Funny, I sort of agree too but not sure if that will be amazing or a travesty! A clean sheet but 0-0 vs Stoke Still, better than last year! MP? I just don’t get him - a must win game but we still play backfoot football for 1st 70mins. To timid, to sideways & then to late.
I never, ever, in my wildest nightmares thought I would find myself saying this, but I would rather have Merrington as manager than Pellegrino,
Its clear to see that the manager is not up to the task or premiership footbal.However,i do have a smidgeon of sympathy for him. Imo he has not been backed in the transfer window.he should have been backed or sacked.neither happened
Agree 100%. When the post-mortem on this season is conducted, the board will take a huge amount more blame than the manager in my opinion.
Something really odd at the end. Only 2 mins injury time which literally never happens and then he ended it after 1 min 50 seconds as timed on my stopwatch. Travesty
If we go down then I will 100% blame the board for resting on their laurels in 2016 and continuing to do failing to see what was unfolding before their eyes. That doesn't change the fact though that even a half competent manager would have us almost safe by now.
Anyone who thinks the players are the primary reason why we are where we are, I would suggest should watch that game. I don't think we played badly, and I certainly think we were better than Stoke. Bertrand wasn't as good as usual, and Tadic was totally anonymous. But that's about it. We weren't brilliant, far from it, but we weren't bad. However, yet again, we played with the handbrake on. We spent the first half passing backwards and sideways, it took far too long for us to get someone (Sims) to play close to Carrillo, and we had no-one on the pitch who could take a set piece. I wholeheartedly believe that the reason we failed to win was because of MP. Again. I don't even give him that much credit for us being totally dominant in the final half an hour. For me, Lambert rolled the dice somewhat rather than accept a straight forward, boring, 0-0 draw. Shaqiri playing further forward, followed by Crouch coming on at HT, had already led to Stoke not getting as men behind the ball as previously. But then bringing Jese on all really pushed it to another level. Suddenly there was space galore for us to attack. Lambert went for it, and he was a sitter of a Boufal header away from it totally backfiring. Carrillo won so many flick ons (as a target man, I'm really impressed by him - although without goals, it ultimately isn't enough), which is no easy thing and yet he totally lacked support. And far too many of our players were conservative for me to believe it's anything other than instructions they've been given. We're good enough to survive, and we just about have enough games to do it. But we won't. With MP in charge, we're sleepwalking straight into the Championship. Huddersfield and now Swansea have both scored four at home recently, against fellow relegation rivals. I can't see us doing that, today being such an example. It's very difficult to walk away thinking anything other than I've just seen the two teams who will be going down with WBA.
I've always said that I don't blame Pellegrino for taking on a job that he should never have been offered.
That wasnt a reply to you mate, and the chap i replied to actually said it was fair enough and that he did misunderstand. I see you ignored my other reply as you most likely realised you have been quite rude and i have been calm in all my replies. This isnt going any where so lets leave it and next time we converse try to not over react and instead debate the football
Of course you would. It's the modern trend to predict doom and gloom and be happy to be proved wrong. You can't lose! There is absolutely no reason why we can't win the cup. It won't change the fans entrenched views against MP2 but it will probably be enough for the board to give him another season. As for today's game - it was pretty awful. Can't help feeling that, listening to his post-match interviews, MP2 is as frustrated about our slow build up as we are. He did revert to two up front quite early today. I know 3-5-1 is the way a lot of top teams play nowadays but thought his tactical changes and substitutions were probably about right today. I personally think he tries to hard to keep everyone happy by rotating - particularly in the middle of the park - and just wish we could stick with the same line up during this final run in.
Yeah - made no sense if you allow 30 seconds for each substitution and then he actually showed his watch to their keeper indicating there would be time added on for his time wasting.
It’s all Cedric’s fault. There was a period during the second half where we were really beginning to build some pressure. Then the ball comes out to Cedric and he has a shot which ends up like all his shots, somewhere around row Z. We never really recovered the initiative after that. Stoke were really poor, which makes the draw much less easy to accept. A point at Burnley is one thing- we should have won today.
We can’t win the cup because we are a rubbish football team under this manager. We have beaten Fulham, a Watford side who had just replaced a sacked manager, and a West Brom side bottom of the league, so far in the cup. Yes, we should beat Wigan, but we won’t beat United, Chelsea or Spurs.
