High Wycombe 1-1 Watford (27/10/20, 7.45pm) $ky

Well what a dreadful game to watch that was. Foster our MOTM against a side with no points before we came along says a lot about the performance today.

 

You (and a few others) just seem to have the evidence that what is being served up is utterly ****, but it is always "just wait till x comes back and we will suddenly walk the league / avoid relegation"

We just got bossed by one of the worst sides to ever grace the championship - maybe this side is just ******* **** and we should say it like it is.

 

Aside from those who can pass to their own players and have some semblance of creativity in the final third. You know, pretty much any other team.


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Exactly. They were the reason we were relegated last season and if they aren't careful, they'll be the cause of us not going up as champions.

Be careful what you wish for.

 

We also had claims in the Shoutbox tonight that we don't need a left-back. Staggering.

 

Erm, Foster has just said in his post-match interview that it wasn't good enough.

Ivic has also said in basically all his post-match interviews this season that he's been disappointed with the performances.

I'm sure Ivic knows that today was unacceptable and will be giving them a huge b0ll0cking. It won't be easy to drastically improve the performances though.

 

In Zola's season we had 10 points after 8 games.
In the promotion season we had 16 points after 8 games.
This season we have 15 points after 8 games.

I think it's a little premature to write off the season and plan for mid table. There are issues we need to work on but as Ivic himself said, we need to be patient with such a young squad. Had Quina (20), Pedro (19) and Sarr (22) starting. Garner (19) off the bench. As inexperienced players they will have off days, and it'll take the likes of Capoue a little while to get back up to speed. We're playing catch up with a slightly tricky pre season for a variety of reasons, but I think the building blocks are there for a successful season.

Tonight was absolutely crap and we deserved to lose but I remember a fair few results and performances like this in seasons we've done well. It happens. I think we've been good/goodish in half our games, average/slightly below average in 3 and crap tonight. Others would say crap in most games and that's fair enough. Either way we're still 3rd.

 

then he should resign.

 

Exactly. I’ll knock Ivic’s ability as a coach but the bloke can analyse a performance pretty well and calls a spade a spade.

 

While I take your point, it's unfair to compare the two really. We bought Gray 3 years ago when we had £18m to spend. Its pretty clear we didn't have £5m to spend on Toney this summer, even if he did or didn't want to join us.

Poor work in the market, totally agree however.

 

Which is fine, but they keep doing it over and over.

He sets them up negatively with a back 5 and then a defensive midfielder screening and then gets annoyed when they play negative football.

 

I have not defended him for 2 years, I just thought he should have been given more game time as part of a front 2 in some games. And stuck up for him when I thought the stick he was getting was unjustified. Nothing unreasonable about that.

As regards to your opinion he will terrible be at this level, it is a complete guess. Coz he not played yet. I'm taking the 'let's see, hopefully the attack will improve' approach which is a reasonable way to go about things.

 

Terrible and boring football. Why are we trying so hard not to win football matches ? Other than the Luton game have we been the better team in any game this season ? Rubbish.

 

Fair point. I was more alluding to them showing a reaction to getting a good bollocking.

 

That's a bit unfair. He was only on for a handful of minutes. He made himself space and missed the far post by a whisker. He wasn't to blame for that s***show.

 

Ivic is sadly being exposed as being horribly out of his depth, not helped it’s true by a truly inept recruiting team.

I’m afraid we will soon get left behind, while the higher quality attacking sides in the division start moving above us.

We are bang average.

There’s nobody you’d confidently put money on to score 10+ league goals.

We seem to have few players who can stay free of injury,

We lack a real creative spark in midfield.

We are wasting Sema by having to play him at left wing-back, because we were too incompetent to sign one.

And now the only saving grace this season seemed to bring, namely we could keep clean sheets and try to sneak 1-0 wins, has gone out the window as we’ve blown the last two matches.

There are players tonight who should hang their heads in shame at their performances tonight.

And a Head Coach who should do the decent thing and walk, and take his puerile brand of football with him.

 

Of course it is. I'm not sure Ivic can do much more. This squad isnt the same as the one that went up. We dont have players like Abdi & Vydra. We have a bunch of centrebacks, a bunch of midfielders, no left back, a winger being asked to play centre forward and a couple of youngsters who are being expected to provide the creativity to carry us over the line. What strikers we do have are old, unfit and injured. The recruitment team have done us again and the hierarchy placed too much stock in Pervis & Saurez who clearly never had any intention of playing for us.

This is just hyperbole. What it should be is a wake up call to those at our club who thought the championship would be easy.

 

It's repeating the same mistakes as last season:



Here's our corner maps from last season: X represents a corner without a shot, circle represents a shot and the lone red circle with a G in it is a goal. There's a heavy emphasis on that near corner of the 6-yard area from both sides.

Now there is a "sweet spot" that is near to that area as seen on the map below - these maps represent every corner goal scored in the PL during the 18/19 and 19/20 seasons



That area just on the 6-yard just before or in-line with the near post sees a huge proportion of the goals. But that's not where our deliveries were landing and our movement was awful so it fell pretty much flat (notice the lack of goals in the PL where our deliveries were actually landing). And this season our deliveries have been hitting the exact same positions.

 

I’ve put you on ignore after this negative comment and the forum is a better place.

 

We are playing a 30m creative player as a target man.

He is leagues better than Vydra, but he isn't going to show it with balls pelted at his head from 40m away with his back to goal.

 

The only little piece of criticism I'd have for Ivic is that maybe he should have played Murray from the start, just to give us something different, Sarr is incredible when teams come at us a bit, but today was not his kind of game, and as I keep saying, Joao Pedro is wasted as a striker, he just cannot get into the game nearly enough. At least if we had started Murray we could use the long ball a bit more, though saying all that...this is 37 year old Glenn Murray we're talking about here...

 

Hopefully once we get more of our long term, proven crap performers like Gray and Deeney back we'll be OK.

As Cleverley has shown, you can be absolutely rancid in the Premier League but that doesn't mean you won't be just awful at this level.

 

Would anyone buy him for the price we want for him? He's showing some quality with a decent cross or two per game and happy he scored tonight, but he's mostly getting caught offside or missing 1-on-1s so far. Suppose this may be as he's playing out of position, but you'd expect him to have a field day against Wycombe's defence, but he was mostly anonymous.

 

Yep. We have some deeply strange fans.

 

Yes, like the owners seemingly. Shame the time for filling the gaps they didn't think would matter is closed til January.

 

Can I just say that I never at all said we would walk the league. At the start of the season my expectations were that we would hopefully get top 6 and be in with a chance of promotion.

Against Bournemouth I seem to remember that the majority thought we was robbed, and Bournemouth were lucky and that we didn't deserve to get the win snatched away. So then we held our own against one of the better sides of the Championship. Tonight we should've done better and got a more positive result against lesser opposition, I agree with everyone on that, but the season will have ups and downs in it. Other teams will drop points too, its just the way the league is. Vidic has had to cope with no fit strikers so far. When they are back, along with Hughes, let's see if we can do better.

 

I have seen some fans on social media moaning about Chalobah tonight, he played 15 minutes and the rest of the team were a joke for the whole game but yeah pick Chalobah out.

 

Yeah of course. I’m not blaming him for the result. He had more time than he thought though and if he’d looked up before shooting i think he’d have scored.

 

What a disgraceful performance. We’ve been second best in every game except Luton. We have points way above performance levels currently. The approach is negative, lacks urgency and numerous players can’t complete basic passes. So so poor. And Sarr is being wasted in his current position.

Mid table beckons. Negative coach. Incompetent owner. Next season’s squad is going to be comedy when financial reality hits home.

 

Bournemouth deserved red cards, but they were the far better side 11 v 11.

When have the ups been? because honestly I am struggling to recall a properly good performance (NB - not result) since the Spurs pre season game.

We were better than Luton, but that was more them just being utterly abject than us imposing ourselves.

 

When I say up I mean a positive result.

 

Wycombe defend so deep yet so close to the strikers that both Sarr and JP couldn't find any space, once you take that space away from Sarr then that severley limits his game and what he can do, especially when you put him up front. They did however defend narrow (which is why Kiko looked so good - as he had acres of space to bomb into). It was calling out for a proper striker with Sarr on the wing - then he would've caused them real issues.