Nice thread. I really think it is the mental side we are missing more than team selection. Today shows it as you point out. Some of the players just cannot seem to focus for 90 minutes and when they don't we ship goals. We cannot sit them as the squad is too thin. We need a mental coach to get them straightened out.
Definitely the things letting us down is organisation and concentration, not lack of quality. Thankfully that's something which can be resolved, which is why I'm still very hopeful of being able to turn our problems around and improve significantly.
Superb thread, makes good point and contains a mocking undertone to some people. I enjoyed it. Well said Mikey, have some rep.
Been brooding all night. Didn't go to the pub for fear of conciliatory words. A defeat at West Ham is ****. So thanks for such an uplifting post!
Very good, rational, reasoned post. You've even shifted my slightly knee jerk opinion (for the first time) today. I am worried still, yes, but you are currently correct here Mikey.
Some very good points but you need to look at the rest of the season as well. It wasn't just today Adkins has made questiionable tactical decisions, subbing off Lambert and Lallana against manu for instance. Also it wasn't just the short amount of time at the start of the second half that our defence has been at fault, we have seen it countless times this year. I am not trying to argue that Adkins is crap or whatnot, simply stating we have seen todays mistakes far too often this season. Personally, I would love it if people started thinking and speaking logically.
Of course, these are recurring issues and issues that need to be dealt with, but if anything, despite on the face of it looks almost as if it's gotten worse, I think it got better. Taking the game as a whole defensively, we were facing a huge threat in completely unideal circumstances, a fatigued, low-on-confidence player forced out of position, a new keeper in the side and facing a team perfectly set up to expose our weaknesses. But as I've emphasised many times, for 80 minutes of the game our defence was completely dominating, and despite that being undemined by more mistakes, I believe that is cause for optimism. We conceded one due to confusion from our new keeper, two from our player forced out of position, and one from the handball from Fonte. And whilst at first I had no idea what Fonte was doing and was cursing him, after watching it a few times on MoTD I sympathise with him a touch. At first it seemed like he had just punched the ball, and I may be being to kind and he did just that, but after watching it, to me he is clearly fouled by Reid, stumbles, then sees the ball coming in, Carroll is backing into him and up in the air already, he tries to get up and challenge Carroll by trying to give him a push to the shoulder but as he jumps completely misjudges it and ends up punching the ball off of his head. Regardless of that confusing incident, our defence for the majority of the game under terrible circumstances did very well. Adkins has made some very questionable and some outright daft tactical decisions as well, no doubt about that. To this day it still pains me that when we were controlling a game against United well on our way to a win, that we regressed back so pathetically and invited a comeback. He is inexperienced, and decisions like that have shown it. But today I thought actually showed improvement on his part, although again, on face value it doesn't seem that way. In our last away game against Everton, he sent the team out there with the best attacking line-up we had, played our best players from the first minute, didn't shape the team to counter-act Everton's strengths, and we got absolutely slaughtered. That is life. Today we played West Ham, who have nowhere near the technical quality of Everton, but to a team like us so weak down the wings, especially with so many injuries at full-back, and so poor at defending and clearing balls into our box, pose just as big a threat. Because of that, he shaped our team to counter-act West Ham and again, I've bleated on about this many times, but we were so so close to doing exactly that. It was only defensive lapses that let him, down, and you might say that comes down to the coach, but when you look at it, can you really blame him? The first goal was simple, Boruc should have claimed it, that doesn't need to be coached, he's a vastly experienced keeper, there was no disguise or curve on the ball, it was a straight long ball which he should have comfortably dealt with. He didn't, Adkins fault? No. The second goal, some sloppy play due to us being slightly rocked by conceding, then, ends up with Yoshida misjudging a ball, allowing Benayoun in, simple ball across the face of goal and we're 2-0 down. The only thing that can be called into question here is Hooiveld not closing Benayoun down, which you could argue is a coaching issue, but I believe that is still mostly down to us being rocked by that first goal. Clean sheet gone, confidence shot, Benayoun bearing down on goal, does Hooiveld want to rush in, leaving someone free in the middle, or even worse lunging in and conceding another penalty? No, so he ends up stuck in nomansland, shellshocked and too frightened to do anything, and it costs us. Adkins fault? Barely, not much he could have done short of quickly giving the FA a ring, convicing them to impose a timeout rule, calling one and getting the players head's together. Someone on the pitch needed to do that, chiefly probably Lallana, our young and attacking-minded captain, but he's not really going to wrestle control of the defence and sort them out is he? But that's another discussion for a different day. Third goal, unlucky free-kick conceded, another basic ball into the box and Fonte through misfortune or stupidity handballs it. You can't spend hours in training teaching professional footballers not to handball it, that should be built in. But it happens, it happened to us, bugger it but we'll move on. Adkins fault? No. Fourth goal, simple really, a physically and mentally tired Yoshida get's done all ends up by a fresh Maiga, who then shows Fonte the wrong way and finishes beautifully. Only coaching that could be done there is making Fonte know that Maiga is left-footed, but I imagine he did know that and it was just another lapse in concentration in what was a lost cause of a game. Adkins fault? No. Adkins did everything he did to put us in a position to win the game, despite what his starting line-up may have suggested. It was only bad luck and two or three moments of bad individual play that stopped that from happening. And it was the same against Fulham, we were put in a horrible situation with Ramirez and Clyne already injured and then Richardson dropping within 10 minutes. But despite that we were very close to taking a win, despite Fulham having a good second half and controlling a large amount of it. The only thing Adkins did wrong was introduce Chaplow with options like Mayuka and JWP available (Why god, why?!), but again, it was a case of bad luck and poor individual play that cost us. Bad luck with the injuries, rare bits of poor play from Lambert and the rest of the attackers not giving us a more comfortable lead, and then two moments where Lallana switched off and allowed their right-back to set-up their two goals. And again, people might claim that's a coaching issue, but Lallana isn't an idiot and he wasn't unprepared, he knows he has a responsibility, he knows his job, and he just messed up, simple as that. He'll have learned from that, but it was simply just two moments of bad work from him. And then of course there's the two moments of combined bad luck and bad play that were Hooivelds two own goals, well two deflections, one own goal. So basically, I think Adkins in the last two games has done many, many things right, only a couple of things wrong, and so have the team, although slightly less right and slightly more wrong, but that show's lessons learned and reason for optimism and faith for me, and if it weren't for as I've mentioned about 17 times now, a combination of bad luck and mostly uncontrollable instances of substandard play we might very well be 5 points better off, sitting pretty 13th in the table and everyone would be hailing Adkins and rubbishing all those that ever doubted him. And I do believe that because of these signs of improvement, because of the quality that we have shown despite all the negatives, that we can continue to get better, and in 5 or 6 games time, we will be in that situation, Adkins will be a hero again, and we will be in a good position from which we can continue to fight to avoid relegation, and succeed in that battle. Of course, everything could fall to pieces, we could lose a few more games and Adkins could take the brunt of the repercussions and we'll be on the hunt for a new manager to lead us into battle. But I'm not a fortune teller so we'll have to wait and find out, but from my point of view, I think we're not as far off of being a good team and competing well in the division as it may seem from our league position and our results so far this season. I'm sorry for another essay chaps, but as you can see I have a lot to say and I don't like making half-arsed points without fully explaining them and backing them up (Especially the point of us losing a game 4-1 but still having great cause for optimism, that is not a statement that can be taken seriously without great explanation haha), which does lead to me waffling on a touch far too often. And MLsfc, the effort I went into in making my rebuttle to your points was not indicative of how much I disagree with you or me wanting to go to great lengths to show you that you're wrong, as I think you do raise very legitimate concerns, it was just me making a disproportionately long reply because I had a lot of that in my head to say regardless, and you kind of just set me off.
Like SFC92, I too have created a profile in order to totally agree with all that Mikey has said. It's an excellent post, a refreshingly calm and logical appraisal of the game today.
Lots of fine words, but ultimately we shipped 4 more goals and earned no more points, the only statistics that count. Dominating a game for long spells is worthless if the ball's not in the back of the net & for the first 45 we looked gutless in attack. Again.
Almost certainly not, and maybe we should introduce an editor! But there again, it does make a change for someone to develop an argument rather than simply making sound-bite responses. As for the point of this thread .... While it cheered me up last night, and I needed it, in the cold light of day the argument seems to be that we were only crap for 10 minutes (roughly). The problem I have with this is that it only needs us to be crap for 10 minutes to get an absolute stuffing. If we can get that down to only 5 minutes we might only lose 2-0 on this logic. Surely, the key issue is that when we weren't crap we didn't score. This was true against Wigan; it was true when we were cruising at 2-1 against United; it was true when we were 1-0 up on Fulham. The inability of our defenders to keep a clean sheet is worrying, of course. But I am also worried about our inability to create and/or accept chances (J Rod v Everton for example). I'm not down about this, but only because it is only football and if we go down nobody I know is going to suffer any more than a bit of pub banter. I'm not calling for Adkins to go, and I admire the purpose of this thread, but ...
I so want these positive comments to be true. I'm not in despair apart from worrying for Nigel, because I have decided to take each games as it comes. It is so early in the season that we would be unworried if we had managed to hold on to even one of our leads...it's that close! The big concern is team morale...this is where the Leeds game is important...just wish it was this Tuesday.
Yes we need a win to boost morale. Let's hope Spurs have an off day next week. They are strong going forward but I think we can score against them!
In the cold light of day as CH20 puts it, I still think Mikey has made a very good point. The whole thing about the Premier League isn't just that we're facing better players, but that generally speaking, chances to score come more rarely than in the lower leagues and players are coached and coached to be ready to take those chances. Look at the game at Elland Road last season, how many chances did Leeds have? If we had been playing Arsenal or Man City or Everton we would have been buried that day, but Leeds just weren't able to capitalise. OK you say, but West Ham have only just come up like us, but Fat Sam has many many years experience of managing in the Prem, and knows how to get his teams set up to exploit chances. Nigel has two main aims in the next few matches: first of all stop giving so many opportunities to the opposition, and secondly, make more of the chances we get. I know we've only failed to score in one game this season, but we still aren't scoring enough goals when chances arise. We had over 50% possession and a lot more shots than West Ham yesterday but only one goal, which in the context of what was happening the other end, was never going to be enough for a result.
Are you agreeing with me, Chilco? Hangovers don't make for lucid debate, but you seem to be saying that we need to score more when we're on top. Agreed.
Pretty much, we also need to stamp out those "switch-off" periods in games which dogged us much of last season and all of this. The Prem is a clinical, unforgiving place and we need to stay alert for 95 minutes.
