Disagree completely. Today’s performance was poor, albeit against a team astronomically more valuable and well up for the game. The performance against Liverpool was pretty good in context and the score was harsh, both from the common sense of seeing two lucky assists for the first two goals but also on your beloved xG statistics, and on the standard statistics. These matches will not make or break our season. We need roughly 12 wins to have a decent chance of staying up - neither of these matches were more than “hope for a draw”. We will get hammered again, at least once, by another of the big clubs. And it still won’t have much of a bearing on our chances of survival.
The trouble is Rob that Man City was one of only 5 wins last time. Most of the sides around us doubled us . We beat Man City, Newcastle, Leicester, Everton and Bournemouth we don't win against the so called **** sides either . Even after our run of games that nobody expects us to win it doesn't get any easier. We need a plan B which doesn't involve pissing around with the ball trying to pass out from the back as every time we lose possession we nearly concede . We need to defend corners and set pieces properly, seems like years I've been saying the same thing . We need to defend better , and somehow we need to learn how to bounce back from a goal down . We have a crazy stat that goes back to Watford in May 2016 the last game we won from a losing position. Some will say that trends and runs are meaningless but I'm fully expecting to lose as soon as we concede first because that's what happens . Our defence is nowhere near good enough at this level it hasn't been since Bassong was playing for us we are minus 8 after 2 games . Realistically we need a Pukki alternative too but they don't come cheap. Last time he scored 6 in the first 5 games and struggled the rest of the season . It is what it is and I don't want to risk our future by over spending so I'm not too hopeful this season for the reasons above. Get a few new faces in before the transfer window shuts and it could give everyone a lift.
I agree, we have work to do. I just refuse to wet the bed after two matches against the top two favourites for the title in the premier league and who have each finished in the top four for each of the last five seasons. Especially as we were chosen to play them when both had a point to prove as a collective team and with players coming in with a point to prove individually, on top of a disrupted pre-season. Don’t get me wrong, if we are eight matches in and performances are shaky and we don’t have many points on the board, I will be worried. But these two matches are just not the yardstick for us. When we stayed up finishing 11th nine years ago, we lost 2-5 at home to Liverpool and 5-0 away to them. Ok we had better results against Man City (when they were on the proverbial beach), but still, even in a comfortable mid table season we had moments of being hammered against these types of teams. All concerns raised are valid, panicking though (I’m not suggesting you are, but I think we are in danger as a fan base of panicking) is not valid. The reason I think this is important is that we got relegated, as performances dipped, when the fans gave up hope in each of our past three relegations. We can’t afford for hope to be lost after two matches.
I think it's glaringly obvious that our defence is not good enough and we still haven't addressed this . They were terrible today
This is much closer to the truth than your previous post Rob. I resent the 'bed wetting' label when people are making constructive criticism. We weren't up for the fight because the tactics were wrong. We needed to keep things tight in the first half and we didn't. Yes there was luck against us but it could have been prevented by defending better outside the area. Our lack of a defensive midfielder left us with a soft centre - Gilmour is a good player but he's no DM and they exploited that. DF could have played Sørensen but he didn't and we didn't adjust accordingly. There have been positives in these two tough results, but there have also been negatives. We lined up in a 4-3-2-1 very similar to their 4-3-3 and tried to play much the same way. We did mix up playing out from the back with intermediate goal kicks aimed at bypassing their press. That worked enough for Rashica to use his pace to run at them, but again we didn't seem to have a coherent plan on those occasions we got that far up the pitch. The lack of fitness was again a factor, but we didn't allow for that. Pukki was looking tired before the first half finished. We have a fully fit alternative in Sargent, but didn't bring him on until the final 15 minutes when we were already dead and buried. I didn't expect a result today, but I did expect us to put up a fight and we didn't. It isn't the results of these matches but the way we yielded in them without a real fight. Lambert's team was less skillful, but the players were willing to battle for every point. We need that now.
For me it isn't the defence that isn't good enough, but the way we defend as a team. Aarons, Hanley, Gibson and Giannoulis are all good enough players, but they can't do it all. The players in front of them need to defend better than they did today and to do so, they need a proper DM at their core. That was patently lacking today. Rupp, Gilmour and Lees-Melou are all CMs without the balance of a DM sitting deeper. I'm beginning to wonder whether DF really thinks we need a DM. The one we have, Sørensen, has been left on the bench both games. Rashica's defending looked better today and he managed a critical takeaway on the edge of our penalty area. We needed more of that from the CMs but didn't get it often enough. A DM like Sørensen can sit deep in front of the defence and provide another CB presence when we're under pressure, something the others failed to do. It's not their fault, they just don't have those skills. That is our main weakness. If Sørensen isn't the answer, then we need another DM who is.
I find it astonishing how few games Sorensen has played as DM , I can understand it if Skipp is fit but he's the only player in that position and we still don't know how good he is . Weird
Yes it is weird. The difference was obvious when Sørensen came on in pre-season games and played that role. How we needed that today. I just hope that DF doesn't have some prejudice against DMs.
Fair point Rick - apologies I will try to avoid the phrase in future My point is the team really need the fans behind them. I know it takes two to tango there - we need them to show desire and endeavour. I am just worried we are in line for another season like Hughton’s second, where we absolutely should not have got relegated, but ended up getting relegated because of a vicious combination of fans vs manager too early.
Hooton was boring but we rarely got thrashed . Farke has lots of credit with us fans not many wanted him sacked the last time we went down and at Championship level we are scintillating. We just want to see sensible recruitment desire from the team and a bit of tactical intelligence. Farke summed it up perfectly, we conceded the same goal 4 times . The trouble is he picked the team and tactics . This is our strongest cente back pairing and they looked out of their depth particularly Handley who was colossal last season . We need an upgrade and a Skipp
Yeah it’s interesting to talk about the centre back pairing. I agree with you. On MOTD just now they focused on Gibson, Giannoulis and Rupp. I’m loth to agree with MOTD but I think they are right - Gibson is not communicating enough. Farke blamed Giannoulis (which is fair) and Rupp too, judging by the substitutions, but you have to question the communication between Gibson and his left back because the story was identical with Mumba as with Giannoulis - that’s indicating it’s not a player quality issue but rather talking and working together. It is strange that both left backs stood so wide, without a call from the centre back to tighten up. And I also maintain the midfielder in front needs to work to prevent that slide rule pass in wide areas. Now I don’t know what it would look like without Aarons at right back, but it is interesting that all goals we have conceded from open play have been down the left hand side of defence. Equally, though, no matter what they say on MOTD, I just don’t think Giannoulis and Mumba will be up against Salah and a Gabriel Jesus/Kyle Walker combo every week…
When you are up against a side that can go out and spend three times what your entire team cost on a single player what do you really expect? It would be like criticising someone who lost a F1,race who had drifted down to the local used car lot with five grand in their pocket. We just gave to face it that competing at this level without a budget that runs to £100m just isn't on. Personally I'm looking forward to winning The Championship in 2022/3. Look at Watford losing 2-0 at Brighton. Had that been us instead of at Citeh people would be saying that if we are losing games against teams like that we've had it. How many points did we seriously expect to get from those two fixtures? As Bill Shankly might have said, we were lucky to get none.
I just wish that if we get a free kick level with the centre circle rather than playing tappy tappy we need to clip the ball forward and see what happens. Don't take it quickly and backwards, against world class teams it doesn't work, get the ball up the field and give some rest to the defence.
True. I just feel that if I DID have to race an F1 car in a 5 grand old banger, I'd at least try to set up the race to benefit me best. I'd try and have the race happen on uneven ground, and on a narrow track. I'd look to get in front early and then block the road so the shiny F1 car can't pass and show off its true power. Also I'd fill the F1 cars petrol tank with sugar. And if that didn't work I'd just force them of the track in a collision like Hamilton does. Not sure where I'm going with this analogy now...
I seem to remember Hughton's team being thrashed 7-0 at ManCity, or am I misrembering? Busan's analogy is apt - well at least until the bit about putting sugar in their tank. What I want to see is some realism from DF. We set up as if we were equal to them and tried to play our own game and were punished for it. Our 'own game' got nowhere. Rashica's long range effort was our only shot. If we had held back and defended with a low block early on we might have frustrated them and created more threat on the break. Instead we were picked apart ruthlessly by a far superior team. Losing like that damages players' confidence going into our next games.
I wonder who Leicester and Wigan's opponents were in those two games. Probably not champions and previous year's champions.
WhoScored has Ajer as Brentford's lowest rated of their 3 CBs in both games at 6.7 and 6.9. I'll wait to see how he does against Liverpool and ManCity.
Why should we make wholesale changes to our game week in week out to suit the opponents. What message would that send to the players, how would that help team moral or development. Maybe DF did want to do what you said, but Man City's early goal, made that strategy ineffective. From my memory when we did beat Man City we didn't use the strategy you suggest. but i might be wrong. Anyway can't see the point of playing the whole season on the biases that it's all going to come down to goal difference. Would rather just go out play our game and see what happens.
I raised this question a month ago in a post on the Rumour Mill thread (26th July). To quote: "All the evidence is pointing to the fact that DF doesn't actually want a specialist DM. Put another way, he doesn't want the Leicester City version of N'Golo Kante, he wants the current Chelsea version, i.e. a player who has the defensive instincts and awareness of a specialist No.6 but allied to the creative, offensive instincts and awareness of a No.8. We saw this last season in the way in which, as the season progressed, Ollie Skipp was encouraged to develop a much more offensive interpretation of his role while, conversely, McLean was being encouraged to learn from Skipp and embrace a more DM-like defensive one." I think DF regards a dedicated DM as too inflexible a use of resources, an unwarranted restriction on a team's offensive options. It's an example of his wanting to have us play as if we were what we do not have the resources to be. What's fine for Tuchel is out of our reach but DF seems incapable of resigning himself to it. We are assured that a DM will be brought in before the end of the transfer window; my fear is that we aren't actually looking for the Skipp-clone that we need.
