Trouble is we need two or three someones and we don't appear to have one right now. I do think the answer is a free agent, but that has not happened immediately and perhaps it won't. Lambert will bring common sense so I don't think we need to worry about that or so much for that matter personnel including forwards. The performances since the international break have been so bad and so damaging that his task is really to change a losing, fearful, error-ridden mentality into a winning, positive, world beater one and somehow he has only one week to do it.
Good analysis Scowey.I've said it elsewhere,but I bet Hurst's biggest regret is allowing Waghorn to be sold,I'm sure with him in the squad we would be looking at an entirely different scenario.
Trouble is Waghorn scored about half the goals of Daryl Murphy. £5m was a very good fee for him. If you're looking to the long term, it's not really a mistake at all. Only with hindsight.
My version - Keepers - Bart NOT having a good season at all / swapping and changing / Gerken starts off okay and back to usual. It's worse with the same personnel (to date) Defence - Lot of swapping around with positions. Nsiala doesn't look up to it. Chambers having a poor season. Same with Knudsen. Pennington perhaps doing well. Donacien on off. Looks WEAK but we'll see what Lambert comes up with. Lack of options. Worse than last season. Midfield - Edwards looks good. Huws / Bishop / Adeyemi doing their usual injury fun. Nydam on loan. Dozza a plus. Chalobah on / off. Ward having a poor season, Graham ( nuff said ) - worse than last season. Bang average at best. Attack - don't even need to expand, it's pants. See what Lambert does / comes up with. We'll know more with Hurst's signings / what we can expect. However, whatever way I look at it = We lack goals. Are we going to keep enough clean sheets? Massive 31 games in the league. Fa cup sadly needs to be fringe - we MUST keep players fit and we must stay in this division ( unless we're flying by early Jan then perhaps we can reassess that )
Waghorn wanted to stay, however Hurst was told he needed to sell further than Webster for funds to be released for him to get the players in he wanted. Hurst did probably the logical move - selling one POTENTIAL one season wonder to get his boys in. Evans - be interested to see what you do January to assist Lambert, as now we're really in the mire.
Jackson never has been a prolific goal scorer even in the 4th division, and we must face up to the possibility that he probably isn't going to solve our lack of goals, the absolute idiotic folly of getting rid of our entire strike force is coming home to roost with a vengeance coupled to also getting rid of our best defender, what sort of imbecile would do a lunatic thing like that? Answers on a postage stamp please. Knudsen seems to have got a bit of the big time Charlie about him since the World Cup but I think Lambert probably knows how to cope with that. The midfield is it's usual mess with the permanent absentees such as Adeyemi ( who the Hell is he? ) leaving us with a selection of players who seem incapable of passing the ball to a team member and no idea of what those white sticks covered in netting are for apart from runner beans. Having said all that I am going to the match to support the new manager and team and I don't expect us to suddenly become a good side from a poor side, but I do expect us to become a better side than we are now and continue to improve especially after the January transfer window, if there's no money made available to Lambert which is not beyond the realms of possibility with Coco the Clown holding the purse strings, then I think we will struggle for the rest of the season.
What I am hoping for tomorrow is a sign that the team is in fact starting to become a team, I would like to see more passion, more high pressing, more chasing a ball that looks like a lost cause. A team that defends as a team and indeed attacks as a team Now, I`m under no illusions that we have the personnel to carry this off but I want to see the effort, give PL a sign that he has a base to start from I think this is equally as important as the result
Yeah I'll go along with that. Tomorrow is a free hit if you like, Lambert hasn't been here two minutes and we'll see who figures, if anyone is binned off etc not in the 18. Be interesting the line up tomorrow. We're not really in a position to have many sexy good performances with no rewards. Imperative we start putting some Ws on the board after this, when we'll have 30 games left. Last season, Bolton survived on 41. 2016/17, Forest survived on 51. We're on 9 points after 15 games. I don't think the points total is going to be anywhere near 51 this season, low 40s should do it. So what do we realistically need? 31 to play, I'd suggest - 8 x win 8 x draw 15 x loss That would give us 41 points total. Perhaps still not enough! Not going to edit it but you get the general idea. Lets hope we pick up and others continue to be pants down with us.
I don't think tomorrow is a "free hit" at all. Lose and were minimum 6 points (possibly 8) from safety, and a home match against one of our rivals. New manager or not, a win tomorrow is of paramount importance - a draw "may be ok", but these are the games we need to get three points from, not away to teams like Leeds Boro and WBA.
Evening gents. Waghorn might have scored a few more goals than Jackson but let’s not kid ourselves that keeping him would have made a lot of difference to the situation. I felt that Harrison and Jackson could have combined well at the start of the season, but they never got the opportunity. We have a fresh start now for everybody and I do at least trust Lambert to get us well organised and maximise the talent and the chemistry in the side. fieldmarshall & yorkiegit - I agree the quality is not going to emerge overnight but what we need to see is the sharpness yorkiegit is talking about. Chasing balls down, one touch passes. We need that tempo and energy to our game. We are lucky that Lambert is kicking off with a home fixture because the atmosphere is going to be electric. Hopefully that can drive the players on and whether by luck or judgment we win or draw both of the next two fixtures. 4 points would do, no points and I feel the writing would be on the wall. No pressure lads.
I have to disagree with you about the difference Waghorn would have made,Yorkie. Last Season the overall quality of our play was really no better,the only difference was Waghorn frequently dropping deep,making things happen and weighing in with goals at crucial times. It's academic/speculation but I'm positive,had he been kept,a good proportion of the drawn games would have been wins and Hurst's position would have looked far more comfortable. There are rumours he wanted to go/stay,fell out with Hurst,etc,etc but at the end of the day it was ME who decided to "cash in" on his most saleable asset with the resultant consequences for all concerned,not least us poor punters.
He had an incredible start to the season last year, but then he faded. Yes he certainly would have contributed but would he have been banging them in isolated and with little service? I have my doubts.
One thing I noticed watching that training video on TWTD was the exercise that involved 2 players playing piggy in the middle surrounded by 7 or 8 others. The instructions were clearly given as one or two touch maximum and you can also hear the coaches saying things like "Don't feel sorry for them" in a way that encouraged the players to do their best to keep the ball off the chasing lads. It was an interesting training element that I enjoyed seeing in action. This makes me think that Lambert will be making the players move the ball much quicker than before.
It's nothing new,I've seen a variation of the routine used by the past few regimes as a warm up for the subs at half time.
well the good news is we only need 7 wins to catch up with that lot up the road ( assuming they do not win for the next 7)
This Waghorn debate really puzzles me. Why is it a debate? He was vital. He scored goals. U don’t “cash in” if u have ambition. U kept your best and u add to it. Or u buy someone even better, which we definitely haven’t. IfPH sold him voluntarily he’s crackers. He went to derby because He’s not PL. but he went to derby because they have ambitions of being promoted and a guy who can score 15+ in the championship is a rare commodity and worth investing in. For whatever reason we didn’t. Maybe he was a one season wonder but I’d put my money on him ahead of the ‘fresh hungry’ talent from division 4 we’ve ended up with. Selling him made us worse off. Maybe we don’t have the same service for him this season (Celina wound up at another champ team with more ambition to add quality players ...) but that doesn’t make him a bad player. He’d be the same good player just in a slightly worse team. I’m gutted he was sold. We’ve nothing but bottom place and crap strikers to show for it. There’s probably other reasons too, like Hurst could seemingly suck both the belief and confidence out of even Ronaldo, but goals win football matches and we have a lot less without him. Whoever contributed to his departure be it manager and/or owner really ****ed up and we can only hope lambert can recover with the squad he’s got and/or what he might be able to do in Jan to keep us in the division. I wanted mm out, we were going nowhere, I really wanted hurst to succeed but he clearly couldn’t operate at this level for whatever reason so I just hope pl can organise a very below average set of players to punch above their weight. It happens. Everyone on this forum broadly agrees were in the **** and it’s hard to see how we’re getting out of it. I think Waghorn would have made a difference right now.
If football was that simple, everyone would just sign the players they know will do well for them that season. The side with the biggest budget would always win the title and the side with the smallest budget always relegated. Waghorn is an average Championship striker - Derby didn't sign him to be in the first XI week in, week out - true we don't even have one of those right now, but he was really no great loss and £5m was a steal. McGoldrick was the real clanger because we got no fee for him and we have let countless talented forwards leave the club for peanuts in the Evans era. Hurst had no option but to sell to buy - he's signed some good players and some duds but it's hard to see how he could have done a lot better in the transfer market. The only fault for the gaping holes in the squad is with Evans.
