Right boys and girls, lets take a look at our team and yesterdays performance with out emotion and with the benefit of having now seen it. My overriding thought is encouraging, we played a lot, lot better, showed fight and desire, some skill and we should have won. We lost because of the pressure of a bad run, pressure that makes good players make mistakes, first goal and pressure that makes strikers try to hard, make goal line saves and just stop things going your way. Our season is a big dissapointment and we all know that, some of our players have been a dissapointment, some performances have been a dissapointment and we are all worried, annoyed, angry, hurt and maybe a little frightened. We have had to suffer some insensitive knobheads from Newcastle but we have also had some sensible football fans from Newcastle who understand our pain and yes have had a laugh but have also tried to encourage. The season end will leave Short, Quinn and Bruce with lots to talk about and big decisions to make on the future of the club, the management and players, maybe the biggest desisions since Quinn came. All of this makes it hard to have clear thoughts about the now, everything is clouded by the past hopes and future fears but the now is really all that matters over the coming weeks. Next Saturday I will follow my normal routine and be at the SoL to hopefully do my bit to help my team get through what will be a tense afternoon but will give us that elusive win. I saw nothing in yesterdays performance to suggest that Bruce and the players cant do it or more importantly donââ¬â¢t want to do it. That said pressure is on and they donââ¬â¢t need us adding to it, lets focus on the now and lets get behind the manager and team to ensure we get them over the line.
Just said more or less the same thing on a new thread syd great minds and all that. Not there next week working Good Friday and the Saturday but will be listening on the radio in deepest darkest barcode country.
to many negatives yesterday by too many people who didn't see the game. proud of them, but still gutted as god knows how we lost. players put some effort in, wasn't impressed with wellbeck though. was impressed with sess and as you know im not a fan of his, so well done to him. felt sorry for bardo, poor ****er seems to have to play l/b and l/w at the same time, as we were lacking there. just plain unlucky, carry on playing like that and good times are round the corner
I must confess to feeling very sorry for Bruce, you could see the pain on his face. He was slated again yesterday but I fail to see why it was his fault. His team played fo him and not a lot he could do about the goals.
trouble with bruce seems to be, when he opens his mouth to the press, he always seem to puthis foot in it. many have said his lack of technical ability, but he's been trying to find the formula by using different players. strange how he picks a team many of us almost agree with, then when we lose it's his fault and we jump on him. thought colback did ok, and noble's got a bright future. so as the thread is, in the cold light of day... i'm gutted about the score, but encouraged by what i saw
As I've said elsewhere the most encouraging thing for me yesterday was that we didn't fold at the first mishap. A misunderstanding between a defender and a goalie happens to every team several times a season, so I would say to Mig and Bardo, forget that - it was nothing. So positives, yes. Everyone is saying we have no left side though. I'd make the point that just about the only good game we've seen from Muntari was the international, where he was excellent - on the left wing. C'mon, Bucie, put him where he wants to be. Goals remain the problem.
You can't blame a manager for individual mistakes. As a whole we played some decent football, football that i'm happy to pay to watch, we play like that next week and we're safe then we can run the remainder of the season down without any pressure and i bet we see some cracking performances.
Looks like we're on opposite sides when it comes to Bruce, Syd. Can't agree that his team played for him. For me it was a group of footballers who performed better than their opponents but who didn't get the rub of the green. Throughout the match, I never had the impression that the players were pulling for each other, for the "team", for Bruce, for the fans. Playing like this, we will no doubt win one of the remaining games and stay up but for me it was just players doing what footballers do, putting in tackles, giving passes, shooting, making saves. I sometimes saw glimpses of someone perhaps going the extra mile (Bardo, Elmo, Onuha and Henderson spring to mind sporadically) but the "team" spirit wasn't there. The Birmingham manager yesterday, as the WBA manager last week, were present, part of the team, in touch with their players, all pulling together, but Bruce is peripheral, not on the same wavelength. I can see why it's painful for him. Do you know Peter's principle? This states that we all aspire to our level of incompetence.That is, we all want to get promoted to that next better job until we get to that job which is just too high for us, which we just can't do, which makes us miserable, until we resign or get fired. This, sadly for me, is where Bruce stands. He's far from alone. It's the same with Mancini. I don't feel that the ManC players do it for him. They just happen to be a group of highly talented players who perform up to their standards now and again. They did it yesterday but should have been dead and buried at half-time. They are just better footballers than ours, which is why they are much higher than us in the league. If we could add that dimension which they have at Arsenal, Blackpool, Bolton, ManU, Liverpool, Tottenham, Everton and Wolves, teams that are playing collectively at a higher level than the component parts (yes, including teams that are probably going down), then we could envisage a top-half finish and eventually Europe. Bruce has been able to take us so far but has shown twice now that there comes a point when he loses it, when he hasn't got that dimension which gets his players to go beyond the call of duty. The players did their duty yesterday but the result showed it wasn't good enough. Obviously there are times when a team does go the extra mile but loses, that's sport, (that's life !) but when a team goes 13 games without a win, then 8 games for 1 point, you have to look reality in the face and act now. Why wait until the close season? The season's over now. I'll be behind the team of course next Saturday (as I will be for the rest of my days) and hope we win but why keep a millstone round our (and poor Bruce's) necks?
"all a matter of opinion mate" Let's just hope that whether it's your opinion or mine which prevails, we eventually get to where we want to be. If Bruce leads us to domestic and European glory, I'll be up front with the rest, screaming my head off. I'll just have a sizeable portion of egg on face and humble pie to swallow.
I'm not saying Bruce is the right man just that it's who we have and for the next game we need to focus on one thing, 3 points.
I genuinely feel we have a better chance of three points on Saturday and greater success in the future if it's O'Neill, my personal choice, Jol, or van Gaal picking the team. However, that's probably not going to happen so let's get on with it.
bruce is picking a team from the depleted squad at the moment, he's picking the same team many of us agree with, if anyone came in now, they would pick the same team, so it's the players at fault, if they can play for a new manager and not bruce, time to **** them off not bruce.
