I posted an article the other day that says we’ve got the oldest average age squad in the league. They honestly couldn’t have tried harder to do the opposite of what they said in that interview.
Yep, we've been lied to again by Duxbury. We've got a team full of over 30s who are struggling to remain competitive for 90 minutes.
I really hope whenever the next opportunity arises to have some sort of fans forum, somebody gets the opportunity to firstly ask Duxbury to talk us through the lessons they learnt and how they changed things as a result, and secondly that someone can read that quote about young hungry players to him and then ask him how we ended up with the oldest squad in the premier league.
Last night was a sobering experience - the game was awful - we looked okay (by our own standards). West ham fans are awful and their stadium is crap. We're going down. Maybe with a bit of fight?
The answer will be the same rubbish spouted by the Pozzo acolytes in the thread at the weekend. “The model only works when we are established in the premier league. To do that we felt it necessary to bring in experience”. Blah blah blah
I'm always despondent when we lose but last night and today are different. The whole dismal episode of Kurt Zouma and West Ham's reaction just emphasize that football is a diseased, rotting corpse,filled with greedy, self serving individuals. I should not have expected anything different from the triumvirate of Gold, Brady and Sullivan but so many owners are similar. If Zouma was a Watford player and was allowed to play again for the club I would return my season ticket immediately. Gino has made many mistakes in the last few years and most of us believe we will be relegated again,at the moment that doesn't matter to me. This is yet another example of football losing touch with reality,matched only by the prime minister and his pathetic leadership. I'm sick to the teeth of almost all of them.
I mentioned it on Shoutbox, but this game really reminded me of our 99/00 season in the Premier League. Our showing wasn't so bad, we made a good effort, a couple of half chances but not much threat, and ultimately undone by an unfortunate deflected goal. Much like in 99/00 we've had a few thrashings, a couple of surprising results and some narrow defeats, but just don't have the class that's needed to get the results. It all feels a bit in vain at the moment.
It's ok everyone, just forget about the owners lying to us and wasting millions building a squad that isn't fit for purpose. If we just clap the team a bit more then maybe they'll do the bare minimum expected of them as professional footballers, then we'll have a great chance of reaching 20 points.
I've been offline since this so apologies for not replying sooner. Equally, if my clumsy wording causing offence I'm sorry for that too. I love cats and have been around them my whole life, my mother in law has 7 of them. My use of the word tool was more referring to in general terms cats are incredibly selfish, yes they are affectionate too, but the comment was made more as a term of endearment that they have the ability to do what they like when they like with the appearance of not really giving a sh't what anyone thinks about it.
Get Sarr and Kalu on the wings to link the play up from midfield to attack and I think we have a chance. Clevs and Kucka are ok but can only manage 60 mins tops now and arent going to be legging it down the wings for us at their ages. Actually looking forward to our games now, thanks Roy and Ray.
At least then we had mostly League 1 players giving a cup tie performance most weeks, but falling short. This year the issues are more despicable.
If we play like we did last night and can remember where the opposition's goal is in our remaining fixtures we'll have a chance
Absolute bullcrap - there was no goals in those teams the last couple of games whoever was in charge. You can't take 3 points from a game without being able to score.
There are goals, but that means letting at least the same about or more in at the other end. It’s basically Ranieri or Hodgson, the end result is the same, we barely get any points.
Replace Premier League with Championship and this season with last season and that statement might have a ring of truth in it. Even then, only Sarr, Pedro and Sierralta became regulars as the other youngsters became marginal at best, were sold, or sent out on loan or back to their parent clubs. Building for the future eh…
I understand your point and I agreed with most of your lengthier post earlier in the thread, but without Sarr even if we play gung-ho football we still wouldn't score more goals, we'd just be conceding more. King couldn't hit a barn door right now, neither JP nor Cucho have done anything as starters, we have only a single goal from one of our midfielders and Dennis cannot do it all on his own.
In your opinion… In my opinion, there are goals. I stood in the away end last night and watched us break on a number of occasions and there was literally only Dennis and King involved. That was a direct result of Hodgson playing pragmatic football with 4 CM’s. I agree we look blunt in attack - but that is at least partially down to the lack of options actually being on the pitch at any one time. I’m not going to go after him because I don’t think anyone can do anything with this squad - but I thought Hodgson was the wrong appointment and think he’s just been chosen because he will make us concede less, not win more.
I said exactly the same, when I saw that he was starting I just thought what a bad reflection that is on Moyes as a human being.
Worst moment for me was Cleverley doing well to win the ball on the edge of our box, feeding King who ran about 50 yards and made it into West Ham's box, to look up and see that only Cleverley had bothered to join him. Think we were losing at the time, too.
We were completely blunt in attack when playing 433 with Ranieri as well. It makes no real difference when the players aren't good enough.
Because we don’t have midfielders who are capable of playing high up the pitch consistently well. I’m not disagreeing with you on the whole. I am just saying I think we could have taken 6 points if we had appointed a more progressive manager and been a bit more savvy in the window. When any of our CM’s joins in the attack, which is rare, my inner monologue hears the Benny Hill theme rather than words of excitement that a midfield goal/assist threat is up there.
You're contradicting yourself here - you're agreeing with me that our players generally are inept at scoring, yet somehow you believe that under a more progressive manager they'll miraculously find their shooting boots and stop being Benny Hill theme worthy?! It wasn't Ranieri not being "progressive" enough which made Sissoko waste chance after chance. A different manager wouldn't have changed that. You can't win a game when you can't find the back of the net.
Yeah the weird thing about our midfield is actually that not only do we not have a single dedicated defensive midfielder, we also don't have a single creative 'attacking' midfielder - this is not news, but it's such a stark thing to now witness that more than halfway through a season, and two full transfer windows, we are entirely stocked with a ragtag group of mostly astonishingly aged ave-a-run-abaht'ers. That is indictment enough of our recruitment and squad building - every single player there is basically the same, and what that 'same' is boils down to 'hmmm, well, he puts himself about quite a bit - gets up and down, gets stuck in when he wants to'. I (and others) have lamented this on here in posts for ages; literally several seasons. Even at our 18/19 pomp we relied on pressing to force opponents into losing the ball high up the pitch or individual stars driving with the ball entirely by themselves (mostly Geri) to create opportunities - we somehow still have no guile, and no attacking patterns of play, and that's more true than ever at this point (that's not a dig at Hodgson, it's a recognition of the utter lack of a single player seemingly capable of providing it). It's frankly embarrassing.
This isn't me saying I'm certain by any stretch that Zinckernagel was good enough for the PL - but he was the only player we had in a different mould in that kind of area.
