Match Day Thread Stoke City v Southampton, Wed 14 December, KO 8:00pm

I actually thought reasonably well, and if it wasn't for the Jay Rod horror miss, it'd be a bit more rosy. It's not his fault his strikers don't know where the goal is, but certainly going into the season I was happy with our strike force.

On the plus side, it's 2 clean sheets out of 2 with my match threads (I'll get the Bournemouth one up tomorrow)

 

Gutted about the result all things considered, But despite them going down to 10 men we still absoloutly Dominated them at home. Are star player is still finding his feet, And the 2 strikers Jay and Shane Have hardly played, Not to mention not playing with Boufal.. So maybe in a couple of weeks they might actually get to grips with each other and finish off the chances they are given.

 

But we don't. What's the point in pushing it wide if we don't have anyone to head it. That's just wasted lay!

 

Oh and **** Neil Taylor for nearly kicking Dusan's nose off because he was in storming form before his injury.

 

Yep, i'd be a lot more concerned if we were getting dominated in matches and Fraser had lots of shots to save. The basics are in place, we are solid, just need to add a bit of flair to our play.

 

Same amount of points as this time last season but 7 fewer goals. Outside the top 5/6 the league is quite poor this season and we have a real chance to finish top of our 'Mini league' again if we start taking our chances.

 

Jay has got into better positions the last two games. Yes, he missed a couple of sitters but last season and earlier this, he was anonymous. I have not given up hope. A cliche I know, but form in temporary, class is permanent. Getting your feet tangled doesn't look like the result of an incomplete recovery from injury. It looks like a loss of confidence/form/belief. I so want him to score a goal. I so want Shane to score. These two could come good. I hope that they do because I am doubtful that we will sign another striker in January.

 

I just watched the game, before hand, I would have been happy with a point, but today, we should have had all 3. Fair play to Stoke, as they defended resolutely, but we really should have won! It's easy to say so, but I think Charlie Austin would have cashed in tonight. We are so light weight up front, we are crying out for a target man!

 

Never seen him do it on a wet Wednesday in Stoke.

 

It can't be as bad as Delle Ali's against Stoke, surely?

 

You know, its quite possible that Puel has been given a conservative brief. Stay up, consolidate, finish top ten. We don't have the squad to be expansive, and have no striker, so it is clearly a problem if we concede - it's a possibility he's been told to not concede as our first priority.

 

Long is not a good striker though. Never has been if you judge him by goals. He wins lots of free kicks, is dangerous on the break and can leap a mile high but come the end of the season there's never much to look back on. He is bang average and obviously isnt on target even for that this year.

Looking to blame Puel makes no sense.

 

Puel is in the same boat as we all are - no one can add a striker to our squad at this point. Add five attacking players and we still couldn't score. If he added an attacking player and we conceded, you'd be even more apoplectic. I didn't watch the game or highlights, but have seen almost every other game, and its clear we haven't got it in the final third. Our most prolific striker is out: we win quite often when we perhaps shouldn't; we have beaten Arsenal and Everton; held City and Liverpool. Goals are clearly our problem, and we're inconsistent. But we're top ten with a pretty underperforming squad. Calls on here to get rid of Claude are laughable - fairly plastic infact. We aren't that kind of club, and I'm proud that we're going to give him a chance. Who knows what his brief is, or what his targets are? We're not actually losing a lot, and compared to my own expectations, I think he's doing a good job.

And if he was doing any better, he'd be gone at the end of the season anyway.

 

That's the problem, though. It was a horror miss, but horror misses will happen, and if you only really get one very good chance a game, they'll cost you quite a few points. We need to be the team that wins 2-0 and opines that we probably should have scored five, rather than the team that gets one golden moment for 1-0.

This was our 25th competitive match of the season; we have exactly one goal a game. Only one team in the PL era -- Birmingham in '09/'10 -- has finished in the top ten while scoring a goal a game or fewer, and it was a complete fluke...they weren't particularly good but ground out some close results, and then got relegated a year later. We either find goals or we're going to fall back.

 

That's not my point fellas - the problem I have is when many people are specifically criticising the formation and/or our shape, which as you say is the simple start-point of a team's tactics, whilst not actually knowing what formation we are playing. Fair enough if you don't care about formations and whatnot, but when people specifically criticise it whilst not knowing what it is... That boggles my mind. It's like saying a book is crap whilst admitting you can't read, just because the prevailing opinion is that it's crap.

 

I remember this time last season so many people wanted Koeman out, and look where we finished. And he'd had 18 months in charge plus had made his own signings.

The premier league is not a walk in the park ffs. And we are one/two players away from being an excellent side again.

 

We've taken there place of old.

 

I just want at least one of them to move up forward. The second half against Boro, we looked so much more threatening when we pushed JWP further up. We set up not to be countered but by doing that we will struggle to score. I actually didn't mind the diamond at the start of the season.

 

away to stoke on a Wednesday night and we get a decent result. Yes we have problems going forward. However Stoke on paper are a bloody good team and we are above them in the league in a cup semi final and just off the back of a Euro tour. This season although not amazing is far from a shambles. If we can score a few more then I see no reason we can't challenge for a top 7 finish.

 

Someone I spoke to last night reckoned that the Puel won't get another season because of the adverse effect on season ticket sales given the boring football that is played. I suppose that this would almost be like the Martinez situation at Everton where the truth about the performances is more apparent to the spectators that the manager who sees it with a different view.

The talk about tactics is really interesting and there is a fascinating book called "Inverting the pyramid" which I would recommend which basically explains the evolution of football formations and why certain formations became popular. I must admit that I can understand some formations when line ups are announced but am a bit sceptical that they fully function throughout the full 90 minutes. It is easy to understand using attacking or defence minded players as well as adding wingers down the flanks. A lot of this is quite straight forward but when you mention "diamonds" this may be easy to understand on a team sheet but I doubt is many could watch a match midway through and say that the team was playing 4-2-1-3 especially when a team is attacking. If you analysed a match, I bet that a team would be changing formation regularly and perhaps not even realising that the formation might have changed over a period of ten minutes. You might start off with a diamond but is this really retained throughout the 90 minutes and how does the fact that some players might favour their left foot, for example, actually effect the formation a team ultimately plays. In reality, I think that football is probably too fluid to suggest that one particular formation might be employed, I suppose it is a bit like a lot of the contemporary jazz that I listen too where a piece of music may be in 7/8 but all sorts of other time signatures might be employed and missed together depending upon what instrument you are listening to. I don't think football formations are too different. any coaches out there will to explain further?