The fans were booing big time at the final whistle, I hate to think what it might be like after the Sheffield game ! When's the last time we lost 5 on the bounce at home ?
My first impression was that he was too 'nice' to take a group of players and put fire in their belly. 100% support but time will tell.
Jury very much still out on Critchley but we can't already be sounding the death knell after just three games. We all know how football is and particularly QPR, we regularly lurch from the top of the form guide to the bottom and vice versa. Judging a manager on his manner with the media makes no sense, being mild-mannered with the press says eff all about how he is with the players. The guy has better credentials than any of us. We need to be calm but you can already hear the crowd getting on the players backs, i don't know if other clubs fans are as schizophrenic as ours. It is a worrying time and the potential departures in January in particular, though Willock's current form and injury record might put off potential suitors if we're lucky. Need Steff fit again, he was training last week so hopefully not too far off, and for the love of God a striker in January would be nice.
So Critchley saud Chair was ill at half time but wanted to carry on. Assist Said that Dozzell and Salter had been ill , hence neither were in the squad. Nothing about Armstrong, anyone know why he wasn't in the squad ?
I thought we played some good football, but f***** up in both the business ends of the pitch. Shodipo did well, as did Chair early on.
Critchley's quote, as Bobmid alludes to, seems to go against Trammers statement. Why would you put so many players out of their comfort zone and into defensive mode, which was an absolute fiasco (0-3)? Neil, handbrake Houdini, better use any "magic" he has left to right this Titanic 'mare. 'Cause no-one's going to games to watch this ****e.
If Neil is half as good a coach as he's supposed to be, I'm hoping he realises he got this wrong. However, listening to his post match interview I'm not so sure he does. 3-5-2 would definitely suit us and I think Beale wanted to play that way, but never had enough fit centre backs. Tim definitely needs to be further forward than he was last night. Really felt for him and Field in there against their midfield three. We were far too open and played into their hands, presumably because it was his first home game and wanted to be attacking, but this line up backfired badly.
We’ve got at least two or three clued-up contributors on here criticising the starting eleven and formation and fairly accurately predicting the potential outcome, so why can’t an acclaimed ‘football man’ like Neil Crotchless see the same thing? It’s rare that fans turn on a manager so soon but there’s many already seriously concerned about this guy. I get that he wanted to work with better players and in the Premier League, but still would question any coach/manager that’d give up a No. 1 role to become part of a backroom team. (I still find it odd that Warbles did the same going to West Ham, but appreciate his circumstances were different, ie he was out of a job.) P.S. Can we now move on from the pot-bellied Bromley hypocrite? He’s gone and he’s history. He’s going to get a lot of wins managing Grangers when most fixtures are against the Sweaty equivalent of the Dagenham Girl Pipers - so what?
I was a bit frustrated on Monday when I realised I'd double booked myself, and had to go out for dinner at half-time last night. I was quite relieved when half-time came and I had to go out for dinner. We didn't play attractive football, didn't look like we were going to score, and didn't have any spark in our play. I then sat at dinner and glanced at my phone to see the goal alerts. Gutted. Critchley sounded a bit shell shocked in his post-match interview, and it does worry me it is too big a step up for him, but I'm going to give him more time until my mind is set. Roll on Sheffield United and the New Year. Somehow, we are still only one win away from potentially being back in the playoff mix, but if the tide doesn't turn asap it could all go very wrong very quickly.
I almost made it to the end, left on about 89 minutes with the Luton fans singing ‘why there f**k are you still here’. I was hoping for a consolation, but……. I’ll spare you my take on team Selection and tactics. He got it wrong, though it’s worth pointing out that he’s only been in charge for one of our record equalling run of home defeats. At the end of his interview, he mentions ‘the bigger picture’ and it’s clear that there are players leaving in the next few weeks. If we do lose Willock, Dykes and Laird, we will have a very different team out for the second half of the season. Maybe he’s preparing for whatever worked at Blackpool? Or something else based on different loans from premiership academies?
68% possession. Almost 30 crosses into the ‘goal-scoring area’ has translated into 8 shots with only two on the target area. That’s appalling. In the past we have let in goals but at least we scored to win, draw and/or worry the other team. We have been devoid of being a team threatening to score for some time now and opposition teams aren’t concerned about our threat to score because we can’t. Simples!
Didn’t like the set up yesterday and didn’t like the performance. But Critchley has a win, a draw and a loss after inheriting a team in what looked like a terminal death spiral, and some of the comments on here are ridiculous. Fair enough in ten games time if the quality and results are anything like yesterday. He has to sort out which of these players has the minerals for this (hint, Roberts doesn’t). Critchley isn’t new to management, he got Blackpool promoted to this league and kept them in it, their fans were gutted when he left. Perhaps they don’t take smooth talking media appeal quite as seriously as Londoners. But if you want some bad news, Critchley’s history with limited teams (which is clearly what we have, especially when Willock is so woefully out of form and Chair seems to be following him) is 4-4-2 with a double 6. Not pretty in any way. Might be hampered by the fact that we don’t have 2 strikers.
Luton were a team in form, very fit, they attacked in numbers and defended in numbers. We had plenty of possession but were comparatively static, relying offensively on finding Dykes, and hoping he could do something with the ball - both long odds. Critchley needs to be given reasonable time to find what strengths we have. Hopefully work on fitness and team co-ordination. He needs to win back support at LR. A respectable performance against Sheffield Utd would be a start.
The trouble was, for many of those crosses, there was only Dykes in the penalty area and he seemed to go near post when the cross went far post and vice versa. He doesn't have that natural goal-scoring instinct of, say, an Austin and the quality of our crosses was very poor. Crucially, we need more of our mid-fielders pushing up and offering more targets in the penalty area.
Just watched NC’s after-match interview on the offy. He does look a bit shell-shocked (as he should). His interviews seem to me to show he takes some time to settle down into a club (his responses are improving, less “erms” and “ums” and more content). I believe he took a few games to get B’pool in the right direction when he started, so hopefully this is just a little of that. He got it badly wrong against Luton but hopefully he took an awful lot from the game. And as Sb says, he needs to be sorting the wheat from the chaff. But he will know the goal scoring situation has been poor this season and is not improving. We don’t have bad players, generally, but the coaches need to seriously perform here. Playing down the wings and unable to put good crosses in and convert them is very poor. Free-kicks and corners are more miss than hit. Players getting into good positions in the opposition box is very poor. Surely these are all areas for coaching and working on the practice pitches. They need to get on with it.
When they scored the second (a minute into second half) Chair ran over and spoke to Critchley. Looked like he wanted to come off to me.
