^^This. Not all Pellegrino's fault at all. BUT, he is so inept at reading the game IMO. At half time surely he must have had an inkling that they would change it? Or surely he thought they may make changes? Within 5 mins it was obvious and the Lemina change should have happened then. Not hindsight, but IMO obvious. Good managers will manage players, help them when the are down, help them when they are up. To me it seems like a poor England side - 11 really good individuals who do not have a clue how to play with each other well. That has to be down to MP2? Not just today either, it has happened too many times. We should have been out of sight before they cheated. And yes, punching the ball in the net is 100% cheating. At no point did it touch his head. I would be saying the same if one of ours did it.
He could have also done something to provide Long with a running mate; if we're going to be in our own half, we have to at least offer a threat on the counter to punish Watford for pushing so many men into our half. Bring on the pace of Boufal or Sims and have them play in the gap between their midfield and defense, as an outlet forward. Would have been harsh on the likes of Tadic to pull him, but we're in the business of winning games.
Assuming that Silva wants to win the cup tie, I guess he has a problem now. Does he start with Deeney against us, and potentially benefit from more than 45 minutes of Watford being the better team? Or does he continue to use Deeney as an alternative, knowing full well that we simply cannot handle it when the opposition change things up mid-game? (Part of me wonders if that might have been Silva's reasoning today. Certainly good management from him if it was. As I said, on the face of it leaving Deeney out against us seemed very odd)
TBF, this is hardly the first time Tadic has been good for a half and then disappeared. He’s always been a hot and cold player. I don’t really blame Pellegrino for that. If there is blame there, I think it is less that Tadic went quiet but that Pellegrino didn’t sub him when he was ineffective. IMO, we didn’t intentionally park the bus. In fact, maybe we should have. Instead what happened is we just got overwhelmed.
All becoming an all too common theme though don't you think? We don't deal with pressure well enough to park the bus.
The problem is that the way we play, we don't park the double decker bus, but more of a mini. We'll always concede
What I want to know is why an attacking player of gabbis quality can't even get a game in a struggling team. I don't get why he's even here anymore.
We’ve answered this question earlier in this thread. And I’m not sure it’s “according to you” when it’s screamingly obvious.
We are terrible at covering crosses. Even if you look at that Man U game our defense was a wreck until Lukaku went off. Yes, part of that was they were missing Lukaku, but it was also because they stopped playing wide. Maybe if we add some defensive players and concentrate more packing the middle, we can stop that. Or maybe it’s just that much more of a clusterfuck. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the players. Maybe it’s Pellegrino. I think we can all see the problem back there, I just don’t know how to fix it.
The fans are totally blameless? I remember with Puel, as early as October the fans were booing at our games. Methinks that could be a catalyst for players thinking they can disrespect the management.
I don’t think we’ll get wins at home, as the fans are immediately on the manager and players backs and form continues as expected ....
Haven't been able to watch the game yet. Saw the goals, well done JWP for two very well taken goals. Three in two shows some real fight. We're going to need some.
Thanks I like it too Atmosphere has been poor for ages, talking about the Norwich game in 2005 recently reminded me of how much we had the ground rocking that season to try and push the team on... Seem much more likely to go with a whimper this time imo.
Sacking the manager should be the first and foremost thing to try and fix it. Half competent manager and a couple of signings would see us midtable imo.
We don’t have anything like the worst squad in the league. We have the worst manager in the league. That’s just my opinion, and a long held one. Lovely chap. Completely out of his depth. I find it odd people are still trying to find a way that it’s not largely to do with him. Of course there are wider issues (trust me, it’s something I realise very well) but this smacks of playing the ostrich if people can’t recognise the most glaring of issues. That’s also me out for the evening. I’m nowhere near despairing because it’s an easy fix to stay up.
I"m an advacate for giving a manager time, But he keeps on making the same stupid mistakes... Game after game.. It's so predictable its laughable.
