Jump to content
IGNORED

Back to square one


Clutton Caveman

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, Badger08 said:

One loss in 7, 2nd in the league. Are you lot having a ******* laugh? Jokers absolute jokers.

I really hope SL pulls out all of his money as some of you will NEVER be happy. 

Just do it Steve, sell the club. 

But not the land, hotel, arena and conference centre??

Im only joking, I get your frustrations. Let’s sit tight and look at it objectively in 3 games time ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, 054123 said:

But not the land, hotel, arena and conference centre??

Im only joking, I get your frustrations. Let’s sit tight and look at it objectively in 3 games time ?

I must be in the minority, but it really wouldn't surprise me if we get a point at Bournemouth and beat Norwich.

We are picking up points playing poorly, I'd love to see what we can do when we really kick into gear 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Clutton Caveman said:

Can anyone tell me how the performance of the last 2 games have been ANY improvement on the trash that LJ served up for 2 years

No direction

No urgency

No aggression

No purpose

Absolutely clueless

I guess that what we get when we take the cheap option, even Tinnion was critical

Genuine question - why are we in second place in table?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can understand some peoples frustration, on the surface we have looked a little Johnson-esque at times. The swapping of strikers when we hadn't created a chance for the starting pair and ending with 4 strikers today feels very LJ. Along with 4 wins followed by a defeat and nearly a 2nd.

What is different is trying to get a system in place and sticking to it, players seem to know their job and carry it out. But the big difference to me is the improved movement. Actually the last 2 games have highlighted that by a few occasions we haven't done that. Under LJ the movement around centre midfield was non existent , that has improved a lot. I have been disappointed with a few things over the last 3 games, but we have to remember the players that aren't available yet. The true quality of this team won't be shown until we have a fully fit squad. I admit, that may not be this season the way things are going.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 games into a season with an irregular pre-season and Holden's not had 2 of the midfielder's he probably was basing a chunk of his midfield around and now missing 2 senior CB's. We're 2nd with 1 defeat, the way some of the posts on here you'd imagine we were 15th and had lost half our games. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Clutton Caveman said:

Can anyone tell me how the performance of the last 2 games have been ANY improvement on the trash that LJ served up for 2 years

No direction

No urgency

No aggression

No purpose

Absolutely clueless

I guess that what we get when we take the cheap option, even Tinnion was critical

Why I don’t log into OTIB very often 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Matthew me said:

I must be in the minority, but it really wouldn't surprise me if we get a point at Bournemouth and beat Norwich.

We are picking up points playing poorly, I'd love to see what we can do when we really kick into gear 

If we got 3 more points then 17 from 30 wouldn’t be bad.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, GTFABM said:

Today no i probably can’t. But wash your bedsheets and think about the rest of the season before going OTT, it’s not all doom and gloom. Everyone has an opinion and rightly so but just think bigger picture

I think telling @Clutton Caveman to “wash bedsheets” is ‘going OTT’ - he or she is just raising concerns, that’s all, I don’t understand the need to overreact at someone having a reasonable opinion ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, E.G.Red said:

It’s interesting listening to both RB & Talksport2 who both covered the game, that they didn’t think either team were poor. They seemed to think it was quite exciting with City shading it in the first half & Swansea for the first 20 mins of the 2nd half. 

would be interested to read the replies to @havanatopia's post. I only heard the first couple of sentences after the games but Tinnion wasn't actually very complimentary about either team - I didn't think it was a bad game and the group message I'm in wasn't too disheartened by the performance - if Tinnion's coments were anything to go by, the staff might not have been impressed by how it played out. I think we will mix it up by taking some long shots, being a bit more direct & playing a few percentage balls over the next few games - it won't be pretty but it'll cause havoc were we might previously have passed it around the back, waiting to unlock the defence.

5 hours ago, 22A said:

Since getting back into the Championship it seems every season, City will be doing well, than an international break occurs and it all falls apart. This season, won the opening four  league games, had a break and two draws and a home defeat.

Last season, that Covid break had the same result;  going well and play off material. Season resumes and we drop down the table.

That's how I felt it went but last season's "collapse" started  in mid february with the defeat to Brimingham (yes we beat Derby after that but it was the only win for a while). It's true though, we tend to do well in conjested fixture periods and then fall, dropping points as the fixtures spread out a bit - I think Holden is trying to make our playing style more sustainable.

2 hours ago, Lrrr said:

7 games into a season with an irregular pre-season and Holden's not had 2 of the midfielder's he probably was basing a chunk of his midfield around and now missing 2 senior CB's. We're 2nd with 1 defeat, the way some of the posts on here you'd imagine we were 15th and had lost half our games. 

This is also why I think Holden was reluctant to make subs too early today - on the first day of the season we swapped Massengo for Bakinson at half time, had he done that today (knowing we had 20 'fit' first team players at half time), we'd have been hamstrung by any injuries in the second half. Not making changes meant the formation could change with personnel changes if required. Totally vindicated IMO (albeit as a result of a penalty), but it still meant we could properly go for it when we had the chance.

If this is square one, I expect Holden to act on it and am reasonably optimistic about it. 8 points from the next 7 wouldn't be the end of the world and that would be 6 points less than what we've managed so far.

I think Reading will fall away, but nothing catastrophic but they've not had the toughest of starts and Blackburn will surely come up the table a bit, having won conviningly in a few games. We've not had a particularly hard start, the players are feeling it physically and teams will start to suss us out but we go into a decent run of fixtures with the variety you only get in the championship.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I said it before and I'll say it again, I'm not seeing progress, I'm seeing the same issues we had before, only disguised by a great start in terms of results largely down to the opening games being against weaker teams. Today was the first real challenging game we've had and we drew at home with a large equaliser, it's not a loss but it's also not a promotion chasing result. Swansea will be contenders this season, to make any kind of statement we should be beating them at home and at the very least putting in a strong performance, we did neither. 

Those who are happy with Holden can look at the league and remain positive, they have every right to do so right now but I think it'll be a different situation come 2021.

I'm still very critical of playing 3 in midfield and only actually playing one midfielder with a striker and a winger/second striker in Weimann and Paterson when we literally have a massive selection of midfielders just screams out that there is an issue with the gameplan/ tactics. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Middlesbrough was very poor but not too unhappy with today.

Not too bad, reasonable amounts of possession- didn't concede too many chances. Have I some reservations or at least some areas of room for improvement? Yes- but overall and especially given the injuries, things seem to be ticking along. That said I think the midfield could just be a bit more of a natural fit, not least as the nature of the season means we need to rest and rotate somewhat- get the adage of not changing a winning team but it's a tough old season schedule wise...

Schedule aside, I think we're more like top 6 challengers than top 2, if I'm honest- mind you Reading based on output are in a false position yet they're 5 pts clear! 7 games, 51 shots, yet 11 goals- none of them own goals and 1 goal conceded, 19 pts! 25 shots on target for, said 11 goals for, 16 against and 1 against.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Spike said:

I'm still very critical of playing 3 in midfield and only actually playing one midfielder with a striker and a winger/second striker in Weimann and Paterson when we literally have a massive selection of midfielders just screams out that there is an issue with the gameplan/ tactics. 

It’s more likely because Pato and Weimann can play the style of midfielder Holden wants to use whereas seemingly Nagy and Massengo aren’t that type of player. Fully expect Walsh and Williams to be in when fit.  Weimann started pre-season with minimal injuries upfront, only moved back to Cm after Williams injury if I recall.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, Davefevs said:

We came up against a team that is likely to be top 6.

We played a team that changed their shape pre-game to be more defensive because they were playing City (3412 to 352), playing an extra holding midfielder.

We gifted them their goal - well taken though....and they sat in even more to stop us after that.  It’s quite difficult to break down when a team put men behind the ball.  You know that though!

We worked the ball up the pitch pretty well, using Brunt....but we did lack cutting edge.  Our best play came from Semenyo in the channels.

We aren’t at full-strength, that’s a fact.  Others teams contend with this too, but it’s unusual to have so many injuries this early in the season.

I saw plenty of purpose, we built attacks.

Clueless? We drew 1-1 in a game where we weren’t outplayed.

Are you expecting 4-0 every week?

 

 

No but 3-0 would be nice

Link to comment
Share on other sites

34 minutes ago, The Horse With No Name said:

Why ? Because people have opinions ?

Because their opinions are just a series of knee jerk reactions. Win a game, we’re gonna win the league. Lose a game, the manager doesn’t have a clue and needs to be sacked. 

Without meaning to sound like MA, football is played by humans against other humans. Some will make mistakes, some will have brilliant moments, some will be feeling confident, some less so. When teams are at a similar standard, as is the case across the championship, luck and getting the rub of the green can literally make or break the result of each game. You can only coach players to help them make the correct decisions more often than not. You can’t just simply coach a team to win as their are too many variables involved. Even Pep Or Klop with a team of world beaters can’t get it right all the time. The fact is we’re 2nd in the league and, overall, Holden has made an unbelievably good start to his reign. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Spike said:

I said it before and I'll say it again, I'm not seeing progress,

progress is a difficult one to gauge, but Holden is trying to make us a possession based side, and largely he is succeeding.  Last season, LJ’s counter-attacking method (even at home) saw us chase shadows and as a home crowd, it was bloody awful to watch us struggle to win it back and then give it away quickly.  We rarely built up a head of steam / pressure under LJ, yet under Hokden we have possession to start to do that.  Don’t get me wrong possession without creativity is pointless, as is possession in our own half.  But yesterday against a supposedly strong passing team we had 57% possession and we did create “territory” after going a goal behind....it stopped Swansea.  Yep, we didn’t create much, but Swansea set-up to make it hard, and they did.  But I see positives in we can at least stop teams passing the time away in a game that we are chasing.

There are easy / lazy comments like “we lose that under LJ”, but I do think Swansea would’ve seen out that last 25-30 minutes last season, because they’d have been able to keep the ball, because we’d got knackered chasing them for 60-65 minutes.  That is the “beauty” (wrong word admittedly) of playing possession based football....you haven’t wasted all your energy chasing the opposition.  Mentally it’s more tiring running without the ball than with it.

I'm seeing the same issues we had before, only disguised by a great start in terms of results largely down to the opening games being against weaker teams. Today was the first real challenging game

I’d say we’ve had 7 challenging games, from freshly promoted Cov on a high, a potential opening game banana skin with a few players having been away on international duty too.

Stoke (a) expected to be top half, many pundits suggesting top 6 (not me, top half about right)

Wednesday (h) we actually beat Barry Bannan, a game he didn’t dominate.  They are a mid-table side without 12pt deduction

Forest (a) might be on a poor start, but a team packed with talent who will be top half / maybe even play off hopefuls if they find form

Barnsley (a) poor start but a different proposition under Struber.  We didn’t take advantage of them being without a manager, and bar a penalty we’d have sneaked a win.

Boro (h) a mid-table to top half side on paper.

and then Swansea yesterday.  I’m not saying it’s was a group of death set of fixtures but there was no 3-point banker either.

we've had and we drew at home with a large equaliser, it's not a loss but it's also not a promotion chasing result. Swansea will be contenders this season, to make any kind of statement we should be beating them at home and at the very least putting in a strong performance, we did neither.

“Should be beating them” - if only it worked like that.  Performance wasn’t great agree, but we are a bit threadbare at the back, a key midfielder out, and a draw is fine.

Those who are happy with Holden can look at the league and remain positive, they have every right to do so right now but I think it'll be a different situation come 2021.

I don’t need to look at the table, we are t the second best team in the league, but we aren’t that bad either.  We e seen some weaknesses exposed, but they can be put right or at least lessened..

I'm still very critical of playing 3 in midfield and only actually playing one midfielder with a striker and a winger/second striker in Weimann and Paterson when we literally have a massive selection of midfielders just screams out that there is an issue with the gameplan/ tactics.

I think it’s a blend that worked better against some of our early opponents, and has showed a few cracks against the better.  Hopefully Dean sees that too.  City are a team that needs some / more players to rise above the 6/10 to get a result.  Swansea are a high budget team don’t forget.

The game plan needs 3 or 4 players to really perform.  2 or 3 didn’t even achieve 6/10 yesterday, yet we weren’t dominated / bossed.  Too easy to only see the downsides yesterday.  There were plenty of positives, but you have to look harder to see them....faults / negatives are easy to see.

⬆️⬆️⬆️

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, Wanderingred said:

Not joining this bickering but one thing I will say is that early signs seem to suggest we are continuing the LJ pattern of performing better away from home. Four home games so far and we have looked pretty poor for three and a half of them.

But this time we can't put it down to fans shouting abuse at certain players.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...