If these players are as good as people say they are they'd know shooting from 30 yards when they could play someone in out wide is the wrong decision. Bruce's reaction when they do something stupid makes it obvious he's not telling them to do that. Bruce has got it wrong many times this season, I'm not arguing against that, but why our players are immune from criticism when they are clearly underperforming really annoys me.
What simple chances? We didn't create any simple chances tonight. At best they were half chances. What is in the managers control is making sure we had sufficient firepower, so when one striker stutters we've got another chomping at the bit. You look on our bench tonight and tell me who is going to score goals? We have a premier league capable defence and midfield with a league 2 attack (Taking Hernandez out) the rest are hopeless. Bruce by his own admission says goals win games - so why hasn't he addressed that by bringing in someone with goal scoring pedigree in English leagues? Not Diomande - he just looks useless. Aluko runs around a lot but isn't really a striker and Akpom isn't good enough, sorry Chuba.
Spot on. In his interview Steve Bruce said we created chances but I agree with you, not enough for the control we had over the game at times. Problems in midfield blend and only one striker on the pitch at best.
He tried to sign Gray, that decision came down to money and was out of his hands. I don't blame him for signing Akpom, it was a risk that hasn't payed off.
For all of those who keep saying "we didn't deserve that", YES WE DAMN WELL DID. Any side chasing promotion who set up with 6 midfielders and no strikers for the 1st 72 minutes, totally deserve to lose. I am disgusted, completely totally and utterly disgusted.
We could but it's no guarantee, Boro signed Rhodes and he's been ****e for them. If the Lambert rumours are true that would be great but I can't think of many others that would come here and be able to make a difference.
So what would you have done then? Abel is hopelessly out of form and Akpom just isn't cutting it at this level, what other strikers would you have put in there?
Can't wait til Lambert signs,it'll be a whole new era. Like when we signed the last lanky ex England forward, Hartley. Ahhh happy days. Nurse the screens!
And you watch people say "Oh but the benefit of hindsight" but most of us at the time were saying "If we get Gray in we'll go up."
Is he? He looked pretty damn sharp when he came on tonight, and was our most dangerous player. I wouldn't say he's hopelessly out of form, Bruce just isn't using him properly.
There's plenty of strikers who'd do a job in this team. Gray would have been perfect but there's plenty of alternatives. Nugent was going cheap and he'd done alright for Leicester in the PL last season and is a very well proven striker at this level. I don't like the Allams (might have mentioned that) but he had a big enough budget to get someone in. Clayton Donaldson made it clear with the game against us that he's better than what we've got. One game but it's obvious when he's doing things our don't. It really doesn't require a fortune. He got it right with Long and Jelavic but we've spent loads on other strikers and never replaced either of them.
He's not looked like scoring against some very poor teams in the last few games, granted when he came on tonight he did well but his form leading up to this game certainly didn't merit a starting place.
