You're right in a lot of what you said, but on the balance of fairness, yes pandur saved us in some games but there's also a fair few games that we should have picked up points if it wasn't for players missing sitters or gifting goals with awful individual errors. So it works both ways
Stuart Elliot would have moved faster than Kamara at the end - shame he didn't bring his boots with him
I thought the same at the time as we were never going to score. It was about trying to hang on for the point.
There you go again. Read my post. I literally said his biggest issue was that he failed to adapt tactically when he realised the players he had been lumbered with were appalling. If he was a tactical genius he would be still in a job as he would have done what selles has done and resorted to long balls and using donkeys to run around a lot in the middle of the park. The way we lose matches under Selles and the way we lost under Tim are similar. One moment of weakness, softness, a mistake. And that is down to the majority of the group being out of their depth. It's a pointless conversation but many of the points we dropped under Tim were by single goals or sloppy draws. The exact same thing Selles is finding. We don't have the mental toughness in our team to see games through. It's a huge issue.
Agreed but in the three games mentioned as “great” we would have been at least 3 possibly 4 (Stoke) down if not for Pandur & that’s before we even had a sniff of a goal. We were far from great. The 3 wins in a week were just masking Walter’s ineptitude. Some of our finishing has been abysmal, a lot not even forcing a save. We certainly look more steady under Selles & there’s signs of a little confidence sneaking back in to some players. Hopefully that will start to show in the “goals for” stats
I think one interesting thing about the whole sorry season is that, although we languish in the relegation zone and are likely candidates for relegation we've only really been battered in one game. You might be correct about a lack of mental toughness but if so, the problem is exacerbated by a chronic inability to score goals. Right from the off its been obvious that not signing a proven, quality goalscorer or two was going to cripple us, a situation which only highlights the problems when you try to rely on the likes of Slater to fill the goalscoring gap. It's been said before but Pedro wouldn't be here if his legs hadn't gone, Burstow may get there but his season at Sunderland should have given a bigger warning than it appears to have done and Bedia was just a poor signing. Simply not at this standard. We need to address this immediately. If we don't then any others signings are going to be in vain.
Bedia should be nowhere near the match day squad. Offers absolutely nothing. Just shuffled side to side around the centre circle from the moment he came on.
You're right. Even under the big bad wolf from Germany we hardly ever looked like we were unable to compete. Norwich is the one game I remember, he got that totally wrong and played into their hands. In the majority of the rest we were in the game and it was an error or dumb piece of play that cost us. The fact its still happening now under Selles shows that we have a group of players who are soft. When Coyle is your captain you know you're in trouble.
Boro have shown how you build a good squad at this level. Pick off the best players from sides who are near the bottom. Azaz - Plymouth Barlaser - Rotherham Burgzorg - Huddersfield Simple, cheap-ish deals of proven players in lesser sides.
You get my gist. It’s probably a 12 Pandur Drameh/Giles Maka Jones Coyle Alzate Puerta Slater Burstow Pedro Kamara/Longman The middle 8 players are pretty much running themselves into the ground every game ATM for us to compete.
I can't work out if you're being serious or not but presuming you are why don't you compare the squad like for like. The answer is in there. Its easy to be captain when your centre half is Jacob Greaves and you have the best attacking line up in the league. Captains are supposed to be leaders of men. If you know anything about him he certainly ain't the man you want in front of you going into battle. Maybe his brother but not him. Nice lad to send on community projects but on field captain, not a chance.
I used to get embarrassed by people constantly talking about Ash but when we are as soft and as poor as we are right now it's impossible not to crave for a leader like him.
