His immediate challenge is to find a defence that can keep a clean sheet from players that look jaded . First time in along while where we have a creative forward looking team.. we normally have the opposite , sound defence but can't score ..
The script is already written draws are no use to us so we have to play the game in their half ... ... Pritchard is vital to the way Neil will want us to play imo. As you say we have enough attacking players to score goals so give them the ball quickly before the opposition defence is in place. The midfield need to be mobile in bombing forward and falling back if we lose the ball. But I'd be happy to bypass the midfield and keep feeding the wide players from the back. Even by the law of averages they'll get enough of the ball to cause problems and we won't have to play endless balls across our back line.
True enough. But I did mention this ONLY if we were relying on luck this time round. The context is that going for Ex Preston Managers had not been a paticularly fortunate in the past.
Let's all get behind the new gaffer and his (our) new coach. k.t.f. we can still get out of this **** leauge.
Wigan and Rotherham have around 6/7 'six-pointers' as well as local derbies ... ... we have less so could make up ground by default, and Defoe
Clear thinking, its what we have lacked recently, hope the new team coach, gives this idea some thought.
He's mediocre at PL level, decent in the Championship and one of the best in L1. I doubt many in this division would tempt him.
I love quick direct football mate. Arsenal, under Wenger were one of the best teams I've ever watched go from back to front. They would do it in no time and it was very effective. Obviously they played a lot where they passed it around etc as well but that counter attacking football was unreal!
Just watched Alex Neil's interview and he comes across really well. None of this "I'm happy to be here, it's a big club" soundbites, he genuinely knows how big a club we are and the pressure that comes with it and seriously wants to do well. Not that other managers haven't when they've joined just that the club has been too big for them and they've been beaten before they started. This guy seems like he thrives on that kind of pressure
He was my choice before Keane threw his name in.. There's a reason why the lad has been out of the game for nearly 8 month in that no one else fancied him. I really hope he does well here but I, particularly, don't want to be in a similar situation in 12 months time. The longer were down here , the harder it becomes to get out.
EFL Expert Lad on Quest was saying he's a brilliant signing for us and will be awesome (slightly pissed paraphrasing maybe!) I think he'll be canny if we can acknowledge there's work to do and don't **** ourselves at every setback. Reckon he'll get things going the right way. Age 40 300 games as manager, and lots of good achievements on his cv already. These players and fans, decent manager should be able to sort things out. Sadly might not be in soon enough this season but I'm optimistic. Playoff final win coming up you heard it here first haha! "Will you start the false hope generator" (in the voice of Richard O'Brien)
very similar comments, obviously not the same , when Bruce took over at WBA. You need to see that these people who do this, have to keep onside with player, clubs and not to rock the boat.
Alex Niel like all the other managers that have come and gone over our recent history will only do a good job if the club let's him. We'll have to wait and see how he gets on. Yesterday was a free hit for him. We shouldn't have needed a manager for motivation to get a result Yesterday. I hope he does the right thing and takes some players out of the spot light that need it, local lads or not. History shows this club can turn good managers **** and players that should be good, crap. Let's see what he can do.
If we make the play offs I’d say he will have made a good start. A lot more confident in AN than the Speakman temporary managers or Johnson tbh.
Liking this bloke more and more. Telling the fans as well as the hierarchy exactly as it is https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/spo...news/alex-neil-sunderland-free-agent-23069282
first opinions, he talks well with none of the 'bigging the club up/fantastic place' blah blah blah crap and after watching his first game he realised what is needed, unfortunately he will have to rely on out of contract players when he really needs players who can start and work for 90 minutes, returns from injuries will be a major boost for the run in but could all be too late by then, or it might give us that run of form that gets us promoted 'the long way'. he more or less has a bit of a 'free hit' as there is nothing much he can do to change personel but if he can change the attitude and get them playing as a team again that should give us some hope at least, so i for one am not going to judge the lad as right now he has tired players although i feel we will see the defense change before anything else, might be worth looking at batth/wright/arby/hume combo, couple of experienced heads in there and gives doyle/cirkin the break they seem to need. speakman and the new team did ok in the summer window but i think most fans feel they struggled in the recent one and have simply added more of the same, think we all wanted more than batth added to defence even before flanagan was released and we needed a striker able to stand in for stewart, maybe defoe can still do it but we need to start our passing game again as long ball hoofs are no good for him.
