I enjoy the sarcasm. Some on here are adamant that we do not have any financial concerns. The £15m (Kamara sale) from Daddy to Son will shore up the running costs for a while. We may go into administration far early that many expect. Failure to sell Pedro or Sarr in January could well leave us making an announcement before the end of this season. I fully anticipate Sarr or Pedro, perhaps both, going to Udinese in January if there are no offers from other clubs. Offers are open for Okoye already. Interesting times ahead.
I would argue that most, if not all, the teams we’ve played this season have (on paper/in theory) “inferior players”. It’s just that they play with much more enthusiasm, passion and direction than ours.
We've had a squad of losers for a while now, many of them with a couple of relegations under their belts in the last few years. They had it nice and easy in the promotion season, no nasty fans there to shout at them after games. The mentality of the squad is cowardly, no courage on the ball and no fight without it. It all stems from Pozzo, he's the one that has let the players off the hook time and time again with head coaches getting the push instead. Also, it's reasonable to assume that we do no checks on a player's mentality before we sign them. Again, down to Pozzo.
Having just watched the highlights online and it still doesnt look like the ball crossed the line for their first goal. Admittedly it wasnt the great angle but from where I was in the Rookery it didnt look like it had crossed the line, certainly not fully. Thought we deserved all 3 points, we were certainly the better side for most of the match. Means little though if you cant kill the opposition off or sit back as soon as you score. I see the usual suspects are trotting out the squad is toxic, mentally weak, passionless and cowardly lines again. For once I dont agree with this, certainly not from what ive seen. Theres one or two players who dont seem good enough (eg Bayo) but that doesnt make them cowardly or toxic. If anything I would say that Saturday, after we scored, it needed better direction and leadership from RE whose subs saw us sitting increasingly deeper and become less organised
Pretty sure I heard they’d shown the computer-generated Hawkeye image on the streams and it was definitely over.
Apart from when the EPL were desperately trying to keep Villa in the Premier league, GLT has been pretty reliable.
4 years ago we couldn’t believe the negligence of the owners for having Cathcart and Mariappa in a premier league defence. And nothing has changed. If we somehow manage to scrape promotion with a 1-0 here and there you can bet your house Cathcart will still be a starter. I’ve noticed these threads getting fewer and fewer views each week. People are fed up
There was an image going round twitter showing it was a good few inches over. I'll do a bit of digging.
We simply must not go up this season in my mind. OK we need the Prem money but we are useless spending it and there is no chance the current squad could be improved to prem level in 8 months time, meaning we'd be dragged thru another horrible few seasons. Let RE put his stamp on the team over the next year or so and then add some players RE wants next August. This season is first step forwards (slowly)..
I reckon in GTs days he fired them up and decided who was on it during matches. These days I get the impression everything is based on "training data" which is ridiculous....
Ah fair enough. I've only seen the replay on the highlights which like I say wasnt the greatest angle.
No chance. An increasing number of fans (including a fair few on here) are already calling for his head after 2 losses, one of which was down to a wrongly disallowed goal.
To be fair, there’s plenty to question Edwards over. I personally don’t think he was ready for the Watford job. Off the pitch he’s a great ambassador, which will win a lot of people over. However, I’ve not seen anything in the way we play, tactical knowhow, substitutions, the way we defend, the way we attack to suggest he’s progressing the club. For me it’s a matter when not if he goes. We’ve been poor, performance wise, all season. The recruitment was dreadful, which is a mitigating factor in his favour, but we’ve still got a lot of quality to be at least competitive. I’ve been very disappointed in what I’ve seen from Edwards so far. It all depends on how desperate Gino is to get promotion. If he needs it to happen this season then Edwards won’t be around for long.
Unfortunately was just over. Loved the refs pose when it was given, was like a toddler showing off their new watch.
Haha. It was very clear in fairness except he forgot to signal the goal first, so lots people at both ends and half the players seemed not to realise for a moment or two.
I've seen a lot of people talking about how good our squad is and how it should do better, but I've not seen evidence of that on the pitch. They seem to be trying their hardest, we've tried several different formations etc. Yet there's a fundamental inability in the entire squad to be good on the ball. Pedro and Sarr can't paper over the cracks in the rest of the squad and in my view, we are just seeing how absolutely appalling the recruitment has been, not just this summer, but for the past 6 or more windows.
I’d say with the loanees, JP and Sarr they have given him a squad that should be on the fringes of the playoffs, competing for 5th or 6th spot. The worrying this as you say is the performances. I suppose it is possible that our rancid defenders just undermine everything else.
A lot of it seems to be mentality. We seem to be scared of attacking this season. We have scored more than goal only twice - which isn't like us in previous Championship seasons. We are scared of attacking because we know if we lose the ball it's panic stations at the back with Kabasele and Cathcart playing musical statues. This is something Edwards must know about, and it's my belief this is the reason we start games so slowly. We have little spurts in games when we look comfortable and a decent side, but more than half of the game we sit so deep it's like we are in the PL still. It also doesn't help we have so many injuries and that has to come down to fitness and player fatigue levels. Davis, who is probaby our best forward after Pedro, is going to have to carry a lot of the burden of our forward threat. Bayo is fit but needs to build consistent performances. Our defence is one of the poorest in this division on bad days, which is why we won't go up this season. We will never out score teams at the other end. Not on the evidence so far anyway.
The squad is most definitely mentally weak, I don't see how that can be disputed. Just look at last season and the start of this season. There's rarely any fight to hold onto a lead or get themselves back in a game, it's been a problem for quite a while now.
Am predicting a Beppe/Ivic style appointment next ( prob in December) to install some tactical know how that Edwards clearly lacks . He’ll then be sacked by Easter for a string of nil nils after initial good start , folllowed by a Xisco/Zola happy clapper type appointment to encourage the players to express themselves more but built upon solid defensive foundation installed by previous tactics based coach . Might just be in time for a late run into play offs , but probably not .
In terms of last seasons squad I agree. But theres been quite a few incomings and outgoings since then and this squad has already shown more togetherness then it did in all of last season. you say we cant get ourselves back into a game yet the team have already done that several times this season. Rotherham & Brum away, Boro at home and QPR at home twice. All games we went behind in and came back to get something from the game, bar ultimately QPR in the end but they still came back from behind twice and almost did it a third time. As for fighting to hold onto the lead, thats exactly what we had to do against Burnley and Sheffield United! If anything this squads problem is cohesion and depth. Every game seems to bring a different back line and front 3.
