That Pritchard was outstanding. No surprise Spurs refused to let Brentford turn the loan into a permanent.
All the talk of having the best squad wears a bit thin. Who cares if they are supposedly the best players? Its about a team. Well some may be good individually, often the attitude has not been and I don't think the squad has that good a balance. Saying that they should be capable of finishing top 6.
I'm not sure it's attitude so much, more method for me although I have not seen a lot of us this season.
That's not quite what I said, tbf. I was essentially saying that having the best players is marginal and not enough.
Not every match, but I think at times the attitude has not been perfect. A little lazy at times. I agree with you in the sense the squad lacks an identity. I think it has become a bit of a mishmash of players who don't compliment each other all that well. I don't think massive changes are required, but certainly a bit. Rob it wasn't a dig at you, we have heard it all season.
As I said yesterday, Norwich had the better players, Brentford had the better team. We've barely played as a team all season and it's down to the new manager to get them to bond and gel as a team, and if he can't he'll have to move a number of them on.
Agrred and the lack of cohesion has been very poor at times. But I also feel the personnel in the squad make it slightly unbalanced and inflexible in the way we can play, making a cohesive performance more difficult.
I think it is very much an issue of good players not gelling as a team. Back in the 90s we had good but not great players, but they achieved synergy, where the total output exceeds the sum of individual inputs. Brentford had that yesterday and we definitely did not. That is the manager's job to be sure. It was Lambert's strength and the players bought into it. I felt we were getting there after Phelan came in (Derby was a good example) and perhaps his absence showed in yesterday's performance. I hope this doesn't mean the player's aren't buying into Neil now that Phelan is gone, but I fear that might be the case. If it has to be done by changing the players then we can forget about any chance of promotion this year. It's up to Neil now to show he can be the manager we hoped he would be and get us functioning as a team.
Well if you look at Hamilton's players and budget there's definitely a strong argument to be made that he must have had them playing as a team. They had next to no money to spend and a group of players that were unheard of, so if he can do it with them, he can do it with us.
We need defensive reinforcements who can do the job, I'm sick of conceding cheap penalties and soft goals due to clumsiness it's inexcusable, the defence need to get their **** together. We can talk about this being a confidence problem, but I simply don't think the back up is good enough, Neil needs to play the transfer market we need to bolster that defence, I also think selling Pilkington was a suicidal move by Adam's as we only have two naturally wide players in the team.
The whole team must take responsibility for defending. Far too simplistic to say we concede stupid goals so it is the defences fault. The team lacks balance and cohesion. In fairness Neil has had very little time yet, so we will see what he can do. While selling Pilks may look a bit silly now you can understand it. He was so injury prone and not long left on his contract. We still had the Murphy's, Redmond, Benno and O'Neil. It just depends what system you prefer on whether you need more or a different type.
Perhaps in the event of set pieces or dictating possesion, but it is the defences job to prevent goals being conceded, they haven't done an efficient job of that this season, I'm not prepared to let that one lie and distribute the blame across the team. All I see is sloppy and defendable goals which could of been prevented if we were more organised but instead we have five players at the back who are full of nerves and shaky. I agree Neil has inherited this team so his not to held accountable but you have to admit these players have come against much stronger opposition so they could be doing a better job.
I agree that it's primarily the defenders at fault, but you also have to question the tactics used. Surely, Neil knew that Brentford were going to defend strongly and then break with pace once they one the ball, but there was no plan to deal with that. They simply poured down the pitch unimpeded and sliced through on goal at will most of the time. Gray was clean through on Ruddy in the first 5 minutes only to muff his shot when the ball bobbled. That happened time after time and yet nothing was done to stop it. Even after the half-time talk nothing changed. We were lucky to get away with 1-2.
That's another problem not helped by injuries in the midfield, saying that we had an almost full squad allowed Brighton to do the same, I remember Tettey annoyed me on that day running around like a headless chicken shirking out of tackles, especially when you've seen him own world class players doing the same thing in the Premiership. I still think it's a nerves thing, clumsy players with no leadership at the back and that's working it's way right through the team on the pitch, it's up to Neil to fix it, could be resolved in a few games with the players we have or might require some fresh signings.
Of course it is the whole teams job to do their defensive duties as everyone is involved in attacking. How many goals have come because the midfield have given away sloppy possession, this weekend being a prime example.
Conceeding possesion is mostly down to ineffective passing or over playing the ball like Snodgrass used to for an example. It does seem that we committed too many players forward, we should at least have a full back and centre back covering the back if we're going to throw everyone forward. Agree about the comments on the central midfield early on this thread. We have a bit of an identity crisis in that area of that pitch, you can call Johnson and Tettey defensive midfielders to some extent but do they genuinely have the discipline to play that role? Johnson has become more of a box to box player and Tettey has the tendency to get forward, we need someone who can sit in front of the defence break up possession and distribute the ball effectively, we've needed a player with those characteristics for seasons.
