Match Day Thread Hull City v Peterborough

Haven't read the above, assuming it's a load of reactionary nonsense saying Grant is garbage and we're ****.

Coming in to the game today I was worried, I thought they might play us off the park and outclass us. The truth is, we made them look extremely average. They had 2 chances in the game, the goal and that wicked deflection. It was a complete fluke, it's harsh but that's football.

The performance was a major positive, if anything, we looked too comfortable and once again missed too many chances. It was always going to bite us in the arse at some point.

Dembele was nullified extremely well by Josh, who had a good game again and Grant got the tactics bang on, we just have to finish off the chances we're creating.

I'm sure over the next 38 games we'll win games we didn't deserve too, there's an argument we've already done that this season (Crewe).

The weakness is Elder, but it's nothing major, it's just highlighted more so because of how good Josh is on the other side. It's going to really puzzle me how we managed to pick him up on a free and how he was on a free in the first place.

8 games, 6 wins, joint second. That's pretty good going and 3 tasty upcoming fixtures. P'boro may have started well but I'd be surprised if they stayed the course. They've got little squad depth and take out JCH, Szmodics and Dembele and it's an extremely average side.

 

Nailed it. Only Elder is no more of a weakness at the back as an asset going forward - a bit like one Sam Ricketts back in the day, and he didn't do too badly.

 

Elder's fine. It's just one of those things we have to manage.

I don't understand the level of stick Grant gets either, if we'd brought in a new gaffer and he'd have won 6/8, the fans would've gone bonkers. He doesn't get much praise but a tonne of criticism when anything goes wrong. Of course, the second half of last season was unacceptable but, as we can see from the latest accounts, he was handed a bottom 3/5 budget (£17.5m).

That budgets small enough, but it looks a lot smaller when you factor in that Stewart took just short of £1m from it, Henriksen will have seen around £400k despite not kicking a ball either. Throw in Toral, Kingsley and Irvine's wages and a substantial chunk is gone on very average players. I'd be shocked if we didn't pay a portion of Dicko's wages at Vitesse either. All that means is there's little room for new signings and I think that was pretty clear and why we went for cheap punts who'd played for Grant before.

Adkins' job the season before was a walk in the park compared to the task Grant was handed. He had Bowen and Grosicki for the season along with Marshall, an available Henrikson and Campbell. He was also able to spend a big chunk on wages for Martin, Pugh and Elphick. And he only managed to finish 14th. Not taking anything away from him as he's a decent gaffer

 

Still think Grunt had the tools and points on board to keep us up with a bit of creative thinking and less obstinance. Long way to go to make it right but I'm not going to see everything he does as **** just cos I think he should have been sacked last March.

Theres stuff he's responsible for ( 2nd half Fleetwood) there's stuff he's not (today).

Just undermines genuine criticism when he gets hammered just cos certain fans don't like him.

Personally think he's limited. But young too as a manager and has a long way to go.

Just like the majority of our squad, and **** it.... This season too.

Bottom line is we have no right to walk this league without taking punches.

... And sometimes I feel the bipolar nature of our support gives us entirely the karma we get. When things are good they're great. When things get tough to a certain level. Support is ****ing ****.

 

A fair assessment IMO, I thought we were extremely unlucky to lose the game. They got the rub of the green for their 2nd goal with a huge deflection, and we just didn't get the breaks, a lot of narrow misses that just went the wrong side of the post. Eaves headed effort was unlucky, he got across his man well and just went the wrong side of the post.

Overall a good performance, on another day we would have won it.

P.S. Dembele was irritating, went down if anyone went near him.

 

We totally got done on Martin. Whoever signed off on that loan needs a kick in the cock. Was never gonna be fully fit.

 

Here's a curved ball then..... our coaches and management team were defenders. How can you teach what you dont know....There are scores of successful unemployed strikers who could be employed on short term contract or a daily basis to come and lend their knowledge to our mis-firing attack. I dont mean Deano but someone more predatory. Someone who has earned the right to tell them positions they should be taking up, movement, finishing...

Told you it was left field...

 

Welcome back, Prof.

 

The trouble with the 4-3-3 today was that midway through the second half Smallwood started to slow down, Peterborough then started to play the ball out wide more stretching us, if we had changed to 4-4-2, this would have nullified this and made Peterborough think again about there tactics. But all we do is make like for like changes.

 

In a nutshell

 

We would have got money for some of them if ehab hadn’t let their contracts run down, can’t blame darnborough for that..
They all got fixed up with other clubs so obviously they’re all capable
Kingsley apart. Who ended up looking the least likely footballer ever

 

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• just watching motd and with all this Covid ****e
• Is there any need for managers to be bumping fists, hugging, high fiving the opposition manager and back room staff!! So I propose they’re all made to do the Ollie hardy wave
  

 

For what it's worth and I'm not just saying this because of yesterday, we will be ok against the so so teams and get done by the ones that are getting promoted and occupying the play off places after 46 games. We will not be in the mix.

And yes I will own up if I'm wrong.

I want to be but we have Ehab and Grant

 

It's ok. He 'knows this league'

 

Both far too good for this team.

 

I wonder if Darnborough realised how good he was? Not sure he would have splashed out on Coyle too sit on the bench.
I only half watched half the game yesterday, we seemed to dominate the bits I saw. I did notice they tactically changed their midfield at half time and presumably we didn't? Was Elder poor again? Playing 433, fullbacks are likely to be exposed especially if they are more attacking fullbacks especially if they have a naive young lad playing in front of him who I suspect has never been asked to defend before at any level of his fledging career.

 

Elder wasn't that bad, just a bit of a weak link which they saw and exploited. He seems to get caught out of position a bit and he isn't the quickest to track back. Emmanuel also gets caught out a bit after he's been attacking but somehow he always seems able to get back and stick a foot in. I think he (Elder) probably could do with a rest though.

I thought KLP did a reasonable job of tracking back but Smallwood being a bit knackered after an hour didn't help our case.

 

Elder wasn't poor, he just had a massive job to do. He is being asked to cover the whole of the left side, Greaves remains far too central for most of the game.
I agree, Ferguson's changes exploited our left side and Ward had far too much time for their second goal.

But we had loads of chances, passed the ball and looked to put the ball behind the defence all of the game. We used every inch of the pitch and we were punished for pressing forward after sitting back against Fleetwood. This was a tight game and we lost. It wasn't a humiliating result by any means.

My only question is why wasn't Batty in the squad? We needed him on after 60 minutes.

 

Talk of the exposing the left yest a bit over the top, they got one decent cross in from that side for the 1st, and whilst they went that way a few times they barely troubled us.

 

So without seeing it, two top 3 / 6 sides play each other, one generally plays better than the other, one had more luck than the other, one has a manager with a plan B, not a whitewash, shows some frailties, not unfixable, everyone is a football manager including McAaa
Still doing better than I thought we would