Same story every week with him. He's fine as depth but there was a patch of time when people seemed intent on believing he'd develop into a regular starter.
Interesting story Ernie, could have almost come from the pen of Chris Difford who I’m going to see at a very intimate venue in Barnoldswick, Lancashire next month, where we also saw Glenn Tilbrook around the same time this year. One of my all time favourite bands, although it sounds like your thoughts of them will be forever intertwined with that fateful night.
I'm sure our passing stats are superb, Ingram to Jones to Greaves, to Ingram to Coyle, to Greaves to Jones to Ingram ... The views expressed in my posts are not necessarily mine.
That’s a shame I was immediately imagining the type of political and current affairs chat that might happen over a post coital breakfast between Wreckless Eric and Beth Rigby! That’s a successful podcast at the very least, right there.
Neither side had that many chances, Delap looked strong and was our only main threat, Down the middle Connelly apart from a couple of weak shots didn’t do much and Twine was no threat. Philogene was sorely missed and for me would have made the difference. We obviously need a left back but a strong proper centre forward with Delap and Philogene along side him would cause havoc in this league.
Playing our best striker on the right wing, an attacking mid with no pace and mediocre dribbling abilities at left-wing and a box-to-box midfielder as an inverted left-back is criminal. Ironic how certain people on here sneer at other posters about being Football Manager ‘tacticos’ when we have an opinion but today looked like a guy who’s played a lot of FM coaching his first game of real-life professional football. Also, Rosenior is entirely to blame for the left-back situation. He said Vinagre was his first-choice left-back in the summer when we signed him. I expressed my reservations about us signing him based on him playing fewer than 5 games on loan at Everton last season due to his injuries and was shot down and told it didn’t matter. Don’t want to say I told you so… but I told you so. George Cox had a decent trial in pre-season but instead of offering a short-term contract like we’ve done with Connolly and Sharp, we instead signed a Brighton academy player who hasn’t played for us once in a competitive game. Well done, Rosenior.
Sunderland are a decent side, which we already knew, but from our point of view it's just the same old problem again. We can't turn performances into results because our finishing and ability to get shots off is so unbelievably poor. Some of the shots and lack thereof today were absolutely baffling. We still can't keep clean sheets like we did last season, but the finishing is a bigger issue. When you keep missing and missing again you're always going to be prone to a late goal at the other end. We should be putting games to bed before these late sucker punch goals happen. People will fall into the trap of blaming players' positions as usual, and probably the usual 'tempo' ****e as well. But yet again that wasn't a bad performance at all, just a piss-takingly wasteful attacking effort. I can see why we decided to bring in Billy Sharp...
If you thought that wasn’t a bad performance, your bar must be incredibly low. The first half in particular was appalling.
You really do choose when you to believe who is a first choice signing and who isn't. For the record I agree that Vinagre has failed to deliver and we need to address the LB situation immediately but to put the entire blame on him seems a bit rash. The club have a committee that deal with signings and I imagine whilst Rosenior has a valuable input its not entirely on him. We had George Cox in and its been pretty much confirmed had we shifted Fleming earlier we would have signed Cox. Again, I doubt that falls entirely on Rosenior's door. Not every signing will work. We've had a fair few transfer windows prior to Acun's arrival and 1 at the start of his tenure that we are still feeling the pains of. That in part is the reason we have had to play some square pegs in round holes. I agree Rosenior could improve but entire blame? lets be sensible here
You can see why someone like Sharp is being brought in, I agree with that. But if you cannot see how Sunderland were so much better today going forward and playing as a team, then I don’t know what to say. I’m afraid you are ‘falling into the trap’ of believing Rosenior’s post match BS. Read the Sunderland manager’s thoughts for a more accurate view (he has no reason to twist the truth). Or watch the game again. Watch how we are excellent individually, but not as a team. This is why I’m frustrated most games. We are not getting the best out of these players. I think we will look back 5/10 years down the line and think - ‘how did we not go up with this squad?’ (I think we are not far off the team Robertson was in, in terms of quality at this level).
Sunderland were more organised that most teams I've seen come here. I dont agree we were good but I dont think they were so much better either. I think both teams struggled to break each other's defenses down but in moments of chaos when the game opened up was when both saw good chances. It was separated by one moment of quality. Much like our win vs Preston earlier in the year with Philogene. I disagree we dont play well as a team either. I saw against Cardiff and Boro a team that played together and won in different ways. One was by pure dominance and the other was grinding out a victory when they didnt have much business doing. You dont do either by not being a team. What we saw today was a team that for a while has been a couple of key injuries away from being disjointed and finally those injuries happened. Look what happened when Coyle had to go off. I thought he did superbly against Clarke and whilst he was always a threat he didn't get a clear cut chance. Second he goes off injured its a goal. Fact is, squad depth has been our issue. We've been fortunate to manage it better this year than last but now the games have come thick and fast we are seeing the consequences. Today was a painful watch especially the first half. The season is still up for grabs as nobody seems to want take 5th place by the horns and run away with it just yet so lets not overreact one way or another when as always in reality it always lands somewhere in the middle
I've watched our game back and the glaring thing, as I said in the dying moments of the game, is that our players are miles apart. If we want to be doing this death by a thousand passes routine, the players need to watch teams that are actually good at it. For starters, Seri and Morton need to be up and down the park constantly. Morton was, but Seri just isn't mobile enough and it's allowing teams to just walk through our midfield because they aren't being closed down. Out of possession, we need to hunt in packs and close the ball down, not just walk around expecting the opposition to make a mistake or, worse, the defence to deal with it. Our midfield needs to be dynamic and I've said this from Day 1, it's just too slow. For all the flair in the world, Morton doesn't put a tackle in, so having him and Twine and Tufan (who to his credit has started getting stuck in) and Seri means that nobody is trying to win the ball back and we just get mowed through when out of possession. I know Seri is a great footballer, but he just doesn't work in this type of set up. It was like when we had Thudd; if you're playing him as part of a 4-3-3 with him as the sitting midfielder, it's not too bad because there are two other midfielders working alongside him. Play him in a 4-2-3-1 and there's only one other guy to help out. He's a quick passer of the ball and has great vision, which sort of brings me to my next point, which is... When we pass, the ball takes a ****ing age to get to where it's going and that's because the players are far apart. Get them in closer, the ball doesn't have to travel as far and you can press forward much quicker. Even the ball across the defence is slow, I'm surprised there aren't more interceptions from the opposition. Sky Sports recently did a mini documentary of Fabregas coaching at Serie B side Como 1907. They play a very similar style and he outlines exactly how that style of football should be played. Very fast tempo, players confident enough to take on opposition without fear of losing the ball. That's clearly what we're trying to do, we just don't do it quick enough. Sounds kinda nerdy, but something I say to new players on the video game I play (a first person shooter) is that one of the first things you need to learn is "anticipation without hesitation". Don't wait for the opposition to do something, make them do what you want them to do, dictate the game. If you know what your opponent is going to do, you don't need to adjust what you're doing because 99/100 times they'll do the thing they usually do. For me, in January, the left back situation needs sorting out. Either James Furlong isn't good enough, which is baffling because he hasn't been in the U21s AFAIK and he hasn't played for us either, despite us using everybody else we possibly could there, or Liam favours Coyle there. I assumed Coyle/Christie/Greaves played there because we had no other options and it was temporary, but I'm starting to think there's a tactical decision behind it. Forget Vinagre, great player, but if we're serious about promotion, he can't possibly be first choice. Still think Derry Murkin would have been a good signing, but he went to Schalke instead. Ridvan Yilmaz isn't getting much game time at Rangers, get him in.
People say all the same stuff every time we lose. It's just the usual go-to of saying everything's **** and forgetting about everything that happened. If Connolly scores a huge chance in the 46th minute it's a totally different game. I was tearing my hair out in that moment because we've seen it so many times before, and you could sense that people didn't really care because it was the 46th minute and half the crowd were still coming back from the concourse and there was plenty of time for more chances. We often seem to do that in the opening minutes of a half and and then inevitably come to regret it far more than we realise we will do at the time. And then we all log on and pat each other on the back about how **** we are at every aspect of the game and how the positions were all wrong and it's all tippy-tappy, too slow, no plan B and the usual roll call of things to blame. Scoring nil today from the chances we had was pathetic, it's a familiar theme and it was by far the biggest failing in our game both today and across the season.
Let's just go with you're theory for a second and pretend that everything is ok bar us "not scoring". LR has been here over a year now and hasn't sorted it. Even if we forget last season, he's had half of this season to sort it and hasn't ( and if we're honest, isn't looking like sorting it ATM ). How does he/we sort it and what makes you think he suddenly will do after not doing it so far? I'd also love to be wrong, but I have my doubts that Billy sharp is the answer.
Here’s the important thing. I don’t take the result into account when posting my analysis. I was ready to post what I had if we’d won. I think this is the same for a lot of this board. If you believe that people criticise because they want to, then you are mistaken and you have a natural low opinion of other people. As for the ‘goal would make it a different game’ b*llocks, I predicted someone would say this earlier in the thread. Are you going to say this all season when we don’t win?
We will probably have to agree to disagree. I think there a plenty of good options on the bench (Traore, Lokilo, Vaughan) and players on the pitch who I’d replace (e.g. Twine, Seri). We do play well at times, as a team. But in the wrong areas. I think others (e.g. GFAW) are on to something when they say Rosenior is yet to prove himself as a manager who can attack. I agree on Coyle. He was superb. I also agree that Sunderland weren’t much better. They were just as wasteful at times, which is a good job. But we were at home. We should have attacked more.
Positions were all wrong. We had a box-to-box midfielder at left-back, a slow #10 on one wing and a striker on the other wing. It also didn’t work. The midfield was too far away from the back four and the forwards were two far away from the midfield. Most of the game was us passing it between Greaves, Jones and Coyle and then losing it because the midfield weren’t showing for the ball. Our only outlet was to try and get it to Delap and hope he can take on 4 or 5 players hahahaha. I’ve said it before but we are a team that likes to knock the ball around with short passes to make us look like a slick possession team but the reality is we rely on individual brilliance from the likes of Philogene, Delap or Tufan to get us goals. For a possession team, our build-up play is miserable to watch.
