They still have some pretty tall canny physical but competent players who seemed to know when to grapple pull shirts etc. their right back did Millar a couple of times which the ref failed to see .-and he was young !
Can slice it whichever way you want, but getting tonked 4-0 by a team that will likely be also rans by the end of the season is very concerning.
Thought Norwich played very well tbf. Their movement was excellent. They looked like a very well drilled side. We didn't .... but hopefully we will in a few months time; it was never going to happen 'overnight' and not without fine tuning the new squad in the January window.
This is exactly how I see it. I also think it’ll be the first of quite a few occasions in which we lose by 3+ goals.
Only on here could someone attempt to tear a strip off Walter for how he lines up a team against Manchester City. Ludicrous. As is often the case, I come on here and read about a different match to one I saw from the away end. Obviously the result was awful and the individual mistakes were obvious. But for a good half an hour, either side of their penalty, we were the dominant team but our forward play just didn’t quite click (they defended very well to be fair). A grim day, but not the Armageddon a few on here think it was (not particularly the poster I’ve quoted, to be fair).
If you mean me you couldn’t be more wrong. I’m one of Walter’s biggest supporters/defenders on here. I actually enjoy the style of football and think our attacking play is far more dangerous and entertaining than anything we saw last season. I just think he needs some pragmatism when it comes to setting up against certain opponents. Playing such a high line with McLoughlin making runs forward against Norwich on their own turf was just reckless bordering on stupid. If we had quick, mobile centre-halves like Greaves still, it might work but McLoughlin doing it just looks daft.
Yes I said I didn’t mean you at the end of my post. Our style is gung-ho for sure and will see us getting beaten now and again, like today. But I don’t think being more pragmatic is the answer, because that will sacrifice the attacking threats we pose. Agree about Macca though. Think he will be sidelined now, liked the look of Hughes despite the obvious snafu.
Can't we be more pragmatic and also still be an attacking threat ? We have to try to do that or we'll finish mid-table scoring and conceding loads of goals
We definitely have to try a different approach against the better sides. We'll probably get away with it most of the time against the bottom third but not against the top half
I don’t buy that. We won’t try a different approach because that would need a different manager. We have a manager with a clear preferred system and we have to get used to that. But also, on another day we won’t make the daft mistakes, we will have all our best players in defence, we will convert the possession into goals and we won’t lose. Defeat to the better clubs is not inevitable!
It is if we leave ourselves wide open, giving them one easy pass to get through on our goal. It's happened in all three "tough" games so far. I like Walter and enjoy our attacking play, but he has to learn when to be pragmatic
Of course we can, the major difference in attack between this season and last is we look to get the ball forward quickly, we look to play it in behind the defence and we have players attacking it. That can still happen, it doesn’t need to come with a total disregard to any defensive organisation. There is absolutely nothing in our attacking play that means defenders need to stand 100 yards apart, have no shape as a back 4, move independently and break defensive shape rather than move as a tight unit, midfielders don’t drop back to fill in gaps in the defence, don’t track runners… etc Walter is a poor manager and cannot organise a team, that’s all there is to it.
Today's performance wasn't massively different to the last 3. We always seem to give the opponents plenty of chances, today Norwich took them. We'd been very clinical in those 3 games we won, and today we weren't. It wasn't a 4-0 game today, it flattered Norwich but I thought the score line flattered us in the games we've won so it's swings and roundabouts. My biggest concern is that we've still not had a good performance under TW, we seem to play well for spells and then be really poor in spells too.
No point having a manager who can't adapt his system even slightly, I've never heard of a manager who can only play one way and that's it
Well I didn’t mean it quite that literally. But he wants to play an attacking style and take risks. I don’t think wanting him to eliminate the risks is practical.
But we’re not taking risks that’s contributing to our attacking play. We’re just completely disorganised and terrible at defending as a team.
I liked Rosenior, but this was literally him. It worked against the teams that were dross, and occasionally against the teams that tried to play against us, but we couldn't unlock the teams that came to our place and defended deep
