Supersonic Robin

Exactly how I'm feeling right now. Maybe I'm just dumbstruck by yet another capitulation, but I'm really running out of ideas for what the root issue at the club is and how it's resolved.

Incredible isn't it. Coventry didn't even have their own stadium to play in last season! Seems that we expended too much energy on "talking the talk", whilst other clubs quietly and modestly got on with "walking the walk". It feels like it just clicks for other clubs, but never does for us.

Appreciate where you're coming from, but what evidence is there that Benarous is ready to contribute anything meaningful? (Same goes for some of the other younger players). Benarous really really struggled to make any kind of positive impact vs Barnsley. By no means am I writing off the likes of Benarous, but you can't just assume that they'll be an improvement.

Kalas has been one of our best players for the last couple of years, and IMHO joins Bentley in the exclusive club of players who can be said to have said to have saved us from relegation last season. I personally think he's been one of our better players so far this season too. Is it Kalas' fault if everyone around him in defence plays poorly? Is Kalas expected not just to manage his own performance, but also the performances of 3-5 young players around him? How much more do people realistically want from Kalas? IMO we're very lucky to have a player of his quality given the extreme amount of defending we have to do! Maybe, just maybe, our defensive issues actually lie in the fact that we're so frequently dependent upon Kalas and Bentley to save the day from within our own box........

Tend to agree that no matter how poor a squad may be, a manager should get be able to get the team doing the absolute basics. I'm not convinced, however, that LJ, Holden, Pearson, McAllister, Simpson, Downing, Fleming etc are ALL dreadful coaches. Is there an element of players failing to understand or implement instructions? Is it something else?

We must be the most mentally weak and low confidence team in the EFL right now.....

Really frustrating how we allow Coventry to make such a game of it when down to 10 men.

We do seem to have a bit of a habit for "bottling" big challenges. I've always felt that many 50-50's are decided before either player reaches the ball (i.e. I'm coming towards the ball flat out and looking aggressive - do you have the balls to match my aggression/commitment?). Quite often I think our answer to such a question is "No". Don't mean to pick on individuals, but Bakinson has been guilty of this multiple times in the last couple of games, for example.

I think sorting out the defensive fragility is probably the first step in arresting our poor form. This was one of my main expectations of Pearson for this season - I anticipated that we may be rather lacklustre going forward, but felt we could at least make ourselves difficult to beat/score against. FWIW I don't have any issue with 'defensive football' if that's what it takes. Many fans talk about "just wanting to see some exciting attacking football", but IMO the main source of excitement is competitiveness. I'll happily sit there for 90 minutes watching us defend competently, resiliently, and bravely to grind out points.

I do sort of see where you're coming from - looking to the long term future, I'd perhaps rather be in our position than many other teams due to our ultimate overall potential. However, if we're simply looking back on the last couple of decades, it's very very hard to make an argument that we'd be the preferable choice. How many Hull and Cardiff fans are on their forums saying "Were those seasons of success really worth it when we could have had what Bristol City have?".

The other potentially misleading aspect of this is the Championship experience (or lack of) with some of our younger players. A player can be young and have decent experience at this level (e.g. Dasilva). For many of our younger players this isn't the case. Pring is 23 (so not THAT young by footballing standards), but is in his first ever season of Championship football. Tanner, Atkinson and Scott are also in their first season at this level. Bakinson came into the season having played 2054 mins in the league in 20/21 - approx 23 matches worth of Championship experience. It's very plausible that all 5 of those players could be starting a game for us - that's half our outfield players with little/no experience at this level prior to this season. When Bentley talks of us being "A young squad on a learning curve", perhaps this is part of what he means.

Very good point. Although the average age works out okay, we actually have very few players in those "peak" years. (Perhaps unsurprising that Bentley and Kalas are quite comfortably our best 2 players over the last couple of seasons?)

Just a thought on this with no agenda other than to prompt discussion: When discussing Lansdown and good/bad owners, we quite frequently reference clubs who have had a much bumpier ride than us with their owners (e.g. Sunderland, Sheffield Wednesday, Forest, Portsmouth, Coventry, Wigan, etc), often using them as examples of "when things go wrong". If offered, how many of those clubs would actually swap their last 10-20 years (including running of their club) for ours?

SL has undoubtedly had the best interests of the club at heart during his time here (IMO). He's done some great work off the pitch with the stadium and training ground. On the pitch....not so much success. I think some fans are overly negative about the possible alternatives to Lansdown though. Perhaps we would be stuck in League 1 - or perhaps we'd have spent over half a decade in the Premier League and won a domestic cup (as other clubs our size and smaller have done).

Yepp, the reason we're not winning many penalties is fairly clear!

When exactly was our last penalty?

If you're purely going off the last couple of games, then you guys may have a point. Across the full season so far though, it's not crazy that there are 5 worse teams than us. We certainly weren't one of the 5 worst teams in the league through August and September. Really hoping we can return to the standard shown around the start of the season ASAP.

I don't think we'll see much movement of players into or out of the club. I believe NP alluded to this previously. Fans forget that even loans have fees - they're not free. If we do recruit, it may well be a "George Tanner type" signing (lower league, relatively cheap, not expected to immediately make a big impact in the starting 11). In terms of outgoings, we'll struggle to get rid of any of the players we might want to (e.g. Palmer). I'm not sure anyone will come in for our best players just yet - think that's probably more likely in summer.

Incredible how many of our fans still don't understand that we can't "Spend big in January".

Surprised at just how much criticism Dasilva is coming in for here. His injuries have obviously set him back a bit, but he's far from a bad player.

Yepp, we can't really complain that we didn't know what we were getting with Palmer (as if the Palmer saga wasn't already frustrating enough)

Didn't NP say in one of the pre-match interviews that they'd asked to leave their contracts early?

IMO the biggest difference is possibly fitness. Diedhiou could play 90 mins Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday Saturday. Martin can't do that (at least not without very diminished performance levels). The financial point is a big one for me. I completely get why we didn't offer him a new contract with the wages he was requesting, but the decision not to sell him in January was crazy IMO. Obviously we don't know how much interest there was, but I recall strong rumours about interest from other clubs. Imagine how much difference just £1m (plus 6 months less paying FD's wage) would have made in summer?

One could argue that technically Wells was a player who "other teams in the play off positions would want in their starting line up" at the time we signed him. (That's not me saying that I necessarily think he was a good signing, or that I think he's likely to replicate that form for us). Forwards are always going to look poor in a side that are poor going forward and create very few chances. Of course our forwards are partly responsible for this themselves, but the point still remains. Ivan Toney, for example, wouldn't have got anywhere near 30 goals playing for us last season. I recall reading about Brentford replacing their strikers when sold. IIRC they put as much thought into 'continuing to create 25 good goal scoring opportunities for strikers' as they put into 'finding a striker who could score 25 goals'.

Unfortunately the same constraints will persist regardless of manager. We will still have a relatively poor and unbalanced squad, we will still have little-no money to spend, we will still have a big wage bill we're struggling to cut, we will still have a psychologically damaged team. I don't think a manager will get much more out of this squad that Pearson was around the start of the season (hopefully we return to that soon). Panicking and changing managers again may well just delay the rebuild by another few months. Besides, who are we (realistically) going to be able to attract? I can't imagine there are many managers in the EFL that envy the job which NP has on his hands here. And that's before we consider what we could afford (whilst having to also continue paying for LJ and NP).