1. Another Saturday, another defeat. 2-1 to Preston this time, all with a demoralising air of inevitability about it. Even when City surprised us, and themselves, by taking a first half lead. In the same way that Ehab Allam’s ****tarded approach to transfers is easy to work out in advance, so Hull City’s capacity for finding a way to lose a winnable fixture counts second only to the sun rising in the east for predictability. 2. Preston aren’t especially good. You don’t need to be any good to beat City any more – in fact, as Sunderland showed recently, you can be really rather terrible and still expect to collect something at full time. We’re the ultimate easy-beats. 3. As much as the club’s death spiral ultimately rests with the despicable Allam family, there’s a degree of culpability also lying with the players – who are better than 22nd – and the manager, whose abilities are completely escaping us at the time. It may sound harsh, but it isn’t easy to feel a great deal of sympathy for Nigel Adkins. His post-match utterances are already beginning to significantly grate, his cathartine loitering in Leonid Slutsky’s tortured final days was quite unsettling, he knows (or should know) that the Allams are irresponsible owners and he has no evident plan for survival. 4. Not that there’s any point whatsoever in dispensing with him. Hiring someone with the capability of keeping this doomed side up would cost money, and yachts cost money too, so we can forget that. Instead, our flimsy hopes rest with the players themselves. They’re capable of finishing in the top 21, after all. Unfortunately, the principal leader has had his head turned, but it’s probably now with McGregor, Meyler, Larsson and Campbell – notionally the senior pros – to chart and then traverse a route to safety. 5. It feels unlikely though. It’s tough to find a City fan who doesn’t think we’re doomed to successive relegations. The club feels broken, and repair will not come until its current owners go. And that cannot happen too soon. Let’s assume for a moment that this season is already lost. Let’s not pretend that we’re suddenly going to prosper in League One next season, because under this parasitic regime we won’t. There’s no limit to how far we can fall. Others have fallen further than we’re about to. The longer they stay, the further we fall – it’s absolutely that simple. 6. So, we must protest, and protest hard. It may be in vain, but let’s not have to explain to City fans yet to come that we sat back and did **** all while the club was deliberately shovelled back into the lower leagues we worked so hard to rise from. Sheffield United on Friday 23rd February is on Sky Sports. Let’s do it. 7. The mental gymnastics Ehab Allam has to perform to maintain the delusion he is a good steward of the club would have Louis Smith’s psyche gasping in approval. His latest psychological somersault, performed in the Yorkshire Post, is to use the analogy of the housing market a few years ago, with people not selling because they expect the price of their asset to rise in the near future, as an excuse for City being less ambitious in the winter transfer window than bottom club Burton Albion. 8. “When you are only outside the bottom three on goal difference, it is a hard job to bring players in.” Hmm. The two clubs below us brought in nine players between them. Maybe the problem stems with you Ehab, and even if you deflect the blame onto Lee Darnborough, well who was responsible for his appointment? 9. Pathological lying is described as a habituation of lying, when the individual lies even when there is nothing to be gained from it. Nobody believes Ehab any more, the Yorkshire Post are content to publish his words without question, but then they just need to fill space to make it look like they don’t only care about Leeds, so even then belief isn’t an issue. Ehab could just tell the truth, that his family are bleeding every penny out of the club possible while still keeping it functioning, and when the parachute payments have gone they’ll discard the club like a mattress in a lay-by, but he just doesn’t seem capable of it. The truth would shatter his best run club in the League delusional construct. 10. Everybody wants job security, and being well paid doesn’t create an exemption, especially when your career is relatively short and your earnings will need to finance the rest of your life. So when you’re in the last knockings of that career, out of contract in the summer, able to field offers from other employers from January, having no certainty that your current employer will exercise the one year extension option they have but won’t activate till May when the employer’s status is known, and that employer is notorious for taking a Victorian mill owner’s approach to employee relations, you grasp that offer of security like a drowning man grasps a rope. We don’t blame Michael Dawson for wanting to move to Nottingham Forest on deadline day. http://www.ambernectar.org/blog/2018/02/things-we-think-we-think-291/
As far as i'm concerned, unless a miracle happens and new owners come in who are decent, league 1 is an inevitability, be it this season or next After that, we are perched perilously on the edge of the trap door to league 2 The summer will be a disaster regarding the playing staff Is there any realistic scenario where we don't end up in administration?
Usually agree with these lads but would question why they now think we should “protest hard” when they have previously not joined protests. Maybe they should have been “hard protesting” sooner rather than standing on the edge peeping in?
Another excellent TWTWT. Anyone who thinks this squad is 'good enough' or 'sufficiently motivated' to keep us up is deluded.
I 100% think it’s good enough. If you believe we paid the fees quoted, we had £12m of available talent not even on the bench on Saturday and then an £8m international winger omitted through ‘injury’. Toral would get in most teams in the division, Lord knows why we aren’t utilising him.
The Toral thing puzzles me, hes one of our few players that seems to have a proper football brain and thinks about what hes doing with the ball. Plays some great through balls for the strikers and he makes things happen.
I agree with regards to Toral - I like what he has shown so far. But we're definitely relegation fodder. Starts from the top. The club has an infestation of rankness. I can't see that changing.
Exactly! People say we aren’t scoring and you can quote 47 ****ing balls into the box as much as you want but that’s often easy to defend. It’s about spotting that clever through ball. For me the team from what we have available right now genuinely picks itself. The only query is right back but I’d shoehorn Meyler in there for his experience and he’s played there enough. Mcgregor Meyler McDonald Hector Clark Bowen Irvine Larsson Wilson Toral Campbell Then on the bench you have Evandro, Dicko, Keane, Aina, Tomori, Diomande, Marshall then returning very soon we have Dawson and Grosicki. If anyone thinks that squad isn’t good enough to finish at least mid table in this ****ty ****ty division then they’re ****ing mental.
Pass completion rates on Saturday, it's no wonder we've got problems... Meyler 46% Campbell 42% Hector 41% The entire team had a pass completion rate of 56%.
I think the problem is, and that is down to our lack of planning in recruitment, we have bought too many players that are number 10's and arguably our best players, and you just can't fit them all into the team. Toral, Henriksen, Evandro & Irvine are all best in that position, but they can't all play. Really is **** crazy that we bring in too many that are suited to one position, and we lack numbers & quality in other areas.
Yep, I really want to squeeze Evandro in for precisely this reason but I think we need Irvine’s energy in the middle so it’s either Evandro or Toral. The only other option is instead of Larsson but I wouldn’t leave him out.
They certainly were but they were also stood watching, from a distance, a protest prior to the first game of our last season in the PL when a little “hard protesting” may have added to any impact.
That's a wow, the total team is as near to 50% as makes any difference. Every second pass we made we gave the ball to them, that's shocking.
It suggests headless chickens low on confidence and we need a steadying influence in the middle. The more I think about it the more I’m convincing myself Evandro needs to play in the middle as a metronome. But that then leaves us massively low on energy in there. You could do a diamond with Larsson or Evandro at the base but then why sign Wilson? All this shows is the ****ing embarrassment of riches we have to be 22nd!!!
I'd play Evandro in the middle with Larsson, he can pass and keep hold of the ball, he's even capable of winning a ball.
Article just appeared on the HDM website, that Larsson is allegedly talking to a club in his native Sweden regards a move there in the summer.
