Just to support the mods, I have been banned from several threads, warned repeatedly in private messages, but I usually know where the limit is…
*181 minutes. Plus three appearances in the cup, totalling another 120 mins. So 300 mins, or over three full games. Still not a lot, granted, but he has done nothing at all of any note. If Archer went three games barely touching the ball, we’d be calling for him to be dropped.
But Archer has gone 3 games several times doing nothing. His first game against Forest he looked awful. Many, many players have started poorly. It happens. As people are rightly saying, he is getting the brunt because he is the wrong signing. We needed someone ready who would get straight into it. That doesn’t mean he is ****. The first couple of appearances he looked ok but missed decent chances. The last couple he has looked much worse. My point is that confidence matters for that, and it is the supporters’ job to support. The Derby support - and maybe this was where the mics were positioned - sounded dreadful. Manning was appalling, yet here we are fixating on some kid who played a bit part.
Manning had a bad game, and was stupid for their goal. But before yesterday he has been one of our better players, scored twice and assisted a couple. He’s earned himself a bad performance. Also, he’s played practically every minute since Wellington got injured. And Manning received a lot of criticism in his first season.
I thought everyone had a decent game against Utd. If it was below par for him, then it wasn’t that noticeable.
Loads of people wrote Archer off really quickly too and a good chunk of people at games seem to dislike him quite a lot. In fact there was someone stood near me at Bramall Lane who moaned like **** when he came on and said "I'd much prefer to see Downs". Manning got absolutely loads of stick from very early on too from the second game vs. Norwich. The support at Derby was decent enough for an hour ish I thought but poor towards the end. Everyone became very downbeat after Stewart came off imo. Could probably break it into 3 sections actually: Up until Stewart injury - 7/10 From Stewart injury to about an hour - 4-5/10 Last 30ish minutes - 2/10 Not great but certainly not dreadful. As I said on Saturday it's one of the better away ends of the season which shows just how poor we mostly are now.
Everything I read about how useless our forwards were, I am transported back to my youth when I grew up with Ted MacDougall and Phil Boyer , a partnership which captured by imagination as a kid. They seemed to form a freewheeling partnership where goals came easy. Our current strike force seems well off the pace but I do think that Fraser and Armstrong have been good. Stewart seems to be better when playing away and I was hoping he woukd come good. Not sure why Robinson is excluded but I just feel that Archer and Downs will never provide the solution. We seem to have issues with forwards. I was never that enthused by Che Adams yet I do recognise those fans discussed in here who have been critical of players like Long and Redmond who never got the credit they deserved. There have been too many youngsters brought in for their potential when the club could do with a few old hands like MacDougall and Boyer to fund the back of the net.
Steve Moran, Danny Wallace, Alan Shearer, Matt LeTiss, Theo Walcott, AOC, we have a history of blooding these players. It's a bit worrying when a kid who has actually produced good performances (J-Rob) gets left out completely.
