Gaspar is crap. Gray would be a better option than Manej. Cathcart is our best defender. Bayo is turd. Asprilla needs some Guinness and a few gym sessions but he will be an incredible player. Entertaining game - quite enjoyable.
Unpopular opinion but I think if Manaj keeps playing he'll come good and be a good striker at this level. I watched live today and he has a bit of pace and size about him, was getting in behind and breaking the offside trap some and nearly had a goal. Bayo also has size, a great turn of pace and some goalscoring pedigree in his previous club even if it is at a lower level. For me, the by far biggest issue is the midfield. Time after time we were lumping balls up front with no direction, no interplay or linkups with the midfield, who could only pass sideways or kick it inaccurately forward. No incisive passes or ball-carrying from midfield. Choudhury is a good destroyer and breaks up a lot of attacks, but he needs to be paired with a more technical partner who can recycle the ball properly once he has won it. Kayembe is not that player.
In a nutshell. Nailed it. We have been reduced to applauding the absolute basics for an elite footballer. Minimum requirements: *Level of fitness needed to compete,example A M'lud Daniel "Fats Waller" Rose. * A designated game style and back up "Plan B" M'lud. * An entry level ability to pass the football, without concern or fear, to a member of one's own team, consistently and with a measure of calmness. * A desire to compete,never give up and chase lost causes. Is this too much to ask? Reply to G Pozzo,The Bunker,London Colney Saintsbury's ,Third Trolley in from the right.
Of course he needs more time. Lots of it. And a few new players too. That doesn’t stop me starting to have a few early doubts though. We haven’t really played consistently well in any match yet and he’s being outdone by opponents we should be beating. Despite the huge mistakes being made higher up than him, I don’t believe he should automatically be given a free pass on days like today.
I won't dissect everything you have said even if it would be easy to put in a worthwhile counterargument on many of those points. So I will summarise by saying that today was our first league defeat of the season and the first time we have conceded more than one league goal in a game. The manager will know it wasn't good enough today and am sure he will let the players know. The season is long, for most there is still 120 points to play for. My expectation is a hope for a top 6 finish and see where it takes us. I am still feeling optimistic that this is still a reality because it is so early in the season. A reminder too, (this is not aimed at you it's just a general point) that Xisco Munoz was seen as a joke appointment in our last season in this division by a fair few, and the Pozzo recruitment was being sl*gged off then, but we still got promoted.
Cathcart and Kabs are two years older and slower (both should of been moved on three years ago at least), Serraltra wasn't trusted in the Prem but had a poor game today - hopefully just a one off from him but he looked very uncomfortable in a back four. Bachmann is great at this level and still is, but he cannot be punished by poor people in front of him. How many seasons have we all been saying our rear guard is terrible? A lot. Has anything changed? Some, but not enough in the years Pozzbury has been in charge. Teams know we are weak in this area - we are still asking Cathcart/Kabs/Cleverley/Gosling to play the majority of a 46 game season. Not their fault, but they know their legs/concentration isn't there like it was.
We’re going to lose matches. Everyone does. We lost to QPR at home last time. Things didn’t go our way. A deflected opener for them. Dubious offside and penalty not given for us. But, as I said before, it was only a matter of time before we start shipping in goals. West Brom should have scored 5, Burnley should have scored 3, Preston at least a couple. They didn’t because of wonder saves from Bachmann. That was never going to continue. It was papering over the cracks. Today was shambolic. Defensively clueless and overrun in midfield. QPR are a team we should be beating. They are just mid-table, nothing more dangerous than that, but they opened us up time and time again. Just as other teams have done this season. We are suffering because of poor recruitment, we can all see that. Manaj, Gaspar and Bayo should not have been signed. But they were and we’ll have to suffer because of it. I really hope the board strengthen the squad or else they’ll have to accept the cost of not going up. Gino will be the loser in that, as the team assembled is an expensive one, but with glaring holes which they seem reluctant to fill.
I disagree on the strikers but agree on the midfield, it's a real struggle at the moment. Other than Asprilla we have no one that can spot a forward pass.
Our play was too slow today gave them a chance to get behind the ball passing sideways doesn't win football matches unfortunately they played a very high line considering there two centre backs were as slow as snails we didn't do enough to put them under pressure lost count the times we kicked the ball over the top to there Goalkeeper
Why do I never learn? Never predict a Watford win. This defeat highlights Championship football to a tee, anyone can beat anyone on the day. Crap defending by both sides. Also, was Sierralta on the chicha before the game?
I do get this as an abstract idea but what does it mean in reality? Calling for an entertaining side I can definitely identify with. We're painful to watch. All the cynicism of a Premier League side and very little of the flair, flamboyance or fun. But holding our own in the Championship means what? Finishing 3rd to 6th? Then what? Losing in the play-offs? Playing 46 games to end up falling at the last? Some fans are losing their cool after our first league defeat of the season has dropped us to 8th. English football's problem is that the number of match-going fans is now outnumbered by the global TV audience and so what the likes of us find fulfilling about the game has become an irrelevance.
Sooooooooooooooooooo ponderous it was painful. Gasper can feck off. Kabasele needs to be removed from the box that says 'kick the tyres on me' as Gino knows he's just absolute bobbins. Gasper can feck off. Kayembe slowed everything down too much today and Choudhury had a shocker on long passes. Gasper can feck off. Bayo didn't touch the once. Dreadful. Gasper can feck off. Gasper can feck off.
Seems to me that Edwards has an idea of how he wants us to play, but hasn't got a clue of how to integrate Sarr and Pedro into it. His approach so far has been to massively overload the front, so we're essentially trying to force counter attacking football, rather than setup to soak pressure up from deep and then counter. I worry about whether he's the right person to get the best out of this squad to be honest. It's one thing getting the best out of a side of decent professionals at FGR, but he's been given a lot more talent to work with here, and I don't think he's showing that he knows what to do with them
Cathcart, who gets absolute dogs abuse from some here and on social media most weeks, is suddenly being reappraised after being left out of the team. Proves the old adage that nothing does wonders for a player's standing among the supporters than being out of the side.
Today was coming. Anyone who watched our first few performances will have seen the vulnerabilities and the failings of our summer recruitment so far were laid bare. No centre backs who can pass, no right wing back, no real no. 9, no midfield who can pass. We are severely limited by a summer of the same old recruitment pattern. We go and buy a bunch of randoms and hope that they can be somehow bended to fit. Manaj, Bayo, Gaspar etc. All pointless signings and not what we need. Davis and hause might be OK, but when will we find out? Today's line up was very confusing. Was it a 4-2-3-1? It looked baffling and our players didn't seem familiar with it. It didn't work. The team was crying out for fresh legs from the 55th minute, but to give Rob his due, there were few options to offer. The league may be poor, but so is our rag tag squad. Sarr should have probably been sold as 25m would be more use than he is right now. We will be fine, if slogging though a 46 game season, win some, lose some, draw some is the aim. If the aim was promotion why was 5m wasted on Bayo instead of players who fit our needs? Why was Gaspar brought in to clearly play a role he cannot fulfill? Why is sierralta suddenly utterly appalling? WtE would have been embarrassed by today's performance Overall its been coming and we got it. Let's see if the gaping holes in our team are plugged over the next few days.
Cathcart is ****. Sierralta and Kabasele being crap doesn't change that. Same school of thought which convinced people that Gosling must be great because Cleverley was gash. They are both gash. They are all gash.
As QPR repeatedly demonstrated this afternoon. I'm pretty sure they had done their homework and they have several tricky little players to put on him. If a team put a big bruiser up against him he will probably win out. But once a good dribbler of the ball takes him on he is very ponderous. Smug of me perhaps, but I've been saying this for ages. In addition, today he wasn't even commanding in the air.
Didn't watch today, but it sounds like Edwards ideally would want a back 3 to mitigate wing-backs going forward at every opportunity, though unfortunately at the same time, if we do go down that route, we might struggle to pass our way into midfield with our current options. Fully agree about our midfield, but, for better or worse, I think they'll probably look at our current options, as well as Louza and TDB to come back in the near and distant future and think it's not a priority. At the moment I think we have a potentially have a very strong, if not perfect, XI when everyone is fit, but ultimately even missing 2 or 3 key players (Davis, Louza and one incoming RWB would make a huge difference) brings the standard down significantly QPR played very well twice the last time we played them, and started off last season very well before tailing off, they have some very good players and have done well in the window I think, so I think they'll be just fine this season, even if play-offs might be a stretch
We've got a massive problem with the types of player we bring in and we rarely bring in a player that fits any specific needs in the team. Then we also seem to get players in with zero proven experience (unless they're well past it) in English football, and don't fancy the graft. I bet if you look at most championship teams they're full of players that have grafted their way thru the divisions - knowing the starting point is giving 100pct every game. And there's our lot trying to slow things down.....
Gabriel case in point as to why players should play with heart and desire to rectify their mistakes. Something a lot of our players have lacked for two years.
For all of the fanfare, Gaspar looks an absolute busted flush of a player. Manaj is crap. Bayo is possibly even worse. Does anyone truly believe Rob wanted these players?
If you don't want defenders to try to pass the ball out then you're going to find it very difficult to get the ball into midfield in fairness, the trick is to get players who are at least competent at it
