You mean the same squad as the 2nd part of last season? Nah you can't blame the manager. Players are playing like ****.
I haven't seen the game as with out with family for a birthday but i sounds pretty much like it went as expected with that formation and manager. Would be interested to know how boufal got on as he apparently played central? but we've seen everything else before. Trying to be optimistic, at least with Lemina back after the break we should be able to go back to the diamond which offered more going forward i think.
Redmond did try hard today, almost came off for him but also gave the ball away a number of times. Tadic is a slow shadow of his former self. I don't get playing 2 CDMs and one striker and consistently sticking with the 4-2-3-1 until we realise it's not going to work 70 minutes in and then bring on Long and Austin. We don't always need to play 2 CDMs fgs. It worked well with Wanyama and Scneiderlin but hasn't really since. Even if Lemina played, Burnley aren't going to come and out possession us in midfield like a Swansea might. They're going to say, alright, you can have the ball 35 yards out, and go back and forth across the pitch, you try and break through us with incisive passing. It's just somewhere we could be more positive in. In Pelle and Mane/Tadic, Lambert and Rodriguez/Lallana, we had a target man with great first touch and link up play, and blistering pace and speed of thought/intelligence in the others. Now we have neither, which cost us last year and is costing us this year.
I think you need to look at the fact that two managers have had this problem now. Maybe start blaming the players and board more
So who would want to come here after 1 possibly 2 sackings . Any manager would look at Puel ( and Possibly in the future MP2 ) and think , It's cannot be the manager , so what is it ? Do I want to get involved in whatever is going on .....
Two managers playing the same way with different players have had this problem. Points to the manager more to me.
AS has been said before , by people with FAR more football knowledge that me , what difference would a new manager make ?
We have the exact same attacking players as we did a year ago, though. This personnel grouping needs to be burned to the ground.
Under Puel you could always see what the idea was and the gameplan, and we were frankly better than what we have been so far this season. Is our squad worse than Burnley, Brighton and Huddersfield? Who have all played harder games so far? I always blame the board, I've been one of the most critical posters of the board on here for the past 18 months or so. Doesn't change the fact that the squad is still better than has been shown so far. If he can't keep get the players playing for him this early then it's a huge problem in itself.
We didn't have Gabbiadini. edit: and when we played an attacking game under puel we actually scored goals.
If he's one with the balls to drop bang out of form players, quite a lot I would imagine. Redmond and Tadic should be nowhere near the pitch.
Playing the same way? Nope. We were the better team again today. Just as soon as it goes to our attackers **** all happens. We had 3 shots on target, says it all. Players and board need to be slammer far more, but fans just like to blame the manager all the time. Same happened with Puel
Had him for half a season, where we were equally goal shy. It's quite clear that one addition wasn't what this group needs...it's going to take a bit of house cleaning. Tadic, Redmond, Austin, Long...none of them have been good enough. None of them have been good, period.
I think Pellegrino's biggest crime was trying to match Burnley when they went 2 up front, we completely lost out rhythm. By trying to match their strategy, we were just lumping balls up to our strikers which Burnley were eating up all day long. The first half was surprisingly positive, and much better than we've seen recently, but Pellegrino doesn't seem to have the courage to fully commit to his strategy. Less crosses from wide to an empty box and more play to feet in the final third.
It's ridiculous to suggest that there's no manager out there who would improve us. I'm not saying to get rid, but all of this "pellegrino is blameless" bullshit is frankly that, bullshit.
