True, and City1904 gives the reason why .... "We don't have a squad, we have a group of random individuals". Root cause of course being Enob.
Irvine has his best game in his best position and then he's put wide left. Aina and Bowen strike up a great partnership and then Aina is moved to the left, despite Clark doing well. Henriksen does nothing, his best performances are when he doesn't hamper the team. I'd rather have stewart in there.
We played truly good football and threatened every defence we came against under Slutsky. We have no defenders and that is still the case and still alarmingly obvious. The immediate difference pre and post Adkins is alarming. Yes there are bigger influences but we are now literally as bad as we could possibly be. Slut was keeping our head above the water by building a team that could work together and play to their strengths.
one of the most frustrating thing for me is why cant professional footballers put a ball in the middle of the box. 9/10 times the ball is hit too far for a throw in or it doesn't beat the first man. it isn't that difficult so why do we struggle so much
I think people are being very kind to Slutsky here. I don't blame him particularly, but we were truly ****e under him weren't we. Even the most average sides were opening us up every week, it was embarrassing. Things aren't great now, but we're actually competitive and not just getting hammered every week. Clearly the goals need to come, but it's hard to see why we're not scoring, considering we do have decent strikers and we are creating good chances. Our recent home draws have been frustrating, but we haven't played like a team 21st in the league and it's not hard to picture that our results will start to improve to match our performances soon.
The reason is that they're not just trying to hit the middle of the box. The idea is that corners are very easy to defend if you just plonk them into an area. It's only when you get the ball in the right place but with plenty of speed and whip on it that defenders are caught out. Players go for that low trajectory whipped ball and when you get that wrong it's often going to hit the first man or clear everyone. They could float a safe one in every time which would hit the area no problem, but the theory is that those crosses would be headed away easily every time.
as apposed to easily clearing the throw in they get I get what youre saying but those floated through balls would be a big improvement on our current attempts. serious question as I cant remember but other than the aina cup header have we actually scored from a corner?
We did at least pose a threat to the opposition and won some games of football. At the moment we aren't doing that under Nigel (not the games that matter anyway).
I wonder if Nigel is thinking that over the course of the season if you draw every game 0-0 then there’s a good chance you’ll stay up?
I agree, Evandro would of been a far better option and at no point have I advocated that two upfront is necessary. But I am trying not to be overly critical and overly analytical as that would take thousands of words. There are a number of issues with the line up last night and we are clearly trying to search for our best XI, which we have been all season. Which is a huge issue as there is no consistency in performance or team selection. Exactly, we got more points under Slutsky than Adkins. I know Nigel needs time and I agree with that. However, our goal difference is a lot better than those teams around us and that is as much to do with Slutsky as Adkins. I would rather we built an attacking team based on our strengths rather than rely on lucky 1-0 wins. I think we where truly **** is a bit harsh on Sluts as we had some great movement and some great link up play upfront, we where also terrible at the back. Under Adkins we are average all over the pitch.
We weren’t getting hammered every week under Slutsky, stop making stuff up. I think it’s right that we are in games more now under Adkins, because we get the ball forwards early and play high up the pitch. But we don’t have any strategies for converting that field position into goals. That’s why we’ve arguably gone backwards under the new manager - that’s what the points per game stats suggest.
We look like a disjointed rag tag bunch all over the pitch since Adkins arrived. Slutsky managed to tune some of the strings and get them to play a song. Adkins couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.
Here are some stats Under Slutsky Played 20, Won 4, Drawn 7, Lost 9. Scored 34 Conceded 37, goal difference -3. 0.95 points per game, 32% of available points, 20% win ratio. Scored 1.7 goals per game, conceded 1.85 goals per game. Under Adkins Played 9, Won 1, Drawn 4, Lost 4. Scored 5, Conceded 8, goal difference -3. 0.77 points per game, 25% of available points, 11% win ratio. Scored 0.55 goals per game, conceded 0.88 goals per game. So to sum it up, we are now winning nearly 50% less games, picking up 20% less points, scoring 68% less goals, and conceding 52% less goals per game. Speaks for itself who was doing the better job, no?
The problem is we are drawing 0-0 at home at losing 1-0 away If we had more games left I'd probably be more positive but these are home games that we really have to win because we are getting nothing away
We were though weren't we? We had some really humiliating, pants-down defeats. Losing 3-2 from 2-0 up at home, getting hammered at Brammall Lane, Middlesbrough and Forest putting 6 past us in 3 days. We were a joke. If we were that disjointed we wouldn't be creating all these chances while keeping a clean sheet.
Creating all what chances? We were creating chances aplenty under Slutsky, I bet you could count all the clear scoring opportunities we've created under Adkins on one hand.
We were creating and scoring plenty but losing because the team was all over the place out of possession. Adkins has addressed that which obviously needed doing. Now we look like an actual professional football team who is struggling to score goals, rather than the whipping boys we were before. But we are creating chances, look at last night. We should have won 3 or 4 nil looking at those and there's been loads of times where that's been the case now, including the reverse fixture against Leeds. Yes Slutsky's record is better overall, but that's largely because of the first couple of months where we got those three big wins. Things were OK then. After that we gradually got worse and the last month or so was the worst City have played in years. Even the one win at Barnsley was an average performance. The defeats were nothing short of abject.
