MarcusX

It probably should have been alarming that in the week prior to his first game in charge (having inherited a fairly decent defensive base) his priority was defensive work before playing 23rd place QPR

Bath are part time, so what else is he going to do with his time outside of their training sessions? Presumably he'll still be with us most of the time. It's interesting that his loan is to such a low level, but is loan windows closed for league teams? It was clear he was some way off first team standard and I dont think chucking him in at a time when the team is struggling and the fans are on the brink of turning on them / manager etc is going to do him any good. Get him to Bath, a very good side playing decent football and pushing for promotion and hopefully build his confidence. I think it's a good move for him personally.

I didn’t see a lack of effort from players Saturday to be honest, but Sykes and Pring looked nowhere near ready to play either fitness wise or not fully recovered. Maybe Sykes is frustrated with his injury? He was getting involved with something with the home fans Saturday and I thought that was odd, then obviously went off at HT. my view is a confusion about how to play. You can see it in the press, Conways going and no one backs him up - then next time Conway was controlling the press telling people when to go, or when not to. Problem with a press is you all need to be on the same wavelength and instinctive really, if you’re waiting for a call then it look disjointed or leave gaps. And when it’s deliberately held off as Conway was doing at times Saturday, it can look lazy or lacking effort. Many times you heard the crowd shouting at them to press as they were frustrated, while Conway was clearly telling Mehmeti not to go.

Yea I thought that or maybe the quick succession of games caught up with him, it’s a lot of time out and we know “match” fitness is a different beast to just getting back fit. Cam just didn’t look himself or particularly comfortable today. Could be lack of protection from Mehmeti infront of him, think the first goal was a combination of those two not passing on or taking responsibility for the runner. Would be gutting for him or Sykes to get a recurrence or setback.

I don’t think either of them were ready, and McCrorie looks like he’s struggling a bit too. I know we’re saying he’s got players coming back to fitness but there’s a risk they get rushed back through desperation.

So it is on the highlights, at 1:24 Yes agree it’s a mistimed tackle and probably a fair second yellow, and the ref did play advantage well - it turned into a goal scoring opportunity. Afterwards he then recovers and headers the ball so st that point play should have been stopped and I think it was later than that. The handball is in the highlights too which I assume is the penalty, does look like we should have had one from that! Yep just seen in the highlights, I remember the appeals but couldn’t see what for from the other end. What can you say? Just our luck

Which was that? I must have missed that too

I’ll start by saying I thought todays ref was dreadful even by usual standards. He seemed to give us very little, but equally gave them against us for similar offences. I’ve seen some say Bernard’s first yellow could have been red but it seemed to me he had cover, I thought it was a standard yellow tbh for a professional foul. Now the red… this caused a fair amount of confusion amongst some of us today because in part half of us missed the actual card being shown. I was fairly certain at the time the ref got this wrong - potentially for two reasons. 1. Stopping a promising attack is only a yellow if it actually stops the attack, if advantage is played the ref shouldn’t go back and show a yellow unless the challenge was otherwise worthy of one - eg a bad tackle. It didn’t stop the play evidently because advantage was played (and I thought it was just another pull not a yellow tackle but I could be wrong!) which leads to the second mistake… 2. Referee shouldn’t play advantage in the event of a second yellow incident, unless there’s a clear goal scoring opportunity - which i don’t think there was really (ie we weren’t through on goal). If the ref does play on, and the offending player plays the ball or interferes with an opponent then the ref should stop the game immediately - which he also didn’t do I don’t think? It seemed like a good few minutes later. Id have to watch the highlights again to see if this is all how I remember it, but a very weird set of events. Oh, and blowing the full time whistle when we’ve just won a corner too, which seemed to cause it to kick off a bit at the end. Very minor in the grand scheme of things but thought it was something else to discuss rather than Manning/Lansdown/Tinnian etc

I’m saying back just because I don’t want us to be one of those basket case clubs that have gone through 3 managers this season. What’s the point in changing now anyway, may as well give him the time now and see what he can do. Who else would come in?

Should add there was a lot of boos after the game today, the players are probably lucky the PA system was so loud it was drowning it out.

I have to caveat this with there’s been some very good performances, fa cup games and Southampton for example - and I’ve seen in some games improvements in passing and patterns of play. That said, today was absolutely dreadful. There’s another thread about soft City being back and I think that nails it but there’s more to it. There were several times today where there was a 50/50 or 40/60 that could have been one with a bit of desire and big tackle, and every single time we bottled it. Forst half we played continuous long balls but there was no cohesion, sometimes mehmeti came short ans the ball went long, others where Conway set off and we waited and waited then played the ball when it was no longer on. Seconf half got even worse, we were so so predictable it was painful to watch. When there’s only 1 forward pass on and a backwards one it’s so easy to defend against. I don’t want to go over the top with a defeat but that was a throwback to the McInnes / SOD era

Neither are, the OP has been disengenuois with the title of the thread.

Received a 3 year ban by the club, later reduced to 3 months after attending a course so not quiet "free pass". Also not so much loyalty but "good behaviour" in those 60 years. Agree though it's bizarre and not inline with other prosecutions. Also according to the article "played it down" when being interviewed, so to later say they showed genuine remorse seems a stretch. Sorry they got caught and banned maybe?

Driving up in the morning, don't know why we do it to ourselves but a free day so I'd rather be there than anywhere else. I fear another 10 men behind the ball, sit back and wait for us to lose it performance - but hoping they might go for it a bit as they need the points

I was really worried this was gonna be announcing a setback or another injury!

Without wanting to go down a Covid route, interestingly whilst searching I found a study here suggesting a link between Covid infection and muscular fatigue leading to injuries: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10048896/#:~:text=The results of this study,occurred before contracting the infection. There's also studies on other sports showing the same patterns such as NFL and basketball This study suggests injury rates were faling in the preceeding years https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/19/1084 Fair point but you'd assume at that level warming up should be adequate... probably shouldn't assume that! Muscle tears can also be down to overuse & fatigue or as @The Coach said lack of proper strength and conditioning. I think on that point footballers are spending more time in the gym than they used to but I wonder if that's also a potential contributor to over use? To be honest with the amount of money in the game you'd assume most professional clubs have the best science and training methodology, it could just be bad luck. Feel sorry for the lad, I said he looked lost in that first game against West Ham at HT - then second half he was brilliant, same against Forest & Southampton. There's a real decent player in there with a bit more coaching and quality.

Why?

Are injuries getting more common place across football? It feels like every season we're affected largely by injuries, but the stats suggest no more on average than others - but was it always like this? Remember that 14/15 title winning season we had barely any injuries and a fairly small squad

Not something I've ever needed to do as I'm not blessed in the calf muscle department, but it's supposedly to reduce pressure / improve circulation. I've not actually seen it at my level of football, so maybe one trend that isn't catching on. Cutting off the soles is definitely done though by a lot of people these days, and you can even buy the socks "pre-cut" as a tube design now. Most kit socks lose their fit after a few washes, especially when you aren't wearing the same ones every week. Makes a big difference to have a more comfortable, and sometimes thinner sock in your boot for a tighter fit and better control. Dont think there's any rule that you can't, see alex scott and jack grealish for example Downside to wearing your socks round your ankles like that though is the shin pad sits lower and is effectively pointless. Interestingly on the topic, the latest trend (as seen by Scott and Grealish) is to wear the smallest pads you can. These are now available https://gaintheedgeofficial.com/collections/mini-shin-pads/products/mini-shin-pads Must admit I wear them, as I find bigger pads cumbersome. There's a big push to get them banned in kids football though as obviously they offer less protection area on the shin. Haven't seen anyone wear a shin pad with straps since I was about 10. Most people use a sleeve, or I use tubigrip and tape if needed. Generally the socks are tight enough these days to keep the pads up - but obviously why it then becomes restrictive on the calf. Grealish definitely doesn't wear pads with straps, he's admitted he wears kids pads so a stap wouldn't even fit round his leg.

It was meant more literally as a question than a sarcastic dig, I genuinely don’t know how much time they have together but as others have pointed out this is the schedule, it’s not massively unusual other than the two replays. It just sounded like he barely sees his players, which I’m sure isn’t the case - but also, the excuse doesn’t wash because they managed a master class against Southampton and 4 pretty decent cup games with this “lack of time”.

Even then, we beat boro and they beat Leicester.

Yep either extreme is silly, but clearly a tough game to through him into. I saw something in Ryan Kent first time he played though so maybe I’ll duck out

Just take the ticket and scan it, there’ll always be a way around it

Talking about not have the time to work on it again. How often do they actually train? Anyone would think he’s managing a part time team the way he talks about training sometimes.

I get it, and I have a similar affinity to the Liverpool purple shirt - was my first kit. It’s still a bit of a joke of a thing to commemorate, but we don’t have much to celebrate. Promotion winning kits, or the fa cup final kit would be understandable.