Fair enough. I think you’re right there. Without the previous four horrendous performances, this one wouldn’t seem so bad. But to me it’s just more evidence that Martin is well out of his depth
Completely agree - also, did Rotherham only play 1 or 2 games in 8 days, or is this pretty much the same level of game frequency for everyone? 2nd half RM should have been screaming at his payers to get them to move the ball quicker and play past their press, was pretty basic stuff. But know, we have to be far more cleaver than that, and stick to our principles and fart around so our possessions stats look good. We simply have to find other ways of playing, or we are going to be stuck in this division for a long time. I never wanted RM to start with, and don’t see the point in keeping him. If the club/SR can’t see even if we got promoted we would be destroyed in the EPL playing this way, then we have a bigger issue, as to continue this madness doesn’t appear to promote a sustainable approach.
It’s crazy. We sign a manager with no history of success, sell all of our best players and replace them with utter dross like Holgate & Fraser, and then people are surprised when the home fans are unhappy when we look awful against the worst team in the league.
Yes. As much as I want it to work, Not confident that Russball would work in the Prem. Not worth worrying about that now though I guess.
They didn't 'work us out'. They were getting absolutely battered, so they went all out ultra-defensive, and their keeper played an absolute blinder. That isn't working a team out ffs.
The point is that the game is going to get progressively slower and slower over the 90 minutes, seeing as - yes, both teams - had played 3 games in a week. That massively favours the defending team.
It took a 'big' club like Forest, 19 managers to get back to EPL, there is a magic formula that doesn't just include the manager. Have we got it right first time with RM? I don't know. There are signs where we are really good and times we are poor. It's all about RM getting that consistency. I think that consistency starts with keeping the manager when we are only 1 point off the play offs. As for him managing in the EPL, that is a whole different question that we may or may not ever know the answer
We can’t just keep chopping and changing managers like mad bastards, hoping to jammily land upon the solution. We keep saying that it’s madness to choose a manager with no record of success, but that’s exactly what Leicester did with Maresca, and they’ve been fortunate that it’s worked out for them. It could quite easily have gone the other way. Now do we chop and change like Watford or Forest and hope we land on the “next big thing”? No, that’s insane. It confuses the hell out of the players, let alone everyone else. We need to be patient and see how things develop. Now it might not work out with RM, but it’s way too early to be making those kind of calls just yet. At least this side of the new year. Yes, we could get Warnock or someone like that, who “knows the league”, but we’d be straight back down the other side, and we’d hate our football. Believe it or not, the club are thinking in terms of long term planning here, and giving the club an identity.
It massively favours no one in my opinion, not if, as most the teams in this league appear to have, we had a manager who could change things tactically. The game was easy to quicken up in the 2nd half once they pressed as we could have played round/over their press and countered quicker. **** me, we have some of the fastest players in the league! I honestly don’t buy this whole we were tired stuff, in theory we should have better players to come in and freshen up. I’m sure Rotherham would have been well pissed off if they turned to their bench and only had players like Edozie, Fraser, Mara, Aribo, and others. The manager sets the team up to play in the way he wants them to play, if that isn’t providing great performance and results, then that is down to the manager. And btw, he may get us into the playoffs, and promoted, but I sure wouldn’t want RM in charge in the EPL, as history suggests rather strongly he would play the same way. I seriously doubt we would win more than 4 games all season playing that way, so therefore what is the point in continuing with him - like SR have stated their aim is to get promoted - correct? If so, if SR can’t see RM has pretty much 1 way of playing that even Rotherham could not only work out how to counter, but achieve it (and they finished the game the more likely to win it), then I’m not sure i want SR to continue to be custodians of our club.
RAWMOK and Laces I'm still undecided whether RM is a good manager or not, but consistency is the key. Plenty of average managers have gotten teams promoted from this division. We will improve the more the team simply plays together. RM seems willing to adapt and change his playing style, and he is clearly learning on the job. What's more the players like him. We need to build a team first and foremost. A semi-successful one would be a good start because you don't just build a successful team overnight after a season like we had last year. If we reach the playoffs and, say, fail to win them, I'm confident we will mount a very good challenge again next year, because we will have more unity and consistency. Also, Burnley at this point last season only had one more point than we do now.
Oh i completely agree about not chopping and changing manager - but the Q is why are we getting it so wrong, so often?
I commented early in the second half that Rotherham had pushed up and was genuinely hoping that we would be pinging balls into the space for Sulemana and Adarma to get on the end of, so taking them both off at the same time, without really trying to hit long balls, at the right time, was a disappointment for me. Getting back to the start of the second half, yes Rotherham pushing up kind of took us by surprise, making us resort to the tippy tappy stuff, but I thought we were turning it around and pushing them back, until the substitutions knocked the momentum out of us. I’m just going to file this result in my “FFS” folder and move on.
I think we got it wrong, properly wrong, once with the appointment of NJ. Yes, with hindsight, Ralph should have gone in the summer. Selles was just a shot to nothing. The NJ experiment was what ruined us.
Whether the 3 games is important or not, I said at half time and only one up that tiredness would affect our quality more than their effort and even up the game and so it did
Don't think tiredness was an issue as both teams played in midweek. The walking pace for 30mins. after halftime was solely down to RM. Also Rotherham had a lot of first teamers out for this game, whereas we fielded our 'strongest' side.
We did rip Leeds to pieces in the first half last week but since then we have actually looked pretty unimpressive. The keeper played out of his skin is a cop out. To beat Leeds we needed exceptional finishing. By all the other match stats we weren’t dominant at all. At the time I defended us because this game is about taking your chances. Against Stoke we were very poor in a very poor match. You can’t judge much from that but I was pleased we had learned to grind out results when not playing well. Yesterday we neither took our chances nor ground out a result. Keepers can’t have worldies if you put the ball out of their reach. This was a team without a single away point who conceded nearly three goals a game on average. We dominated them more impressively than anybody else has - yet are the only team to fail to beat them. That is the issue many of us have with this system. At the moment the decisive, effective moments of play are coming when we don’t play like a Martin side, and as soon as we find ourselves playing that style we become totally blunt and ineffective.
I just don’t believe all the excuses and bluster. The club stated before the season that promotion is their aim. Drawing and looking poor against the poorest side in the division simply isn’t good enough. We know what a strong promotion winning team looks like in this league and Martin isn’t delivering one so far. Which to be honest with the resources and players is poor. Was hoping for a better more fun season this year after relegation, but again every game is so frusstrating as we simply don’t do the basics well. We are risk averse and play boring, dull pointless football instead of going for teams. It’s rubbish
