His crossing this game was better than the last game against Swansea. At least when he goes down his side, we get somewhere. Down the right, Odubajo or Elmo get near the half way line, get closed down so pass it back to Dawson. We should be getting down the right way more than we do. Robertson works his arse off down the left sometimes on his own when whoever is supposed to be LM has drifted inside (that's another problem we have, nobody seems to be naturally playing LM - a striker, Maloney or Clucas keeps getting stuck there). Yeah his crossing needs to improve more but he's hardly an "awful" player.
It's hard not to agree with that but the very last line. Is there anybody out there who can? I'd stick with Bruce for the time being.
He's not an awful player but he's playing awfully Cortez. Bruce is keeping playing him hoping he works through it but he's getting worse. I agree he's expected to do a lot of running as you say Clucas doesnt deliver anything but makes Robbo go past him. Oh and we did score from a cross from the right
Yeah we did but once the game had opened up. Seems to be the only time we get down the right when the game stretches. I'm not criticising Moses or Elmo but they could at least try to take a player on here or there. I wouldn't even say Robertson played awfully yesterday or Tuesday either.
Reading through the posts, I think it is foolish for people to expect that we can simply just brush teams like Blackburn aside, regardless of the quality of our squad. We're in a very unpredictable league and sides are capable of getting results anywhere and at any time. However, it still doesn't justify us shutting up shop at 1-0 and playing for a narrow win. When was the last time we played to score 3/4 goals past an opponent? Even if we only score one goal we need the intent to try and kill games off and punish teams. All teams need a balance between being attacking and defensive and we need to strike the balance quickly or it will become a frustrating season for us. We have a squad capable of good attacking football and we need to use the strength we have here as well as our defensive strengths with Davies and Daws. We need to focus on teams worrying about us, not the other way around. It would be good to see a reaction against Forest with the squad been used to its potential, though we seem to be saying that far too often and it has to change!
Did someone post on here a while back that ehab would or wanted to sack bruce but pappa won't let him?
Spot on, don't expect to win every match but do expect to be entertained, the whole tempo of the team's wrong, the one time we up it, we scored.
It seemed to me that Blackburn had 5 in midfield and we had four, so they to a large degree controlled the ball in this area. They weren't much threat up front, so I would have change to a 352 and brought Maguire on. We can't keep playing Elmo and Odubajo, so probably Odubajo would have had to be sacrificed. I am sure that would have brought Diame into the game more, and we would have control the midfield. However once we got a bit of energy into midfield with Livermore and a bit of vision from Maloney things going forward did look better and we should have killed the game off.
People keep saying we can't just expect to beat teams. How else are we gonna get promoted? We can't keep ****ing it up and saying "ooh its a tough league though" and still expect to get promoted. This is nothing more than a mid-table side the way we've played so far and it's not showing any signs of getting better. Everything seems to depend on us getting promoted this year, Allams getting their money back after promotion and selling up, etc etc. If that's gonna happen we need a massive improvement on the pitch.
I said it, his distribution has gone downhill and defensively he's not improving, he's getting away with it as we have two great centre backs, as well as a good team in general which could be a lot better too with different coaching and tactics
I said it straight away yesterday, we are under-achieving and there is only one way to sort that out, it's been clear since transfer deadline day you don't even need ten games to see it, Ricks blog is excellent by the way
People loved Robertson for his speed and his control running down the wing. Unfortunately his crossing hasn't been as good, we never really saw him that much last season anyway, and the same with his shooting . Bruce is just not a very tactically aware manager, that's why other teams normally get control of the game early on and have more chances than they should probably have against us. There is also his defensive mindset as well which arguably was a big cause in us being relegated.
Thing is, we found the Premier League tough and now we've come down to a level where a lot of our players should be dominating and it's not looking much better. The media were saying we'd "won" the transfer window last season, so the opinion of the playing staff was pretty high. Why didn't they perform? Why aren't those same players performing now at a weaker level? Something isn't right and it's very frustrating. Why did we bring off the goalscorer and man of the match yesterday and invite Blackburn onto us? Blackburn are no mugs, but it's a game that was there for the taking. Play like that against Forest and Wednesday and we're for it. As for there being nobody out there to do the job, there are loads. We didn't see Brucey coming in to replace Barmby. I can't see Bruce lasting the season if we continue like this, which is a real shame, but the football speaks for itself.
If we are not in the 'mix' come December Brucey has to go so his replacement has the January window to work with, albeit I don't expect us to do much business other than maybe replace players who leave. The last 18 months in terms of results and performance have been disappointing and bl**dy boring respectively
Nice to see everyone coming to their senses and seeing Bruce for what he is. Only took 3 or so years for you all to catch up. Bruce out.