Dr Balls

@Davefevswe still don’t look good at doing it and a repeat of the first opposition goal at home this season (scored by Sunderland and gift wrapped by Naismith) never seems far away. We did eventually play long but unfortunately it was often aimless and just easy pickings for the Stoke defence. Both teams were poor today, but their defence was far superior to ours and didn’t give away silly goals. One other criticism I would make of much of our play today was how many times we missed decent crossing opportunities by not taking it on first time. Could be a confidence thing but so many missed chances to cross the ball into the box quickly and put pressure on their defence.

As the man in the supposed “hot seat”, when is the heat going to be turned up on Pearson’s rear end? Today’s performance was a shocker. Large numbers of supporters leaving well before the end, a lot of booing, and nobody wanting to clap the players off. A bad home defeat against West Brom on Boxing Day is on the cards, given the relative current form of the 2 teams, and things could get a lot more toxic at the Gate by then. Expecting a very small crowd for the FA Cup game against Swansea and generally little enthusiasm and a lot of disillusionment amongst most fans on the basis of different manager, different players, same s**t! The only constant is the ownership, hence the questions now being raised in some quarters.

Can I convert my current full season ticket to a half-season ticket covering the first half of the season and get half my money back for not bothering with the second half of the season? I am sure that would be a fairly popular option right now!

Sorry but I find it hard to remember any really stellar performances from Andy King in a City shirt. He seems to be a Pearson favourite but as far as I can see he’s not good enough for midfield and he’s not a central defender so why is he being picked ahead of players who actually know those positions? Until we stop conceding stupid goals we will remain in trouble. And playing Andy King in central defence does not seem like a good way to shore up a leaky defence. As for playing out from the back, we always seem to be one slip from disaster. Playing high risk balls around your own penalty area just adds to the chances of giving away silly and unnecessary goals.

Bringing on Martin and going long against their back line was a complete waste of time. Against a 6ft 6in right back and a 40 year old centre back surely playing at pace would be a far better option. It seems this is always Pearson’s last throw of the dice when chasing a game rather than thinking what might actually work against a particular opponent.

That said we could have been playing for most of the last 4 hours and I am still not convinced we would have scored a second goal. Just not clinical enough!

He let a lot go, hardly showed a card for 60+ minutes but then started flashing cards around like a supply teacher trying to do GCSE revision for those not expected to pass the exam. And even then he missed a shocker of a tackle by Campbell their number 10, who he later yellow carded for the retaliation for Pring’s yellow-card-worthy foul. Also booked Weimann for complaining when he missed a clear corner when Semenyo had been tangling with Souttar.

Don’t drop Weimann, just don’t play him at right wing back where he is wasted. That’s one of my biggest gripes with Pearson. Too many players played out of position, in some forlorn hope that they will somehow pick up how to play there, instead of trying to forge a team that is greater than the sum of its parts. The latter is what I perceive good managers do, and that usually means playing players in their best positions, not trying to shoehorn them into some formation that doesn’t best suit the players you have.

We desperately need defenders who can defend. We have to stop conceding stupid goals. A back 3 of Vyner in the middle with Pring and Tanner either side looked better than today’s combination with King and Naismith, neither of whom are defenders. In some sports they have a stat that shows net benefit or deficit for time spent on the pitch in terms of scores. On that basis both King and Naismith would be in seriously negative territory right now, and that speaks volumes to our problems.

7th largest city in England. Large hinterland for support. Not had top flight football for 40+ years. Overtaken by clubs like Bournemouth and Swansea. Looking at relegation rather than promotion. This is a failed project by Lansdown. And there is no evidence that he knows how to improve it. Being a developing club that sells its best players but cannot actually improve its position in terms of league position is a seriously flawed plan. There is no profit to be made in the Championship, so why is there so little focus on success. It’s not like we can break even on the current strategy. In the short term we need a manager that plays defenders in defence and stops conceding stupid goals. Teams that don’t concede don’t lose. We give away stupid goals playing 2 midfielders in central defence and we lose those games. Something has to change otherwise League 1 and derbies with the Sags await. That is not a prospect that fills me with any joy.

Famara. Whoa aho! Famara. Whoa aho! Perfect. Fam can score against England but little chance to make any difference to the result.

Hats off to JP. Fair amount of homework needed on the Qatar team, but at least we all know some of the Senegal team, and not just Fam. That said the guy who kept mentioning Bath City in relation to Semenyo really needed to do a bit more homework not get obsessed with one detail! Probably. Presume the Iran players stayed silent again as well.

You are wrong. Even in the 70s and 80s at the height of football hooliganism, when an opposition player was clearly badly injured and stretchered off they would not have been abused and might even have got a clap. It shows a real lack of class to abuse a badly injured player.

The Swansea result was fair, Sheffield United we were robbed, and today we were also the better team and had the better chances. 2 points from 9 is not great at home, but those performances against some of the less good teams in this division would have resulted in wins. The bigger concern is our inconsistency and poor displays against teams like Birmingham and Reading. However after the World Cup break we have a run of games that are eminently winnable and if we can’t get results from those then we should start to worry.

Definitely Watford fans started clapping after the Last Post finished and then it seemed large sections of the rest of crowd joined in and the ref decided to blow his whistle. That said it did seem to be the longest version of the Last Post I have ever heard…

Until a player is actually so badly injured by foul play in the penalty area that no referee could ignore it (I actually said life-threatening during the match) then we won’t get a penalty. It is beyond an anomaly, because we have seen such soft ones given against us, and we know from the Hull game alone and the PGMOL apology that we should have had at least one penalty awarded but didn’t, and the one against shouldn’t have been awarded. That sums up the last 2-3 years of bad officiating that we have suffered.

Gosling got a clap from a few of us in the Lansdown. Clear when a player goes down like that without contact that it’s a real injury. The frustration was towards his own bench but the ref was right not to stop the game immediately for his injury as it wasn’t a risk to his health. However still shows a lack of class from our fans to abuse him in that situation.

Good luck Oskar. If you are in the Children’s, I will come and say “hi”.

He has more than one. His older brother is the doctor.

I didn’t put 2 and 2 together until I read a bit further down the article and realised that this was Matt Smith’s dad. And I hadn’t realised that both Matt’s father and grandfather had been both professional footballers and doctors, which is a pretty unusual combination in itself. https://www.oldjoe.co.uk/article/two-goals-footballing-doctor I trained with Chris Sutton’s brother who broke the family mould by not becoming a footballer, even though by all accounts he was at least as good as his brother. And the only other doctor who I can think of who was a professional footballer was that well-known Brazilian smoker Socrates. Didn’t seem to affect how he played though!

Firstly it’s the Barnett Formula and devolution. Wales gets more money per capita than England, especially the South West, plus the Welsh splash big money on Cardiff. It was the same with the electrification of the GWR main line and cutting the route to Temple Meads. Secondly it’s the whole crap about England “and Wales” Cricket Board, so having to have a Welsh franchise and the very misplaced assumption that anyone from Gloucestershire or Somerset would be willing to go to Cardiff to see a game. That said Welsh Fire have been so hopeless and badly supported that there is a rumour about moving it to Bristol to see if it can do better in a bigger cricket market. Probably nothing to it, but it wouldn’t be the daftest idea that the ECB have ever had. And maybe Mr Gould might be in favour…

King did fine replacing Naismith. Certainly felt more solid with him there, rather than an accident waiting to happen which is how many of us seem to feel about Naismith. The question is what we do against Brum on the weekend. Assuming Naismith is unavailable do we continue with King in that role or consider changing things around? Atkinson was my MOTM today. Solid in defence, and great coming forward. Could he perhaps go central and Pring or Tanner come into the defence?

It’s frustrating as the crosses were poor quality as were the set pieces, especially when neither play to the strengths of Wells and Semenyo who are better running on to through balls on the ground. My reasoning behind replacing Semenyo with Conway was that at least it gave us someone who likes to get their head on crosses. That said we did little in possession a lot of the time and we were a bit ponderous in attack, which allowed Coventry to get lots of men behind the ball, which is exactly what QPR did at the weekend. There were also a number of wasted shirt corners. If you have Atkinson and Vyner up from the back why play it short and not get into the penalty box? Certainly areas for improvement. Whether we have the personnel to enact those changes is another matter altogether…

The problem is that at the moment all of these close calls seem to be going against us. The linesman in front of the Lansdown was useless. That’s why he got such an ironic cheer when he finally gave an offside decision for us after missing the one for the second goal. QPR are a decent side but just like last season at home against them, we have been up against both them and the officials, which means that we are always going to find it difficult, on top of our own defensive weaknesses.

Not just that decision. The linesman in front of the Lansdown was useless. That’s why he got such a big cheer when he finally flagged for an offside in the 40th minute. He had missed at least 2 obvious ones before that, potentially including their second goal.