Davefevs

Part guess work, part I don’t like him!

I saw one Tweeter saying it was 85% done! What does that even mean? Burnley don’t even know what division they are in next season yet. My own thoughts are that nothing has happened yet, other than keeping channels open.

At least one relegated club ain’t going up! Big repercussions for Leeds and Southampton if they don’t go up. Suspect Martin will lose his job. Norwich last season of PPs. West Brom’s PPs finished last season. Hull the outsider, their PPs finished years ago!

Maybe if they communicated the strategy, budgets (not how much) and owner funding better, nobody would be under any illusions.

That’s incredible been Tinnion said he only won 2 of his first 87 games! FFF Front Foot Football. All about attacking intent. Didn’t change his subs that were ready when they conceded. Ashton jr, Recruitment.

When I used to do Gillingham and back in a day for work (not Bristol City cup ties) that was why stop-off for a jam doughnut and double espresso!

They don’t play for draws

Think that cap is in addition to the other stuff.

Just another goal from a pull-back!

Likes the HPC!

Because The Who wrote the song “Substitute”.

I had no idea how to spell this word so avoided using it. Now I know.

Just a small point (sorry), but when we say “wage would be available….” that assumes “another player” is just a wage cost, and doesn’t need a fee also. Unless we can get another freebie, it’s probably not a binary wage discussion.

The bit for me is that if we have top-half budget (say 10th), have top facilities, e.g. HPC, a top young head-coach, excellent recruitment, we should be looking to beat our position based on budget. But I think he overstates how good some of those things are. I’d suggest it would be bottom half borefest

How many usernames can you recall? Like Warwick Davis’s Tenable….might be Twentyable!

At the end of the day trying to get someone to break ranks and tell you exactly what they were told and by whom isn’t gonna happen, and will still probably be met with cynicism. And ultimately, so what, my view is “something” happened to change things, and it’s played out well. Taking all “stories” aside… On the back of a losing run, LM’s approach vs Swansea was to go ultra-cautious. He said it himself. We won the game with a different “intent” in the final 25 mins. Had Placheta’s chance gone in, or Ronald not had his McDonald shoes on, it would’ve been Swansea taking the lead. That’s football though. Following game v West Brom, despite a win the previous game, and an opportunity to not be ultra-cautious, he went the same way. Denied West Brom for 30 minutes and we had a 1on1 from a clearance, until Furlong inverted and then it was only a matter of time. It doesn’t matter if it was their first shot on target, it was coming. 2-0 early in second half, and not until last 15-20 (with subs) did we give it a go. So my reading into LM is that his under-pressure MO is to go cautious. He likes structure, he doesn’t like chaos. When opponents create chaos, he appears not to be able to process it. Leicester it changed. And so on since, in the main. According to Hoggy, they didn’t change anything. Hogs fly!

Excellent post…and what I was gonna add was… …there is a big difference between “losing the dressing room” (I hate that phrase) and what happened here (all allegedly). I never thought he’d lost the players, because I think the players like him / his methods. What “can” happen is that you lose a bit of faith in the method / approach as it’s not working (poor performance and results), and a good bunch of pros (as that’s what we have) will feel comfortable to suggest ways to “problem solve”…but in the preparation, ie the approach / gameplan, not during the 90. You don’t need context, you can just make your own judgement as to how far or not it came from one side or the other…or somewhere near the middle. I think you’ll find one poster’s “reliable person” is another poster’s “bullshit”. It’s down to you to decide who you think is worth believing or not. There are a couple of posters on here who go quietly about their “work” on here, but they slip in the odd nugget from time to time. They might slip into your DMs from time to time. It’s probably a bit of a burden for them knowing stuff and not divulging it.

Think @Silvio Dante has in part answered, but for me a mix of everything. A bit of “it’s not working” from LM to “we need to do it a bit different gaffer” from the players. I’m glad it’s happened, however it’s happened. Had he carried on with the pre-Easter style I don’t think his future here would’ve looked very bright. No. 41 points from 30 games post-LM 21 points from 15 games pre-LM Only a smidge behind. Agree. This excellent run has helped LM though.

It’s verbal diarrhoea, made only worse by PA being brought in for his Commercial expertise!

My view only Kibs. What I saw in some of the games you reference were settle into low / mid block, only pressing off of preset trigger once in block (no idea of the coaching lingo but I’d call it it “block to press”), and if we had to wait until we’d been forced back before winning the ball, we’d then counterattack from deep. Perfect for Southampton for example, who overcommit their full-backs forward and leave huge spaces for their CBs to cover. We know they’ll build patterns from deep that means pressing can leave you open, so first instinct is sit in. Doing that against a much weaker Swansea is a different kettle of fish. What I’ve seen since Easter is us pressing higher up the pitch, not reverting in first instance into a block, trying to win it earlier, so we can attack an unsettled defence. If we can’t then, at that point, we will drop into the block (let’s call it “press to block”). A different emphasis / intent. Theres a guy on Twitter - Bristol City FM (he’s the Football Manager researcher for City) - who explains these things better than me. But placing an intent to press just 10 yards higher up the pitch has made a big difference. We stop our opponent building patterns and getting into the middle third as easily as they did. Thats my my view, anyway. It feels very different to majority of pre-Easter.

Yep, stalemate. Agreed. Which was a far better “result” that Bramhall tearing down the left side at NYS in October.

Preston: 15/16 - £0 16/17 - £2.194m 17/18 - £9.683m 18/19 - £0.149m 19/20 - £7.018m 20/21 - £0.725m 21/22 - £0.302m 22/23 - £0.786m Boy we’ve wasted a load!

Which is why I positioned my opinion / thoughts exactly as I did. Did I say “fact”?

It’s funny, because when LM said that, I was indeed buzzing from the result, but I also said that it didn’t take Albert Einstein to work out that a specific approach to 1) a high possession Championship team like Saints or 2) a PL team like West Ham, wasn’t gonna be the model for most “bread and butter” games. So to say we were happy, was more a case of happy for those couple / few games, and not happy at all at some of the other games around that period. I might be a million miles off target, but I still think the players went “rogue” in that last 30 mins v Swansea in reaction to boos aimed at LM inadvertently seem like they were aimed at the players. Rogue is a shit word, perhaps more they decided their way of problem solving was better. You know what I mean. I’m getting the impression (with absolutely nothing to back it up ) that the no9, although being brought in to add a presence may not be a “big signing”, ie we will try to keep Conway and the new no9 is more of an “option”, as TC remains key. If TC goes, we will replace TC appropriately. So the bulk of the “money” will be on Twine. I can’t see us spending more that £3-5m in total (assuming no sales). See above reply to Cov77 re my latest thoughts on the no9.

Yep, once he got past the Nige question, it was decent (against the bar you suggest).