Davefevs

“Yeahhhhhhhh, rat on the road, who loves ya baby” is his catchphrase….looks like he’s sucked that lollipop dry! ???

SL had been with Green Flag, that was the problem!

Grown man….wow

I still think it would work better if it was an “appeals / review” decision like in cricket. Take the onus to appeal away from refs / Stockley Park. Give them one review chance, use it, abuse it, lose it…successful, retain it. Then let VAR do its thing. I agree re timing, if you can’t decide in <x seconds>, the original decision stands.

Nor me….but I was prepared to be patient with results and performances on the pitch. I’ve been saying the club was in a mess for a good while, and I read a great tweet yesterday from Tim Keech at MRKT Insights: We are seeing the benefits of a plan and good decisions.

That’s the point…why is it taking a human 10 views?

I’d say less structured, organised pressing, than less pressing with intent…but you might mean the same? A feature of our “press” is that it’s definitely not a gegen-press (some mistake the location of the press with the intensity). It’s either a high positioned press to stop the keeper playing out through his CBs (we did that ever so well at times v Huddersfield), or one where we retreat to 40-45m from their goal and tend to block. I thought we got scrappy with our structure in the last 25 mins. But the other thing is - you can’t always take what City do in isolation, there’s another team trying to disrupt what we do and impose their own solutions. For me, a noticeable difference was the sub of Wharton for Edun. Wharton on a yellow couldn’t get close to make a challenge for fear of a red and we passed around him, whereas Edun was more rat like!! I think he barged over Semenyo for their opener and it should’ve been a free-kick, but hey-ho. I do get your point though.

Thanks @glynrileyfor re-linking. The things that stood out for me watching back… the vision / objective is PL Thats the easy bit! But the important bit is planning how to get from A to B. Changing the culture is a big part in that.

Is VAR the problem? Or is it the person in Stockley Park / 4th official?

Although Wells hasn’t been a good fit for much of his time here, I still like to remind everyone he was our top scorer in 20/21, despite playing half the season on the left wing. He’s not been a success, but he’s not been the abject failure some make out either.

zooming in on Naismith: first 4 rows are all about how many he attempts, versus all other CBs in the Champ. - he doesn’t have many defensive duels (when opponent has ball he is the ores in challenging) compared to the division - he just below middle for aerial duels - he goes in for lots of loose ball duels - he makes lots of offensive duels (where he is on the ball and gets into a challenge) compared to the division, but then again he’s on the ball a lot more than most! next 4 rows are how successful he is: - duels wins just less than the average champ CB (so doesn’t go into many duels nor win his fair share - aerials less again (so attempts an average amount but doesn’t win that much) - in the top 15% of winning loose balls and offensive duels, couple with attempts a lot, is really good. Heres a better way of seeing them against all CBs. in the bottom right corner you can see that Naismith commits a fraction more fouls (x axis) than Vyner, but gets less cards! Hope it makes sense.

In his best form since his loan imho.

Yep, statistically he’s not as crap as many make out, especially those who focus on the passes he gives away. Cutting out the number of diags he tries to hit helps too imho. But of course context is everything… …creative passes are smaller in volume than general passing, so whikst he’s executing the creative stuff really well, there is room for improvement in the bread and butter passes. If that makes sense? Duels there is still work to do also, but this is comparing Zak with over 100 Champ CBs, so he’s generally not doing too bad is he?

The vanity of posting a profit by including the Kelly sale in 18/19’s accounts pisses me off massively, you can bet Ashton’s bonus reflected that. Had we put it through on June 1st, we wouldn’t be having FFP issues this season.

Indeed….a good striker….at the next level up. A good acquisition, undoubtedly!

Ah, sorry, hadn’t picked that up, assumed you were referring to one in pre season….ta.

I know I posted it after the Cardiff game…but if you go to AG next Saturday v PNE, take some time around 2:30pm to check out the drills he does with the 5 forwards (AS, TC, NW, AW and CM) in the practice net. Very focussed, sharp stuff, combos. I’d be amazed if his influence isn’t having some affect.

I agree with you….thinking back, I liked James early last season, then we switched to a 2 man midfield (back three initiated) and he had to play alongside Bakinson for some of them. Enough to make anyone look bad ???

If I had one criticism of him (it’s more a point than a criticism j it’s that I don’t think he has sustained pace. Quick in the head and off his first touches to get past players, but I don’t see him able to streak away from his marker. But another player was the same….Gazza. And Scott is still developing his physical attributes. Hes such an intelligent player too. I’m blessed to be able to watch him.

Surely Psycho Killer….just keep repeating it. Yes he was…. …SSN is right, he was talking less about the position, but more about how we (City) wanted him to play it, ie, much more on the half-turn, than just trying to find space in the hole. (I can only assume a bigger hole in lg1 - see Luke Freeman in 14/15 versus having no room at all in 15/16….so Fleming trying to get him used to having a DM up your arse when receiving the ball, hence need to be able to roll your man off your first touch to buy you half a yard) He was definitely my meh out of the three, but I did say I was most excited by him too, ie how he’d come in and make us better, when I saw him quite a bit on the periphery in games at Oxford.

Think James started pretty steadily for us last season, but then played for several games with his injured foot (Plantar???) and that seemed to lower our evaluation of him. Think he formed a reasonably decent partnership at the back end of the season, but for many the die was cast. Dont get me wrong I don’t think he’s been brilliant overall, but when fit I think he’s got some unfair criticism. He is good positionally, and he actually closes down well, just not great on the turn! Was good on Wednesday, better today…just that Alex Scott was so good!

I think Nige totally got the financial position when he took over and a fair bit of the football issues, but I reckon (speculation from me) his biggest shock was the attitudes / culture of the players. Not all of the players were bad eggs, far from it, but as they say, one (or two) bad apple spoils a whole damn bunch (Aerosmith song too) and tgat has taken some turning around. We can see how difficult it is to get rid of anyone post-covid. …and still involving him match days too, so not a case of tossing him aside either.

FWIW here’s all three CBs data in league games this season prior to today. Naismith Atkinson Vyner:

for info, they rejected Tommy Backwell and Ben Acey too. We’re all there together. There’s a photo somewhere of Tommy and Alex playing against Bristol City!!!