Possibly, because they are not as good as they think they are. That and the cup final mentality of the opposition every week. However we should be good enough to deal with it.
I don't believe in this 'playing us is their cup final' malarkey. Some teams have played us and rolled over, some have played us and humiliated us. Inconsistency is what makes us and the teams around us league one. We're all in the same boat.
I agree about Moyes. He inherited a bunch of 2nd raters and didn’t really have enough time to bring in better players. My grouse with him is that for the salary he was getting he could have at least PRETENDED to be a little more up-beat.
My grouse with him was that basically he said we were going to get relegated after two games. Not too awe inspiring….
Wholeheartedly agree mate. The old timers will remember the state of pitches in the 60/70s. By January most pitches were mud patches with areas of grass here and there.
Not blaming LJ for any lack of “toughness”. But including a little rugby training at times might be an idea?
I would argue that we are very consistent. People say there are no patterns emerging, but there are. When an attack of ours breaks down it is consistently easy for the opposition to get through our midfield and straight at our defence, which means we are back-pedalling. There is currently no one midfield player capable of breaking up the counter attack. Until we get someone who can do this, then we need to be less gung-ho away from home and change the shape to accommodate a 2nd defensive midfielder. We are clearly much better when we play 3 at the back with wing backs. It's these wing backs that provide the width, so we don't need the plethora of wingers too. I'm guessing here, but maybe LJ wanted Dajaku, Clarke and Roberts to provide the width rather than the wing backs, so decided to go back to a back four. That decision backfired spectacularly. Working with what we've got, I would go something like: Hoffman Batth - Flanagan - Doyle Wright/Hume/Huggins - Winchester - Evans/09 - Cirkin Pritchard/Neil Dajaku/Broadhead - Stewart
I think you're right about that. Batth was probably meant to solve that problem. He still might do to some extent I suppose.
It was noticeable from Johnson's comments after the Pompey game when he said that Batth was brought in to tighten things up at the back. That's not going to happen if runners can walk through our midfield and get at our defence so easily.
Exactly. The weakness in midfield cost us last year It wasn’t addressed All our bad performances have come about by being over run in midfield but LJ doesnt seem to see it. Last year he insisted on playing 2 in midfield when all our good performances came with a three. It’s 100% LJ’s tactics that have us repeatedly caving in. If he again doesn’t strengthen in midfield this window then. Yesterdays result and performances will just keep repeating. I’m really not hopeful that he can open his eyes and change things
then i suppose our Jonah changed his name by deed poll to Ahab and is still out there searching for that elusive team his streaky nickname is perfect for him
Agree about the midfielder mate, just that it isnt just Johnson who signs players. You have to ask the recruitment team why one didnt wander through the door in the first few days. Maybe Johnson doesnt want one, but I doubt it to be honest. To me the biggest test of our new top team, inclusing KLD is now. They need to buy that player right now, and it might need to be a 30 something with no resale value. They have done the last loan deal on Clark, which I think is odd, so it needs now to be hand in the pocket time. Hope they do it, whether they plan to sack Johnson or not.
