Moving on from the utd game, this thread was meant to be a sort of review of the season so far and looking back imo we have massively under performed which is why we are in this situation.
Anyone who expected the 2012/13 season to be a walk in the park is living in cloud cookoo land - particularly when the fixtures were announced. Call it underperforming if you wish - but we were bound to struggle to begin with.
Your not getting what i'm saying its unimportant who the oppisition are if you look at my starting point 2 of our best performances were against the 2 best teams in the league.
Thanks for that, I guess time isn't on our side, but most of our problems could be helped by a couple of decent signings, virtually everyone on here could tell you which areas need to be sorted, once confidence is restored we could see just how good some of these players could be, but we need a bit more luck to go with it, for that to happen.
I think you're being extremely harsh Kitch. We've been let down by our defence, but there's only been a couple of games where I'd say the whole team underperformed. This is a tough league, even if we perform well we're likely to lose to many teams. Just because we didn't win a particular game doesn't mean it was a bad performance.
so wigan we played well, arsenal we played well, west ham played well 1st half spurs we played well everton we played well, no we didn't.
with regards with the fitness of Lambert, the guy is a big unit but he finished games all of last season so why now do people have it in thier head that he must be subbed after 70 minutes? he is the only real threat that we have and should stay on the pitch. What gets me is not that the team plays badly, but playing badly one half and then well the next or playing well (man c) then **** (wigan) then well (manu) then total shyte (arse), we need to play the same players as often as posible
But that sounds to me like wanting to compound the problem, i.e. bringing in yet more "better" players, who will also need time to bed in, so prolonging the process beyond January, and possibly again disrupting a team that has already by then begun to settle. I guess my real point is that, while Adkins and the players are the people under scrutiny, the strategic mistake was almost certainly Cortese's.
The usual 'one vision' summary of the games. Mine would be more like: Man city - good start and very unlucky. Agreed Wigan- Poor performance unacceptable. Agreed Man Utd- unlucky poor subs cost us. Wrong. Should we have kept 3 players on that were shattered? The reason we lost was because they wore us down and we were running out of gas at 70 minutes and with a fresh Scholes on we were struggling. We were sat on our own 18 yard box before those subs and Nigel was trying to push us a little further back down the pitch. This is why Man U score so many late goals,. not just because of Fergie time. Arsenal- Shocking agreed Ason Villa- Poor first half, Amazing second half.agreed Everton- Poor performance no passion shown. No Everton were too good for us. Once Neville dropped a little deeper enabling Fellaini to get on the ball after 15 minutes we were out of the game. EVerton are a VERY VERY good side. Fulham- average performance lucky to escape with a draw. Wrong. Great first half in all but the final third. fulham looked a league below us in that first half West Ham- Unacceptable. Agreed Spurs- Shocking first half, dominated second half. Agreed West Brom. Abysmal defensive showing. Wrong......Mulumbo was the problem People are very quick to slate Nigel for those Man U subs without recognising that Scholes had just come on, that our midfield were parked on the 18 yard line and that Lambert and Puncheon were absolutely shattered. We can't afford to carry anyone so why do people think we should leave players on the pitch when they are absolutley shot?? Ahh you answer for yourself. Tiredness means players can't give 100% so yes he should be dropping those that aren't whether it is due to midset, effort or because they have run themselves into the ground. You are determined to convince people of your feelings on Adkins. Unfortunately we are not buying that. I am sure that if anyone was able to instill belief into a team it would be Adkins. Well at least you haven't incinuated Adkins is useless in this statement
No-one is suggesting that however in the particular game that everyone is harping on about.....the Man U game he was shattered. He is having to work much much harder this season than last and it is bound to have an effect on his overall performance and stamina. If he had to work as hard last year would he have played 90 minutes each week? No-one can answer that!!!!
Wigan we weren't that bad and their killer second goal was a foul, West Ham we outplayed them but silly errors cost us, the others I wouldn't argue with, but where did I say we played well in every game?
Impsaint not sure how you do those quote things but i like it. any way to your points Your Man utd point. i totally disagree those players were not shattered i agree they had worked hard but no way were all 3 of them shattered and if they were then our bench should of been better. we had 4 strikers on the bench a crap cb a rb and a gk. very poor bench selection given that man u get better towards the end of the game. I went to the everton game and i agree everton are a good team but they didn't play very well and didn't really get out of 2nd gear to cruise past us, i will admit we didn't have a clue what to do with fellaini. Fulham if thats a great first half we might as well give up now it wasn't terrible but i wouldn't call it great and i stick by my statement we were lucky to escape with a draw. West brom your saying 1 player was the problem if thats the case we should of changed thigs to deal with the problem be proactive not reactive. i disagree that was the problem though. the rest are your opinions and it would be boring if they were the same as mine so alls good
Just wanted to add some input about the United game. Puncheon was ****ing immense in that game..he was an outlet for us all game. He was unbelievable. Really took the pressure off us. Makes me wonder why he can't replicate that performance or get anywhere close to it since. Taking him and Lambert off in that game cost us the game simply as that. I would say we were extremely unlucky against Fulham. Own goal and deflection. Could have kept a clean sheet there.
The reason why we lost the Man Utd game was because our midfield after the subs sat far too deep and allowed Scholes to orchestrate the game. Hammond or Chaplow would have been useful in this game. I agree about taking AL and JP off, if we had put Mayuka on the right and Lee (I think he was on the bench) on the left then that would have been better. Lee never stops running and Mayuka would have been used well on the counter and wouldn't have had to play as a striker and have to big centre backs on him. I don't think Lambert should have been subbed off; he may have been knackered but whenever we hoofed the ball up the field we mainly went for little Mayuka. Lambert would have won more aerial balls and would have held up the ball for us-we had no attacking ideas, the only ideas we had were to get the ball away and hope to hang on, which we weren't able to do.
Saint Kitch - agree with your comments in the original post. The problem still lies with Adkins/Cortese because they did not strengthen the squad in the defence as anyone with half a football brain could recognise. We do not have one EPL standard defender - Clyne is still young and with this season under his belt he might get there. The performances are declining as the defeats stack up. As for the posters who cite excuses for the goals conceded at various times - focus should be made on my the opposition got into the scoring opportunity in the first place; namely wrong formation, players not picking up their defensive assignments; poor ball retention; poor game-time strategy - to name a few of the issues. Adkins is not a bad manager; but he lacks the experience at this level and l believe Cortese too lacks the experience of stewardship of an EPL Club. Both have been caught out by our sudden elevation to the toughest league in The World. Those old crusties like me who thought two seasons in the Championship before promotion to the EPL would be good for us may yet be proven right - only I hope I am wrong! Lets hope that they can sort it out - but I do not believe that getting to the January transfer window will necessarily get us the quality defenders that we need.
I don't think there is too much disagreement in regards to the back 4 needing strengthening. Yoshida is not bad but will need time to bed in. Fonte is OK but he is not outstanding consistently. Clyne looks the part but fox seems to be out of his depth.....to be fair to fox whether that is because of the roll of Lallana, would be another discussion point on it's own. We have the bite in the central midfield area with Spider and/or cork. We are lacking though decent players on either outer midfield. Davis has been disappointing, Ramirez has probably only had one decent game so it is hard to tell. Your summation in the original post is probably accurate the one mistake in the United game that NA should of countered, as soon as Scholes came on someone should have been told to mark him out of the game. He was given so much time and space it was unbelievable. The City game was just loss of concentration at the back. Wigan was down to NA's tactics again and poor defending Spurs first half was NA's tactics. At Everton....we did not deserve to lose so heavily however we did because of the quality of our midfield and defence. WBA........we had the opportunity to win that game and should have done......we played like amateurs for their first goal and the tactics were not quite right. People have mentioned luck playing a part in some of our games....They are of course right........However I am a firm believer in that you make your own luck and we just are not doing that enough at the moment!
I go along with much of what you write here, but cant agree that ' Davis has been disappointing '. He was very disappointing the other night at the Hawthorns, probably our worst player, but in other matches he has been our best player. In the game at Upton Park many of us thought that he was our MOTM - and in that game we controlled the game in the first half until that daft 2 minutes after the restart and Fonte's penalty when we were on top again after we scored. I feel that most of our players have been too inconsistant and this includes Davis. But i dont think that he has been any more disappointing overall than the rest of the players..
Fair comment, but we don't know what went on behind the scenes, but I regard us as a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of missing pieces and some pieces in the wrong place, it wouldn't take much to get everything into place and we could then change our perchance of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and turning it around into positive results. Some on here would say that I am deluded, only time will tell, have to believe and keep the faith or it isn't worth doing at all.
Of course. It was nothing whatsoever to do with Paul Scholes still being the best midfielder ion the country. He didn't come on with half an hour to go and completely boss the game. Of course the substitutions had an effeect; costs us the game? No, too dramatic. It was (and always is) a combination of things - that was one of the things.
