Players with a particular moral code will be so enraged by the summer antics by Citeh + the hacks, that they will give 100% for 90 mins to show that Pep is indeed a false messiah.
Thanks for posting this, PS. I wouldn't have realised otherwise and I'd probably have been screwed by it. What a monumentally stupid decision.
The line/station owners pay absolutely no attentton whatsoever, or care not, about whether engineering work will cause utter grief with travelling supporters (due to the fixture schedule) . Been this way for years.
A huge part of the problem lies in the fact that players who were obviously only ever brought in to play as back up (Sissoko, Lucas) as well as others who were clearly being phased out under Poch (Dele, Dier, Toby, Aurier, Winks) suddenly went from fringe players to integral parts of the starting XI for extended periods of time. This was largely down to their replacements not being good enough (Sanchez, Doherty, Aurier, Bergwijn, Ndombele) or us dallying for years and not having a plan of succession at all. Maureen got almost every major decision wrong, but he deserves a slice of credit for bringing in the first players (Reg and Hojbjerg) who look like they might actually improve us since we signed Wanyama in 2016. Our shambolic recruitment is what has killed us over the past 3 years.
Despite which we were only 2 wins and draw away from 3rd place and those could easily have been achieved with this squad. We were not playing to our strengths (attack) and we had mistakes in our defence and most of all perhaps in midfield where for large parts of the season we had little control in games. Despite all of that we conceded 7 LESS goals than the highly praised Chelsea and we lost a game less than both Leicester & Chelsea. I think we are seriously rubbishing our squad and our prospects need not be anything like as bad as many expect. EDIT and that was me looking at the season before 2019/20 so lets now look at last season
SO, season 20/21 still 7 points behind 3rd place Only one more goal conceded against 2nd placed United, mind you we helped to damage them with 6. Just 5 points behind CL champions Chelsea. My point still stands.
It was a really disappointing season but if you just consider the games where we threw points away (West Ham etc), we could have been so much closer. And that’s without considering the ones where we simply didn’t show up. There’s a lot still wrong with the squad but if we’d picked up 5 more points from the games where we lost to a Lanzini thunderbolt or a defensive error bought on by pressure from sitting back too much in the second half, we’d have come 4th on GD. A series of fine margin games compounded to wreck the season. That doesn’t make it ok that we dropped points there, and it doesn’t excuse the matches where we simply didn’t turn up, there were and are are clearly structural problems with the team. But better game management and a different tactical approach, with some improvements that we will hopefully see from new signings, should help a lot. We have a tough fixture list to start the season though and I hope Nuno gets through intact without a battering against his name. Then once the window closes and the games start coming thick and fast, hopefully we can begin to get excited about the season.
Right. I have detoxed and not posted since the end of last season- it felt good and I am sure my anxiety levels dropped and that probably helped my health. I have been popping in to read the forum but only glancing through comments- if it was more than a few lines , I didn't bother. One thing I haven't seen mentioned is regarding the number of points we dropped from winning positions last season, and compare that to late goals scored by Wolves a couple of seasons ago. Nuno has said he wants us to be fitter than everyone else. If we are strong to the end of games, then we have a good chance of getting top 4, and even higher.
The worst aspect was the negative boring football which made us look so bad. A positive outlook which Nuno seems to have can make a lot of difference to this squad . They look happy at least and the atmosphere is positive:-
The manager's first pre-match interview: 17 minutes? Haven't watched it yet, but the first minute or so seems to be Kane, Kane and Kane. ****'s sake.
That's why I've started labelling the Youtube videos that don't embed properly! Quite annoying that everyone's started doing that, to be honest.
If a defence has players who have a mistake in them, the worst thing that any manager can do is set them out with tactics which maximise the chances of one of those brainfarts happening Say that for every ten attacks faced that guarantees one brainfart from Aurier, Sanchez or Dier, having us sit back means they'll be facing considerably more attacks so the mistakes aren't a matter of chance but an inevitability
Nuno should pat Pep on the head instead of shaking hands with him before kick off... and Levy should spend the match lighting cigars with tenners while telling city directors we just got a huge sponsorship deal. And kane should be brought on with 10 to go so we can boo him and then be immediately subbed off. That and a win would make for a memorable day all round.
