Well I was going for the slightly optimistic angle, but you've well and truly put the downer on that.
What Chilco said. We're actually having more shots and creating more chances than we have in every season since our promotion to the top flight. Now, I think Puel seems dull, rotates the side too much and may have 'lost the dressing room' - but the fact is we need a striker of higher quality. And we needed that striker in the summer. We've backed ourselves into a corner but maybe we'll have to accept that we need to overspend now to get a quality striker, unless we're ready to accept a 14th (or worse) kinda season. Things would look a lot different with one of those.
I've got to say, the players still look like they care to me. The Liverpool result was a good example of that.
I'm unconvinced that Charlie is the long-term answer. Although he would've undoubtedly turned losses into draws, and draws into wins on some occasions.
I was going to say exactly this. No "negative body language" in evidence at that game, which was...ooh...all of four days ago!
Up to the point where Charlie got injured, we had scored 13 goals in 14 games. After Charlie got injured, we have scored 6 goals in 7 games. Not a huge fall-off there...we were already struggling mightily to score.
If you think puel has lost the dressing room then surely he has to go?! I agree, striker and CB is a must this window. Sorry Kat you can't make 90m every year on player sales, sometimes you need to accept a loss and reach in your pocket for the long term good.
One thing that is quite interesting is how many people start talking about relegation after 4 losses in a row and playing pretty badly. I wonder if we won 4 in a row how many people would even mention the possibility of us winning the league or finishing in the top 3? I can safely say that would be close to zero.
I think it's easier to continue a poor run than a great run. Sustaining high performance is very hard, one slip up and it's gone. Pulling your team out of a slump when morale is low and your captain and starting CB has put himself out of the team is a challenge. A mid table team on a poor run are more likely to fear the drop than a mid table team flying are to start imagining CL qualification.
In the same way you can say a good run of form can end due to one "slip up", a bad run of form can come to an end with a bit of luck like a penalty or perhaps just a good performance. And you can say it's harder to end bad form due to poor morale, but surely in a good run you will have good morale so won't slip up? My point is that a lot of fans are so quick to jump to conclusions that we are just awful during bad form, but they tend to remain realistic during good form. It should work both ways.
And that pretty much sums it up for me. One win. For the sides who are actually in the relegation battle, one win solves very little. Whereas for us, one win could put us 9th. (It's something I've always believed actually, at both ends of the table. So for the sides at the top of a league, which including us in our back-to-back promotion years, if one defeats massively hits your title hopes, then you weren't really in the title race when you kicked off that game. Not yet anyway.)
Not sure about that at all. You say he is dull but when the board have given him 6 CMs to work with, none of which have been blessed with creativity, it isn't exactly easy to play attacking attractive football. The fact we need a striker also doesn't help with him being "dull". If we scored a few more then clearly we'd be more entertaining. As for rotation I can see your point although we have played an awful lot of midweek games so some of it is necessary. My main issue is that you even suggest he has lost the dressing room! Did you watch us play against Liverpool on Wednesday? Those players gave absolutely everything for Puel and got a deserved win. Yes we have had dodgy league results but by no means does that mean the players don't believe in Puel.
Thank you (as always). It can't be argued that we're better off without Austin, of course we're not. But these problems are absolutely not as a result of Austin getting injured. They were already there, and have been since game one. Having no Austin has just made them a bit worse.
But it might also merit a change in tack from Puel. We clearly aren't finishing the sorts of half-chances we're getting from our current approach, and we're deep enough into the season to be fairly confident that it's not a temporary loss of form. We're also approaching the end of our fixture congestion; our schedule will be far less of a factor in how we set up. So, a system that might get us better chances for players who might not be able to slot into a corner, but ought to be able to hit a largely-open net from 12 yards with no one within arm's reach. We've acquired a number of fast attacking players over the past couple years, and Long/Jay both had their greatest goalscoring success with us when they were getting fed chances in open space. But we might not be best-suited to a drop-deep-and-counter setup; we have too many short players to make it comfortable to stack the edge of the box and hope to win every cross and tussle, and our strikers' ball skills aren't spectacular, so punting it forward to them in the hopes that they can create 1v2 is well short of ideal. So, perhaps a system where we attack the ball when defending, with the intent of creating havoc in the transitional phase of play and getting our strikers behind the opposing back four. Luckily, we have previous.
Of course wins matter down there. But they don't solve much. Well done Hull for winning yesterday, but in a months time they'll almost certainly still be in the bottom three - and no doubt much further adrift that they are right now. And Leicester had a great win over City recently, but they've gone back to poor results ever since and haven't really moved anywhere. For side's in trouble, they need to win three or four in a row for things to look much brighter - West Ham's three wins in a row last month being an obvious example. But given we're in a position that where one win will make things so much brighter, I scope that as not being in the relegation battle. But yes, if we don't get that one win soon, then things will be different.
Just a consideration, maybe the owner is looking to sell all/part of the club and does not want to spend anymore money on players, unfortunately, a championship team is worth a lot less than a Premier League team.
