I think the worst part is we’ve actually gone backwards since last season. For all Che’s faults, he held the ball up very well and gave us a focal point. We had Fraser whipping dangerous balls in occasionally. Now we have…. Championship strikers stood out on the touch line with no one to pass it to. Genius, absolutely genius stuff saints
They mentioned it in commentary that when we have the ball Armstrong and Diaz were basically hugging the sidelines and the midfielders were making the runs centrally, which they found odd. When you add that our midfield is Smallbone, Aribo and Downes then it makes it even worse. I guess the plan is for Armstrong and Diaz to stay wide until we get further up the pitch then move in as the full backs overlap, but it’s far too slow and ponderous and we lack quality for that to bother PL level defenders. Last year with the 5 we had the luxury of knowing that Armstrong was a good player at the level and one on one against most defenders he would have a chance. This year nobody is worried about him and will happily leave their defenders one on one with our attackers as the defenders will get the better of them 99 times out of 100. So far it’s what was so unbelievably obvious, we lack quality and Martins style relies on having better quality than the opposition
That’s fine. But explain to me why you think changing manager would be a good move two games into the season, and before the end of the transfer window.
I might argue that ideology here is a big issue. We aren’t good enough to control possession in this league.
Well we’ve controlled possession in our two games so far, we’ve just done nothing with it. His problem is that his options right now are so limited. Perhaps play BBD through the middle. Perhaps a two up top of BBD and Archer. But the reality is that he doesn’t exactly have a plethora of realistic options right now.
My only real worry with Russ is whether he’s going to be brave enough to make the changes that he’ll probably need to do. He has his favourites in the likes of Adarma, Smallbone and Jack. But those are three players I’d be looking to move onto the bench asap, and I don’t know if he’ll do that.
Bit soon to be saying that. He’s played about twenty minutes for us in a team that’s losing and desperate.
We knew it would be tough, I'm sure RM and the players knew it would be tough. I would just like us to spend decent money in getting a quality experienced player in, rather than spending loads of 15m's on players with potential
Need a striker as a focal point, and hopefully RM learns very quickly that he can’t remain loyal to players from last season if they’re not good enough.
So yeah it’s whether or not it can work with this squad. There might not be any style that could keep this team up due to the lack of ability but the possession style definitely won’t imo
We were playing at home against one of the other bottom half teams. We have 5 shots - 1 on target. They had 23 with 8 on target. I know stats aren’t everything but that is pretty awful
Yeah, because we don’t have a striker, and our midfield isn’t good enough. I’d be tempted to put BBD in the middle personally, and have Dibling wide with Adarma, if we don’t have another solution. The hope will be that Les and Fernandes can come in for Will and Aribo.
We already conceded 23 shots today. With 8 on target. That is already way too many. Because we offered no threat the other way. Against better sides more of those 8 go in. If you give the other team nothing to think about then they just pile in To stick with a back 5 we would need at least one better CM instead of Aribo or Smallbone (a more attacking one) and at least one much much better (read: likely outside our budget) player in the front two. Or two much better players to replace both the people playing there (option 2 is even less likely to happen than option 1).
