I do I do, and my post was in jest there Mr Court Jester Damn this lack of "Tone" communication stuff.. I did not use enough emo ticons..
I am re-posting this.. Oh yeah, there's the inflated sense of self importanceMMMmm Feels good Confidence: We have some players with low confidence and a start like the last game exacerbated that dip in confidence which was apparent in Allen's performance and others too of course, he has not been playing well and the tactics used by both managers ensured Joe would give the ball away repeatedly, it is so obvious from that performance by Joe that he felt he had so much less time to make decisions on the pitch. Downing & Johnson also look short on confidence. Skrtel and Agger are suffering the same, Jones? possibly, certainly there is a wee shortage of confidence in the partnership between keeper and defence, Brad has not played many games and that has it's effect on confidence to boot. The way we were squeezed by Southampton helped players short on confidence in themselves and team mates feel there was less and less time on the ball. When you are confident everything slows down and you feel you have much more time, time to choose better passes, take up better positions and anticipate better, improved awareness. We played so many rash passes to the wrong players at the wrong time in the wrong areas and flapped when they applied pressure on our midfield. I think not one of our players believed we could win that game after the first 45 minutes. Brendan looked totally surprised by Southampton's performance, maybe his own confidence was a little shook too. That lack on confidence hinders your ability to asses the situation in a calm way and dissect what is going wrong quickly and apply a fix, if only even to just stem the flow, a quick fix until you work out what can turn it around but instead we went straight to trying to completely reverse the situation, sometimes you have to stop the rot before you recover and turn it around. I am of the opinion that if Southampton had allowed us time in the first 20 minutes and sat back or showed any fear we would have went on to punish them, if they allowed us to have any confidence in getting a result we might have, they did not, they applied pressure and increased it as our players struggled with their own confidence as much as Southampton's energy and discipline. If they allowed us to get the ball down and pass it they would have suffered. Southampton's manager's tactics gave his team more and more confidence as they game went on. Our manager's tactics had the reverse effect and hit ours. It even spread to Gerrard as we know this of a lack of confidence it's contagious. Right now there is some mental weakness in our team that needs to be addressed. Winning does that, hell even not losing does that. 5 0-0 draws does far far more for confidence in a team than winning 3 games 4-0 and losing 2 games 3-1. The belief teams won't or may find it very difficult to get a goal is important. right now, no-one believes we can shut out teams for 90, we have had a decent few clean sheets but lets not see something that is not there, against all the decent sides we've conceded, a lot were silly goals too. I would rather we were solid and went from there, I wanted us to go to Southampton and play as an away team looking for something, not going there to expect a win as we were certainly set up that way, sometimes, especially with low confidence, you gotta just grind it out and shut down the opposition and we have the players that can get those goals when playing like this, and 0-0 would have been infinitely better for the team's confidence than the hammering we got, and the point would have been better too.
Good post Sisu What annoys me the most is the fact that we were completely out of it in the first half. We should have been 3-4 goals down. But we were incredibly lucky to still be in the game and score a vital goal before HT. That should have given the players a lift and a belief that we can win. Yes we did improve in the second half but not by much. I would like to think that the players are confident after winning 4 games on the bounce, and have the spirit to turn a game around especially as we did against Spurs the prior week. I suppose it doesn't help having Carra and Lucas out but there enough quality on the pitch to put in a much better performance. However, tactics and personnel weren't the best.
Good points, I'll add that when you are owned like that and can't figure it out, not great for the self belief, the team's as a whole.
You could make a good living out of being a **** at least we now know who's driving everyone from the board.
That's the difference in mentality between us and a team like Utd - they play sh1t but still believe they can win and quite often end up winning. But that's a mentality that is built up over years and with having the same leader/figure head at the club. I hope Rodgers is given time because I can definitely see improvements in the team and the club as a whole.
changing anything now would be a disaster one of the things I love about our club is that we don;t go repeatedly sacking managers over and over, this recent spell Rafa Woy Kenny is something we are not used to and I care not for it and wish to never see that again. For me winning mentality and confidence in your ability and the ability of those around you is a different thing obviously. re United, it is also that teams they are playing also believe United will score late and win and thus add to their own downfall, Southampton tore them apart till they got a 2 goal lead and in the last 20 fell back and did exactly opposite to what was making them win the game up to that point. Fear cost them, if they kept at it and retained possession to prevent United momentum they would have gotten their win but they shat themselves in the last 20 minutes and lost I think.
Good point. Unfortunately, I feel we have lost our fear factor now and teams are more willing to attack us - our crowd can sense it and if we're not winning by 2 goals by HT, they will go quiet and it creates a tense atmosphere.
