Thanks Diego. No excuses but hopefully we have Llorente and Phillips in the side next time we meet. We're just not strong enough squad wise to be able to cope without our best 2 players although obviously you had plenty missing as well.
But a midfield of Philips, Dallas and Klich might put up a bit of a fight. I agree we all knew it wasn't great so why did Bielsa deem it was good enough. My main gripe is leaving Philips on the bench, if he’s fit enough for the bench he is not injured. So Bielsa does his usual, he plays a CB in midfield, he also deems Firpo as not fit enough to start so Dallas plays LB leaving us a midfield player short so fill it with Rodrigo. We might well have still lost but the shoreline today, that’s down to Bielsas team selection. Philips should have played, Bielsa is too set in his ways and stubborn for his own good at times.
When we lost 6-2 we still looked dangerous, we gifted them two silly goals, we played well. Today nobody looked good, it was much more painful
I'm guessing because Bielsa is an idealist. Why else would he have Meslier chipping out goal kicks to the half way line when we're set up to take it short and play out. Any other manager on the planet would push up, regain defensive shape and then instruct the goalkeeper to lump it long....this is at 0-0 by the way and we conceded within 5 seconds of taking our own goal kick.
Driving home from my parents this evening, and had Talksport on, only channel I get a decent signal on my radio, and Danny from Leeds is calling for Bielsa to be replaced by Allardyce already.
You mean Danny from Fakechester who loves the sound of his own voice is bullshitting on the radio. Well that's my take on things anyway.
I got to be honest before the game I did not think we would even get a draw and it turned out that way , pre season well what can we say only villareal we put up a fight and tried , llorente as I said last season he is a good defender but we need to sell him as he is injury prone and an injured player out alot is no good as might as well not have him
I thought I better not comment straight after the match or I might get a banning. To all you posters who had a go at me regarding pre season, well I wasn't imagining it, our passing was dismal. Anyway I was embrassed by the shambles I watched yesterday. No defence, no midfield no attack.
Stop panicking guys. That's about as good I've seen Scum play since Ferguson left and we were well in the game until the quickfire couple of goals after we equalised. Wheels fell off a bit after that but we still have our best defender and best midfielder to come in. Plus Dallas will be released from left back so some of these problems should be fixed for the next couple of games. I might start panicking if we lose to Everton and Burnley with crap performances.
The trouble is losing can become contagious and before you know it, you can be on a bad run. It wasn't that scum IMO were good, it was more like we were appalling.
I thought they were excellent (it hurts me to say that). I thought we were below par. When that happens against a club with multiple 75 million plus signings then the outcome is a heavily one sided scoreline. I agree about losing becoming a habit though. Sheffield United were playing decent football for the first few games last season but had zero luck and the rot set in and confidence left the players and they were ****e afterwards. That can happen to any team including us. Very important to get a few goals and points on the board over the next two or three games to stop that rot before it sets in. Even a big win against Crewe is desirable. Running in to them on that form yesterday is what it is. We will get stronger. There are far worse teams than us in this division but we need to get going sooner rather than later.
You play a left back at left back. You play a midfielder in the holding role it's not rocket science. Rodrigo is not a 10 and is very lazy. He is i am afraid a very expensive sub or makeshift striker. Bielsa makes some terrible decisions and yesterday was a prime example of his square peg thinking. Could forshaw make a claim for a starting place?. The Crewe game would be the obvious one to try him out. Bielsa usually uses the cup games to try out the bench anyway. Could the sub keeper get a start?.
As I said yesterday on Billy's podcast thread the League this year is going to be very competitive. Forget the Top 4, they are away and gone but the rest will be fighting tooth and nail for every point. Last season no one assumed we were safe until we were and it's the same this time around. As it stands we could finish anywhere from 5th to 20th with no guarantees of anything. Let's all enjoy the ride and if we were to go down hey it's just football.
I’ve just punished myself by watching their goals again after promising myself I wouldn’t comment on the game any further…. Meslier could and should have done a bit better with a few of those goals, they weren’t howlers but at least three were stoppable
D Double our money and i would take that. Rads has a plan and i believe he would sell kalvin too and Bamford.
Llorente back in and kalvin also junior left back and we will be a different side. Still need that quality at 10 though. When is raph going with brazil?. Perhaps try him out there as bielsa states two positions he can play. Give summerville a go and if he does ok stick costa somewhere i can't see him.
Raphinha's decision making and execution were very poor yesterday. Let's hope he's not become a billy big bollocks and believes he's better than he is.
He should have scored near the end of the game, even Bamford would have put that away... or maybe not, Douglas Bader would have though
