We looked solid and actually got forward when we went to a 3 at the back. Allahyar should’ve been on instead of Twine and in hind sight Matty Jacob instead of Christie. Although the latter would never have happened. We should’ve been playing for a point in the second half but Rosenior completely butchered it at half time.
Absolute tosh. They should have had six. It's all very well spouting the bleedin' obvious, that they just happened to score three and we didn't, but how did they get in positions to score in the first place? They completely outrun, outplayed and outfought us for 90 minutes and part of the reason for that was down to LR and his decision making.
This is where managers can't win though. Park the bus and if you concede to a late winner everyone slams you for not having any ambition even if it very nearly worked (look at the Huddersfield fans reaction to their game against us this season). Be brave and try to attack, and if you then get exposed as is obviously likely, everyone slams you for being naive. To be fair he said himself that it proved to be a mistake and he got it wrong, but that's obviously easy to identify in hindsight and there's no obvious right answer when you're in a bad position like that.
I'm not disputing that they played better than us or that we were poor, or that we deserved to lose the game. But no, they shouldn't have had 6, that's just a daft thing to say. They did very well to score the goals they did from difficult positions and it punished us.
Agree with your point, but ultimately you can’t take off arguably your defender of the first half for a player who’s completely out of form and then Twine who offered no outlet on the pitch too. He got it right too late. Allahyar provided an outlet and got us forward, we didn’t look anywhere near as leaky when we went to a back 3 we also had a lot more control of the ball.
The current crop of centre backs are really not the issue. **** me Reece Burke got promoted as a regular last season. Full backs have been the issue since coming up and remain the issue. Coyle works hard but in possession, very limited, Christie is past it, left backs non existent. Our centre backs are good for this level, our midfield’s protection of the back line is one of the worst in the division as are our full back options.
You're almost certainly right but I think also DD has actually made a really good point. Our centre back options are simply not as good as all those named and I do think we're lacking a bit of hardness in that department. FFS Harry Maguire couldn't even get into the team when we had Davies and Dawson ahead of him.
Davies and Dawson were both signed in the premier league though. Jones LG1, Greaves academy, Maka under the Allams. Pretty good quality for the spend. We could go up with those 3 as your main options in a back 4, we have bottom 6 quality full backs though and in that department at this level we definitely have been spoilt, Odubajo & Robertson is arguably the best partnership the league has seen.
You're right about Odubajo and Robertson and, yes, given the outlay our cb options have given a fantastic return on the respective investments. But if we're serious about promotion I'm not sure we have quite enough. Wouldn't you swap Turner and Chester for Greaves and Jones?
Of course, but they’re currently 7th with little midfield protection, poor keepers and poor full backs either side so I think they should be given more credit
So why NT, with the same keeper (Ingram and even Allsop) the same right full backs Coyle and Christie, Elder on the left (who at least behaved like a LB even if not this standard) and essentially the same midfield Seri, Slater, Traore as LR had when he first came and stopped the rot of goals conceded has it all gone tits up...
Because we convinced ourselves that these players were the reason we were stopping the goals, which to some extent was true. But we sacrificed near enough all attacking output to stop the rot and now we are playing more expansive, the gaping holes in the squad are beginning to show. Someone in the middle to protect the back line, good full backs and lack of depth in wide forward areas.
He ****ed it up at the start, the diamond worked well against Blackburn after a series of blunt performances since Jaden got injured, it suits what we have available. He even commented on making the change to play without wingers, when we don’t have any wingers available, nor overlapping full backs, it makes sense to set up in a way that doesn’t depend on them. So why in the monkeys chuff did he decide to revert to the patchwork 4-4-2? I am absolutely not a can’t-change-a-winning-team advocate, but this change defied all real logic? He has a real touch of Steve Bruce about him. The game plan is the game plan regardless of which players are available and how suited they are to actually executing it.
Throughout this post you seem to be unsure whether you're complaining about him changing things too much or too little.
He clearly doesn’t fancy Traore which is baffling considering he was comfortably our best player last season after he got fit.
