or kick from the keeper or a ball over the top because, they are both in attacking positions, when one should be holding.

They don't have to be everywhere, when one goes forward the other should instinctively drop in if he sees his team mate advancing or perhaps they talk/shout at each other "i'm going" was the shout when I played.

Let me repeat do you honestly believe that the 3 goals that started in their keepers hands and then put past Pack and Brownhill to take them out of the game was just a coincidence? because I don't, I have been saying for over 2 years, wait until both centre midfielders are out of position in front of the ball when a move breaks down and put a ball over the top or past them and it's wide open down the middle, the full backs try to cover and that leaves space wide, take a look a games that we have lost over the past 2 seasons and see how many times this happens.

The defence needs protection and for the 4 games before last night they pretty much got it but last night we lapsed back into gung ho attacking and we paid the price.

What you should be focusing on is not that WBA have well paid players and were in the prem last season, that's just an excuse, we were almost certainly the better team and created more chances and could and probably should have won last night but you cannot win games leaving so much space in centre midfield as we did.

[AppyDAZE]

16 minutes ago, JonDolman said:

What made us look the better team in a lot of the game was partly down to our 2 midfielders pushing up and pressing. But our strengths was also our weakness. I'm sure if we'd done the same vs Sheffield united then we would have created far more chances but also been open on the break. It's down to LJ to sort out the balance. I'm certainly happy though with how things are going. On another day we score a goal or two and then it's a completely different game. 

So, to sum up. Sometimes Lee goes a bit Kevin Keegan

No, to be honest i think you pretty much summed up how I feel about things.

Not at all bad, when you consider the league.

[Portland Bill]

18 hours ago, Davefevs said:

Just watched the game on tv (was out earlier).

We started so well, think we got a bit carried away, and we seemed to find it easy to get the ball into their final third....but boy did they catch us on the break.

Lots of positives.....with the ball....but away from home I didn’t see enough desire to work backwards.

Easy to blame individuals, or score them low, but I think certain players like Hunt and Kelly were left exposed by their wingers, and as a result were rarely able to cover Kalas and Webster.

I didn’t see enough of what I expected to be two banks of four with Weimann dropping in.

We certainly created some chances though, could’ve easily been 4-4.

Couple of things...not seen replays.

- did Webster get the ball for the pen?

- thought Hunt was shoved for their 4th

No ratings from me.

Just watching the game again, Webster 100% didn’t get any touch of the ball, the most nailed on penalty you will see. 

Personally I didn’t see any foul on Hunt, what the hell he thought he was playing at by doing a Cruyff turn there and then, is beyond me! 

[Davefevs]

9 hours ago, Esmond Million's Bung said:

Sorry but you couldn't be more wrong, I cannot believe for the life of me that LJ instructed both Brownhill and Pack to just bomb on and get ahead of the ball and not leave a holding midfielder and leave centre midfield wide open to counter attack, which is what happened for the first 3 goals, I think they got over excited because of the way that we started..

My view too.

Could do with watching it back, but I don’t think our wingers gave our fullbacks enough protection, and therefore our fullbacks didn’t protect our centrebacks.

If anything, pressing their CBs, created space to play passes into their front three, who popped off a pass, and then ran in behind. I didn’t see enough of Weimann and Taylor dropping onto Barry and Livermore and making them go backwards and sideways.  We might’ve been better in hindsight to go 460 without the ball.  But that’s easy in hindsight.  I did say beforehand that I thought it was a game for us to have two banks of 4....that didn’t happen.

We still played some lovely stuff, cut them open fairly comfortably, but ultimately undone by clinical finishing and errors at the back.

We showed a lot of spirit and a lot of things to learn....plus bring a number of us back down to earth a bit.  That’s no bad thing. 

[Davefevs]

42 minutes ago, Portland Bill said:

Just watching the game again, Webster 100% didn’t get any touch of the ball, the most nailed on penalty you will see. 

Just seen it back, yep, no arguments there!

Personally I didn’t see any foul on Hunt, what the hell he thought he was playing at by doing a Cruyff turn there and then, is beyond me! 

Defo a push, not a big one, but a foul for me.

 

[Esmond Million's Bung]

14 hours ago, Davefevs said:

My view too.

Could do with watching it back, but I don’t think our wingers gave our fullbacks enough protection, and therefore our fullbacks didn’t protect our centrebacks.

If anything, pressing their CBs, created space to play passes into their front three, who popped off a pass, and then ran in behind. I didn’t see enough of Weimann and Taylor dropping onto Barry and Livermore and making them go backwards and sideways.  We might’ve been better in hindsight to go 460 without the ball.  But that’s easy in hindsight.  I did say beforehand that I thought it was a game for us to have two banks of 4....that didn’t happen.

We still played some lovely stuff, cut them open fairly comfortably, but ultimately undone by clinical finishing and errors at the back.

We showed a lot of spirit and a lot of things to learn....plus bring a number of us back down to earth a bit.  That’s no bad thing. 

I agree with what you say, my only problem is this is nearly 3 years in the making and the same personnel involved in centre midfield, how long does it take for them to communicate with each other?

Going onto the so called foul on Hunt, the bottom line is he needed to be far far stronger and far far more decisive than he was.

 

[...]

On 18/09/2018 at 22:38, Esmond Million's Bung said:

It's my opinion, you cannot concede 4 goals against a team who never had to play very well to score those goals and repeat the same mistakes, the naivety was in central midfield for the first 3 goals and the game was over.

This proves you don't understand LJ's logic.