Spot on Bob, Rosie should have been in yesterday with Chezzie and Dawson at CH and Robbo at LB, not rocket science is it.
Nah - we want Diame to have licence to get forward as much as possible, which means either playing him in that Ramirez position or tucking in on the left (allowing Robertson to be the wide attacking threat when he can).
Part of our woes, imo, are because the central midfielders don't bomb forward enough to support attacks. It's **** or bust now anyway by all means, get him running from deep give us a bit of dynamism.
One way around it would be to have him as one of three, as earlier in the season, with Chester, Dawson, Macca at the back and Elmo and Robertson in the wing-backs positions that best suit them. ...But all this is hypothetical. Against Palace, we'll have to do something specific to neutralise Bolasie.
Bruce needs to get Diame and N Doye working together very closely, these two are closely linked via nationality and that little bit of understanding could compensate for us having no Jelly and the lack of variation in our play. The trouble is we are putting all our eggs in one basket with Diame, if he isn't fit enough or gets crocked then it will be luck whether we stay up, a bit like Brownies first season in the top league when all the other teams (Newcastle and so on) couldn't get going
Fair comment. It's too late in the season to do anything too drastic.We don't know the level of influence Phelan has in team selection/tactics but why not give him greater control in the next few games with a view of (poster ducks for cover) gradually moving Bruce 'upstairs'. A part time job might well suite him next season allowing him the leisure time I think he craves. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the reason Phelan was brought in. If you were worth a reported £14million would be stressing yourself out managing a football team? I like Brucey, I think we owe him but, as many have said previously, this is no time for sentiment. Something needs to change and change quickly.
I recognise not much support for my starter to this thread that Elmo under performing, and I do like him as a player when he is going well, but there does seem to be some who accept that he rarely beats his man if we play 4-4-2, and overall that's what I think we should be playing. I think the stats alone over the last 2 seasons would show how results are clearly better when we play 4-4-2 (and I suspect Rosenior at right back has one of the best points per game ratio in the squad?). And in a 4-4-2 , I don't think Elmo poses enough threat. Anyway, hope he proves me wrong as I'm sure he will remain inked in along with Livermore and Huddlestone.
Theres a lot more wrong than the form of Elmo, More worrying for me is the £13,000,000 1st choice central midfield pairing of Huddlestone and Livermore backed by the I'm guessing expensively waged Ramirez and somewhat cheaper Meyler and Quinn who with a total of 105 (28) appearances between them have contributed the princely sum of three yes 3! ****ing goals.
It's no secret that our central midfield has been totally ineffective in an attacking sense, the only time we have put more zip into the central area is when Huddlestone has been suspended, unfortunately Bruce gives him a free pass back into the first eleven every time, and he then goes on to slow our play down to match his comfort zone.
Here's my take on Elmo, who's really a tough nut to crack sometimes. Super consistent, bags of energy and very useful to have in the team. But funnily enough I think he has been a problem for a while. I just feel like because he's such a constant in the squad that it's always the same tactical plan every game and he can easily be found out by other teams. It's the same game plan every time. Cross Cross Cross. and 90% of his crosses are terrible. On the flip side, he's still better than any other winger we have (shame we never saw more from snodgrass) and if you throw enough **** at a wall, it will eventually stick. So i don't blame him on an individual level, the guy has been a great servant. I just worry that we've been playing the same way for a long long time because he's always starting in that same position. Dropping him for the sake of experimenting would probably be a daft thing to do but I wish we had done it a few times earlier in season. He has lots of positives about him but he's a bit of a one trick pony. How many headers have we scored? Yet all we do is cross. He's not a dribbler but I wish he played a little more like a sterling for example.
Spot on. I'm really not impressed with thudd, livermore and meyler. We got mugged off for livermore, who is my favourite of the three but not worth what we paid by any stretch. Meyler is a championship player and thudd just doesn't seem to give a ****. What worries me more is that I'm not convinced other teams will be queuing up to sign them if we go down. The midfield is definitely to blame for our overall performance this year.
