I agree he's been a major disappointment this season, but you don't need to make stuff up. The first thing he did was to take the ball surrounded by three players who all tried to batter him and he still came out with the ball and moved it on to one of our players. It was about the last useful thing he did, but let's give him some credit ...
Our line up against Coventry was: Allsop Jones Greaves Jacob Seri Tufan Omur Slater Morton Carvalho Philogene The ones in bold are the ones that I think were/are "top end of the table quality". Of those, only Omur remains and he's not having a good season. So if you take the quality out of the team, what's left? That starting XI didn't even have Delap, Connolly or Giles in, and two of those aren't here anymore either. That team had 10 Championship quality players and finished one win outside the playoffs. If we'd had 15 or 18 of that standard of player, we'd have been in the playoffs at least. That can't happen in one window, but we also can't make progress if the foundation of the team isn't of sufficient quality to achieve your targets. The good players left and the ones that weren't really good enough stayed. Nobody came in with bids for Jones, or Jacob, or Coyle because these players aren't going to benefit a team with realistic ambitions of climbing up the league. Odd really, why is it that a team that finished 7th in the Championship only received bids for Greaves, Seri, Tufan and Philogene, why didn't the others get unsolicited offers too (we engineered Allsop's move, it wasn't one that came about because he was awesome)? We know why, we just don't want to say it out loud. So we kept them and hoped we would sign enough quality to recreate last season. That didn't happen, and a few of the signings we have made you could argue are of the same quality as the lads that stayed behind last season. I'm not suggesting any of the lads are poor footballers, they're not, they're just not what we want if we're aiming high. We have to be pragmatic in the window, we can't just assume that we'll be fine if we work hard; we need better players, that's the bottom line and we have to sign players that are going to win us at least another ten games. How we do that, I don't know, we're going to have to be savvy and hold our nerve. I think we'll see one or two over the course, but I'm fully prepared for another manic transfer deadline day as Acun tries to get deals for "better players". So far, that's a risk that hasn't paid off this season and I'd rather he didn't.
The defence sat back pretty much on our penalty line, pushing on would have left a huge gap in the midfield. I understand your point, it's why Slater was the furthest man forward a few times, but they just weren't brave enough as a unit to try and do that. That's something they're gonna have to fix ****ing sharpish.
Think this is my point. A lot of the players that have remained and are getting pelters are ones that did ok last season. Yes they weren’t world beaters but solid footballers in the right team. I’d argue Jones, Coyle and Slater get valuable game time at two thirds of the championship teams. As you’ve mentioned the quality around them has gone and it’s a big shuffle as well. Relying on these to carry the water every game was always a big ask. I do think it is telling though that Coyle was in TOTS for the champ on a lot of metrics to start the season with a competent wing partner in front of him. Now he’s been let down a lot. Granted he’s not helping himself with some errors as well. We just seem to constantly be wanting to attribute blame to one person or another when in reality it’s thousands of reasons that’s got us here.
If Vaughan had have taken the ball to the corner flag to keep possession it is up to their defenders to get the ball off him and with the short playing time left they would have been under intense pressure to do so and Vaughan may have bought a foul off them, it is just your opinion that the referee looks to give a defensive free kick as soon as possible, I have seen them given to the attacking side, you said it was 20 seconds from Kamara going down to them scoring, surely we could have wasted at least half that time and possibly got a corner or throw in or free kick out of it.
I don't think anyone could say we are worse now than under Tim Walter. Nor could you claim we are any better under Selles. Its just the same bunch of crap playing a different style and getting the same inconsistent performances littered with errors and evidence of people not caring.
If Sellés keeps us up he deserves manager of the season. From his first game in charge the team has needed to average 1.3 points a game to reach the safety of 50 points. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it equates to a win and a draw every three games. Until last night the team had done exactly what they need to do and averaged 1.4 points a game. If we manage to beat Leeds we’ll be back on track. It might not look great, but the team is almost twice as productive, points-wise, as it was under Walter. Achieving that in such a short time, with key players out injured, is a clear indication that Sellés is a good manager full of potential. Hopefully he and the team can keep it going. Regardless of whether we stay up or not, Acun deserves to be criticised for how long he waited to sack Walter. If he had removed Walter after 10 games (and taken two games to have a new manager in place) city would have had a much more achievable target of 1.1 points per game to almost guarantee safety, roughly equating to three wins every eight games. If Sellés keeps us up I think there’ll be a fair few clubs looking to poach him from us, similar to when we hired Marco Silva.
We don’t win that game against Blackburn with Tim. Theres clear organisation with Selles. It is mental errors in both boxes letting us down I agree but they’re becoming fewer so I would say we are improving. Not to mention we are getting more points
If Sellés can do what Röhl did with Wednesday last season, I’ll be happy. I think this club’s problems go far beyond who the coach is though. The common problem has been Acun.
This is selective. McLoughlin has always been our backup CB yet Blackburn wanted him in the summer. Millwall wanted Longman back. It's easy to talk down our players and only see the worst but there are concrete examples of players we see as relatively limited backups being desired by other clubs. If McLoughlin is good enough to be courted by Blackburn then how good is Jones? Top end championship easily. I've often defended the likes of Coyle and Slater against this "not championship standard" thing but with Jones it's a whole further level of wrong. He's a serious quality defender, and lumping him into that conversation makes it even clearer that it's just about the fact they played for us in League 1.
We maybe could have. If we'd done that and lost the ball that way and the goal came from that then people would be saying why go to the corner at 0-0, show some bravery, going for the corner hardly ever works, etc. It's a gamble either way to some extent. I have more of an issue with what came immediately after that decision.
The results and performances are both much better now, and arguing otherwise seems a really strange position to take.
Yeah, I don’t get how people think were ’much better’. More compact and organised defensively, sure. That’s to be expected given Walter’s style had players rotating all over the pitch in possession which left us vulnerable to counter-attacks. In possession, I think we’re slightly worse. We treat the ball like it’s a bomb to get as far away from us as possible. I’m hoping this is just temporary as Sellés is trying to make us solid defensively and build from there but the build-up play and what we do when we have the ball has been a downgrade to both Walter’s and Rosenior’s style so far in my opinion. Even under Dawson’s two games as interim we kept the ball a lot better with the same players. The aim now is just to survive relegation and reset in the summer (for what will be fourth time under Acun). I think we’ve got some decent players to build a team around come summer in Pandur, Hughes, Alzate, Palmer, Puerta if we sign him, Millar and Belloumi returning from injury etc. The likes of Coyle, Jones, McLoughlin, Slater etc. for continuity. Ömür, I really don’t know with this kid. Works hard off the ball, can tell he has ability but rarely shows it. Mehlem I think has played his last game for us which is a strange one to me. He didn’t show much but I thought he was decent at times. I think something else has gone on there. He was close to Walter and was the only signing Walter personally asked for rather than being a brain team suggestion. I’d wager that when Walter came to blows with senior players in the squad and started to lose the dressing room, Mehlem was one of the few to back Walter out of a sense of loyalty to him and maybe there’s a rift between him and the rest of the squad. @Ric Glasgow said Walter belittled Slater at half-time against Wednesday for not scoring that chance and the players took Slater’s side. Slater was subbed off for Mehlem after half-time.
Lots to dissect but a stand out was when Kamara made his run with the ball to the corner drawing three players onto him and he crossed it into their keepers hands, i think most of our players were still miles behind. Compare that to when they scored, one player runs with the ball up towards the corner draws three players onto him he crosses into the box and they had players running in to get on the end of the cross.
Could it be that he was never quite as good as many thought he was? He's gone from playing in a side with the likes of Seri, Tufan, Philo, Carvalho et al where any shortfalls in his game would be less visible, to being in a much poorer side where he's a bit more exposed. He might be feeling a bit left behind after last summer's exodus.
That's what I meant by no better. We don't look any better to me other than the change in style makes average players look less like lost sheep. Something I've said Tim should have considered to save his job. Is it really 'better' though? I'd reserve judgement on that until we have seen a few more performances similar to Blackburn.
Just based on his background, who he cites as influences, the style of football Reading played when he got them going from what I’ve read, I was expecting a mix of possession-oriented football typical of Catalan and Valencian coaches but with the high-pressing, intense ‘heavy metal’ football more typical of German and Austrian coaches (like Hasenhüttl, who he says influenced him a lot). We’ve seen a bit of the high pressing but in possession we seem really poor and sloppy and don’t seem to have a plan of what to do when we get the ball back. If he’s focusing primarily on the defensive side to try to keep clean sheets and grind out draws or even wins through a bit of luck or the odd moment of brilliance, especially against stronger teams, then fair enough. However, we can’t play as negatively as we did against Boro against the likes of Stoke, QPR, Cardiff or even the mid-table teams. Even against Preston and Coventry, we looked really sloppy with the ball and out of ideas.
