Taking us down? ****ing hell, the state of you. Three games gone. One big win, one unlucky defeat, one deserved defeat. And you lose your mind. There are some properly entitled folk on here, get a grip.
We need a bit of a reality check this morning. Ok last night was **** in almost every bodies book. We can’t deny it. We are missing two of our best players including a twenty goal player from last season. We obviously don’t have the ability to sign players of proven championship quality that many demanded. We don’t have parachute payments and have nowhere near the resources of the top teams. Grant has to get the best out of what we have. He has earned the right to have a crack after last year. Our replacements are not top championship players and some didn’t do that great in L1. Its going to be a hard year and to be honest my hopes were mid table at best. All the players here have been chosen by the current recruitment team but I am sure they would love to sign a top quality centre half and centre forward. It won’t happen. We have to keep the faith and hope the young lads can adapt quickly. It is what it is.
Too early to know whether last night was a blip or a trend of course, but I think our summer transfer business has been about adding cover rather than believing we were buying players who were better than the team that finished last season. Now that 3 of the best players from last season (Honeyman, Wilks and I include Slater over the last 10 games) are out, and a few others going to take a while to step up a division, our squad looks a bit thin for this level again. And to compound it the obvious covers for Honeyman and Wilks (Moncur and Longman) were also missing.
It WILL get better, just simply because based on what I saw last night it can't get any worse! Better days ahead, particularly when key players return. I never anticipated much more than staying in this league, some big hitters about, and Derby aren't one of them!
I agree with a lot of this, but when you say 3-4 of those performances would be a concern, I'm just finding it hard not to look at the overall trend of City under McCann at this level, particularly at home. Last night was very much the norm in that respect. We've lost 15 of our 25 home Championship games under McCann, there's really something very wrong with that, and it goes back to even before the collapse after selling Bowen and Grosicki, we regularly lost at home before then too, with mostly our away form keeping us in the top half at the time.
i agree, whether its his fault or not- Mccann at this level record is awful . and i keep saying, what happened last season was irrelevant , he was hired as a championship manager so that is all i will ever judge him on personally. and this isnt me saying get rid of him , he deserves time to have a crack with his full team available after the window , but thats why 2 home defeats in a row just sets alarm bells ringing already. deja vu.
What concerns me is McCanns inability to see what’s happening in front of him & to change it. City spent the whole of the first half lumping balls into the box for Davies & Jagielka to clear every time. At what point do we expect the manager & his assistant to realise this is clearly not working & to move KLP up top with Magennis & play him in on the floor against 2 slow defenders? It took 70 mins to make a substitution. Every fan in the stadium could see long before 70 mins the team was set up wrong & was never going to score if the game went on till midnight.
What happened in December 2019, July 2020 or whenever is literally irrelevant to how we play now. That's just using history as a stick to beat McCann with. He will never be able to expunge that time from his record, but he has to move on. Supporters would benefit from moving on too.
He definitely let it go on for too long last night, Derby were really good at forcing us into long balls with their pressing game. It was an off-night for the management team too - I suspect they had a pre-match plan to get Huddlestone on, and for whatever reason couldn't countenance diverting from that plan. I like that we have introduced Will Jarvis to the first team. Keep that academy supply line going.
I think the reason Bruce and Adkins walked by themselves was not ironic but more to do with the attitude of the owners of the club.
Baxter was the keeper against Wigan, the one where the ball bounced off him at every opportunity. Maybe we should stick another loan kid in too, Bernard, put him in the firing line, then everyone can say how **** he is.
plusses from tonight.... Service on the concourse was that slow I missed some of the second half.(they don't deserve our custom) Think the woman next to me pissed herself every time TH touched the ball (c'mon everyone get a grip-embarrassing) Tom.E makes me laugh Watching the Derby fans (what a set of whoppers)offering the flaskers out behind main stand and being ignored.
Papa declared the Bank of Allam shut many years ago. The heir apparent has decided a recruitment policy of youth in the hope of unearthing a Bowen type nugget. It is what it is, or, and so we have come to this. These are the constraints the manager is working under, be it McCann or any other. I agree with those who say it is a young side, desperately in need of a couple of wise old heads around them, but consider this.... Just how the, fer whatsits sake, does a club under a transfer embargo, under threat of points deduction for money fiddling, can make a plea for some help and the EFL say ok?. No, not pop a post on the rams message board, anybody played a decent level of saturday amateur care to dust off their boots. No, they bring in a 40 cap ex England international. My opening statement is not an invitation to have this thread filled with everything that has been posted before about the ownership. It is what it is, we have to accept that, and is in all things being a City supporter, once again, travel in hope rather than expectation. Yeah, ****, innit.
We played against a Derby side that are operating loosely under the same conditions. They’ll be a relegation contender this season without a doubt. Yet we couldn’t even get close to them in terms of ability.
Maybe, but all I'm saying is it's hard not to be reminded of that time and get the feeling that it's happening again. We've had some good and some poor City sides in recent years, but even in the PL, I don't think I can remember us being so routinely beaten at home as in these last two Championship seasons. Part of me wonders how much of it is the Championship and how much is fans being there. We seem really nervous, desperate to succeed but terrified that we won't. At one point last night Greaves was trying to take a free kick in front of E2 late on and the ref made him wait while he noted down a booking, the crowd were moaning at the ref, but Greaves seemed to think it was aimed at him, and gestured towards the ref as if to explain and defend himself from the perceived criticism. Feels like we're a difficult home crowd to play in front of. There's a really **** cycle of defeats and disappointed fans that needs to be broken. Whatever it is, it's McCann's job to sort out, and for me, us looking so weak and scared at home again and again is far more damning of him than any particular formation or subs.
