You attack the team/Rosenior on so many angles that it's hard to manage them all. If one of your points is that we're not good enough at the possession stuff yet, then I think that's reasonable. Certainly based on today. At times towards the end of last season we were scoring some great goals going from back to front both building up and on the break, but we didn't dominate the ball as much as I'd have liked or as consistently. I'm hoping to see that expanded upon this season and today was a poor start to it. I completely accept that. But let's not go back and pretend we did nothing good last season. Football fans so often fail to have a bit of composure and consider things reasonably. I think when you start throwing elements like Acun contradicting himself into it is where it gets a bit weird. He's breathed life into this club with his passion and generosity. He deserves some slack. It really shouldn't matter that he says confusing things, in the scheme of things. Including him in the list of things to be angry about just seems like padding your list to justify a mood you've decided you want to take. Listing pre-season performances as well? We didn't lose a game ffs. That's just a ridiculous thing to have allowed yourself to be disappointed about. There are some things to be excited about, and some things to expect improvement on. But I think you and one or two others talk as if everything is a shambles and I think that's totally wrong. We've come from a really crap place relatively recently and we're infinitely better off now.
Disappointed in the result as I felt we played well enough to scrape a point. Delap looks like he’s a good addition to the team but needs someone to be playing off him when he receives the ball. Tufan today just wasn’t that man The one thing that stood out for me was our conditioning. We looked fresher than Norwich at the end of the game, despite the debacle that resulted in their goal. One thing Liam seems to have done well is got the players match fit (Connolly aside )
We’re infinitely better off the pitch compared to the Allams, I agree on that. On the pitch, we look like a club that will be in mid-table obscurity for some time like Stoke have been. Acun’s appointment of Shota was bad and his meddling in transfers last summer has put us in what looks like a tricky situation this summer. I have my doubts regarding Rosenior because he talks a good game but I’ve seen not a lot to back it up other than he’s stopped us conceding 3 goals a game like we did under Shota. We still concede a lot of chances per game, we don’t score enough goals, our football is very predictable (the amount of times we did the same play from Jones to Ingram to Jones to Coyle to a Norwich player was laughable), the midfield looks very unbalanced and soft, we don’t have particularly good wingers, we’ve signed players who look nowhere near fitness etc. so yeah, I am quite unconvinced by Rosenior. My view of Rosenior will change when he has us playing good football and getting results consistently and not the odd 1-0 win in a sea of draws and losses. There’s nothing wrong with possession-based football and playing out from the back. Lots of good teams do it well in this division alone. We’re not one of them right now. And I was frustrated with pre-season performances (not the results, I don’t care about pre-season results) because I had a feeling it would be a sign of things to come when the league started. I was right to think that because a lot of what I saw in pre-season, I saw against Norwich.
On that basis of standard, relatively speaking, you’d despise every Hull City manager of my lifetime. I could be mistaken, but I don’t recall you this energised previously, especially against a regime that set out to deliberately marginalise fans. How come?
**** knows how Mourinho went from Bobby Robson's translator to winning the champions league with Porto then if you can't be focussed and confident and pass a bit of arrogance onto your team. How do you think Cloughie went from youth team at Sunderland to Hartlepool and eventually Derby and Forest? Think Carrick doesn't have that arrogance? I'd say it was an essential part of the job. First and foremost.
Right. Last summer was about investing, some have worked out, some haven't but ultimately he's raised budgets to give us the best chance he can to be competitive. Those budgets aren't being reduced, it's just we have to move out to move in to avoid falling foul of FFP. Ehab never got close to investing the max permissible under FFP, so it's a new consideration for us - we pretty much went from parachute payments to disinvestment then L1. We are now in the same transfer position to everyone else, but we are a club with a top 10 budget, an up and coming manager, an enthusiastic owner. Window is far from over and it's a new start away at a very difficult opponent with a squad value and wage budget far beyond ours. And all we can do is look for things to gripe about? It's a new season. Anything is still possible.
he’s absolutely bang on, if we lose a close tie or we are in the game not bothered good effort lads, we was absolutely out classed…
absolutely bang on, miles away from where it has been said we should be. If we had a serious gaffer we’d cause issues but in reality it’s work experience and ****e.
Do you know what a slow death over nearly 2 decades feels like? 2 slow and inevitable successive relegations in front of 3.5k on a crumbling lump of concrete, rusting girders, wood, cheap plastic and leaky corrugated steel with relegation out of the EFL entirely as a real possibility? That's even after we'd sold Bunkers to be a Quicksave? Cry like a baby when you have. Just gotta roll with it. Or become a millionaire yourself and do a better job than the other ones you feel you can do better than. It's that simple. Support the club or don't. But it's never been conditional for me.
I can understand some negative comment on yesterday's performance, we certainly were not at our best particularly in the first half, but 2nd half I thought it was a fairly even game, and we did get better. But to start saying we are in for a poor season because of it is rather over the top IMO. On the winning goal, I think the disappointment was that 2 or 3 marginal decisions all went against us, when out of them one could have easily gone our way. Firstly, it was very debatable whether the ball was out and a goal kick. It certainly looked out, but on the Greaves' goal line clearance last season, sometimes the angle can be misleading. I did expect the ref to blow for time after the ball was cleared from the corner, as it was already over the 5 minutes being added, but he allowed play to go on, he could easily have blown for full time when the ball was cleared after the corner. Unfortunately, the player was played onside because it came off I think it was McLoughlin, but again that could have been deemed offside on another day, wrongly, but it happens. However, basically it was very poor defending for their goal, and that is where the fault should lie, rather than blaming any of the above 3 IMO. Norwich looks a good team, and on that showing should be up around the top of the table come the end of the season. Yesterday, the main problem was the midfield IMO, we never got to grips with their movement and energy. In games like that Slater and Seri for me doesn't work, it's okay when we are on the front foot and Slater is going forward, but not when we are under the cosh. Seri looks out of sort and rather laboured, maybe Simon's would have been a better bet yesterday. Also, Tufan just didn't get into the game, maybe it would have been better to change that, bring Traore in centrally and bring Christie on earlier. Traore looked better 2nd half, Vaughan was isolated but never gave up. Vinagre looked rusty, Coyle had a poor first half but a better 2nd. Both Jones and Greaves played okay, but the standout by a long way was Delap. It's the first game of the season away at a tough place to go, and we were seconds away from getting a hard-earned point without playing anywhere near our best, so let's not get too down as there is a long way to go.
Voice of reason . A couple of points re the goal. I’m not sure how long we’d played when they scored? There were ten substitutes in the second half. Is there still a formula for for goals/subs etc, even before we consider injuries, time wasting. Once 5 minutes was give, Ingram was the booked for time wasting. So another 30 secs, which I think is when they scored? I believe refs have been told to get tough with adding time on plus time wasting this season? Secondly, (and I admit I don’t know the offside rule ), someone previously quoted the rule and unless McCloughlin played that ball through intentionally (which he clearly didn’t), then the scorer is offside when it rebounds off him, isn’t he? Add Macca seemingly getting bundled over and then the fact it shouldn’t have been a corner anyway, the ref/ assistant should have had enough doubt between them to just disallow it. I suspect they were massively influenced by 30,000 Norwich fans already celebrating. Terrible decision.
Two concerns/surprises for me yesterday were; How poor Christie was. Is that fitness? Was he involved in preseason? Is he still recovering from his season ending injury? How have Brighton allowed Connolly to be so unfit? He clearly hasn’t been training with them. That can surely only be down to injury (same in as last season?)?
