Apparently it was 4-3-3 according to Phelan who was on the radio as I was going down Anlaby Road, the formation didn't work for me and he more or less said so
or put another way, we just need to get rid of the **** we played for 90 minutes against Wolves, 120 minutes against Accrington, 45 minutes against Fulham, 90 minutes against Charlton and 90 minutes against Rochdale - deluded
A plus point for me tonight was Jak that I didn't mention in my match comment before, he looked steady enough and was certainly barking out instructions, enough to piss off Bruce Jr at one point, maybe a bit of leadership qualities that are overlooked
I have the same worries. The first grievance about the Charlton game wasn't that we lost but how badly we played. Charlton took the piss out of us for 85 minutes and the team doesn't look like a team at all. Bar Odubajo, the new players don't look impressive at all. Clucas looks like a League 1 player at best which is fairly ridiculous considering he cost us £1.3 million (QPR got Tjaronn Chery for £1.7 million who is leaps and bounds better). Taylor was actually what I was expecting - a cheap inferior replacement for the outgoing Rosenior. Huddlestone and Elmo are obviously good players but are not performing to the best of their ability. Meyler can be brilliant one game and terrible the next. The defence seems solid enough with Dawson and Davies looking like a decent partnership but Robertson has been quite underwhelming. We still have an issue with the strikers; Jelavic looks like he doesn't want to be here and Hernandez may or may not go depending on whether or not we get a decent offer for him. The less said about McGregor, the better. The only saving grace so far is that Aluko looks back to his best, albeit he needs to work on passing at the right moment. Maloney should add some creativity to our dull style and play and on top of Diame, we still have Snodgrass to come back. I still think we need another keeper, a striker and a defensive midfielder.
Clucas is raw but he is better than League One standard, was unlucky not to score tonight with a great bit of skill but needs help that he isn't getting from more experienced pros at the moment, a major problem for us I reckon as the other young lads need guidance too and I can only really see Dawson filling that role, need somebody in the middle of the park doing it really
Looking at other resultsa it shows how quickly teams become rusty. Seems bizarre but it must be true. For our team Maguir ewas like the Tin Man he needs oiling. Charon will hate it but AB put some quality through balls down the left with his left peg. All over em and then just sat back, ok it was all in front of us but why do it. Mo Diame will be gone by the end of the window. You'd be bloody stupid not to sign him if you're a mid table PL team. A class apart. It was bizarre he actually got his head up, held his man off and played a through ball to a forward. Weird. Anyone notice when we took Diame off we had this odd formation where Taylor stood on the left mid doing **** all and Abel was covering all down the right with Dave on his own!! ****ing weird. Good to see Luer finish well, **** took it off Mo though-bastard. He did very little after that. Glad he stayed on for the experience but 2nd half he was anonymous. Some negtive bastards on here. We won it was a good workout that got a game into a lot of legs. By the time we play Swansea we'll have a clearer picture of where we are.
The game tonight was the footballing equivalent of Katie Hopkins. I don't think I've ever witnessed a worse performance under SB and I've seen some proper bullshit. We came out of the blocks firing and within ten minutes we had a goal, a well taken one at that. Abel looked lively and involved, the midfield surged forward and Diame looked back to his old self. Then, inexplicably, we just sort of...stopped. As in, totally stopped. For the rest of the half, we had this. The second half couldn't be any worse, we thought. Well, we should've seen that coming. Rochdale bossed the game, putting together exactly the type of passing we should have, they won nearly every second ball, they utilised the space and kept us at arms length. Elmo came on and injected a bit of pace into the side, but it was mostly just sheer ****e. Utter bollocks. Think Mike Bassett's first game at the World Cup against Egypt. That bad. Now, that was against an average League 1 side. If we play like that against Preston, we'll lose. In fact, if we play like that against anybody else, we'll lose. I wouldn't have begrudged Rochdale a goal and a win; in all honesty they were the better side and will no doubt be going home feeling slightly aggrieved not to have got something from the game, not to mention a little pissed off that they have to go back to Rochdale.
It was a failed experiment at 4-3-3 but at least we won, I never thought they really looked like scoring to be honest
And if Hernandez hadda stuck the 3 good chances away we'd have won 4-0. The one straight after half time was a ****ing sitter.
Bruce played well, if he was called Alex Bunce people wouldn't have an issue with him, seems to be a lot of ingrained prejudice against the poor lad because of Daddy Bruce
Can't believe our players just ignore their instructions and decide to do their own thing. Wouldn't be so bad if they could be arsed but they can't. Ryan Taylor left mid, Hernandez right, sitting off and doing **** all once going a goal up... It's a recurring theme. Hopefully the Allams will be able to sell all the ****s off by this time next week so Brucey can get some of his own players in who will actually do as they're told, put in some effort and play a bit of football rather than just moping about half arsed and playing like ****.
I can only presume Taylor and Hernandez were told to play there? I presume you were being ironic about Bruce getting in his own players?
Rightly so, it was a bit silly signing his own son. I think everyone's past that now anyway. Hugely frustrating player is Alex, we all know his technical short comings but thankfully so does he. The problem is he's a touch of Kamil Zayatte about him, he's very prone to doing something ridiculous like jumping in from behind on a player in the box running away from goal, or charging in to the back of someone and pushing them over in very dangerous free kick area in a cup final, or charging out of his position for a challenge he's never going to win leaving a huge gap for someone like Eden Hazard to run into whilst he gets the ball passed round him, or punching someone, or nutting someone... Etc.
Clucas is not good enough for £1.3M, he has no real quality at all and he's not particularly fast either. I just don't see how he will turn out to be a very good player. Taylor was fairly poor too, gave the ball away easily and lost almost every header. Why did we get rid of Quinn and Rosenior only to replace them with inferior players, and spend over a million pounds doing it? We could have bought a proper keeper for that much!
We won 1-0. Not quite understanding the negativity but then again, I was sat at home occasionally reading the forum. Looking forward to my first game of the season on Saturday.
