My stance is that Arry needed December to bed in and assess, and was then faced with a very tough January. Undefeated, 3 clean sheets, 1 very meaningful and unexpected away win and 3 hard fought and well deserved draws against the big boys and west ham. He did what he had to do, played it tight, demanded discipline in formation and has installed new belief. Mission 1, accomplished. Mission 2 - win the winnable games. It's time to start dominating and venturing forward with greater numbers. Brixton's earlier post on this thread was depressingly convincing, but I'm going with staying up.
Oh and it's nice to see the name rollercoaster a little more often lately. We're in a nice, respectful stage on here at the moment. Long may it continue.
That's the answer mate. We need to take some risks and start flooding the box, if we don't we won't win.
Not sure why andy would do that bar being swords nay mate, but what you see on that page I directed you to is the answer for the negative feedback
From the fact that you use this particular wording, I infer (correctly?) that you believe we are in NO danger of getting relegated. REALLY? No danger at all?
Tend to get a bit excitable I must admit. Nothing wrong with a bit of passion, I only wish we saw more of it earlier this season from the players.
This league is full of dross, if Harold is the magician we believe, this will be a simple trick for him. Any chance we could confine discussions about 'rep' to the 'rep' thread? Thank you.
My hope is that Townsend may prove to be an attacking outlet that will make the difference. All-in-all the window has resulted in like-for-like changes, so as Brix rightly says, it's hard to see where the goals will come from and that's where Townsend may just provide the edge. I still feel the set-up will be cautious, but we'll get an indication in the next hour or so just which way Harry is taking us...
Taking the "glass half full" viewpoint... Remy passes expectations and gets scoring average of 1.5 per game and we will win more matches than we'll lose. All subjective viewpoint. Few additional goals from Samba too from set plays. Could work... Optimism and hope! Optimism and hope!
Whiskey? Me? Don't really drink Roller. Remember having a tipple of something after Stoke with you after the last home game of last season but it certainly wouldn't have been whiskey mate. As for me betting we get relegated, no way - there'd be no joy in winning that one! All I'm saying is that the window failed to achieve what many, if not most of us have been saying since last summer. We needed two goal scoring strikers and an additional quality CB. All we ended up with were quality replacements for Nelsen and Cisse. As Col suggests, we're an injury or suspension short of possible disaster. Touch wood that doesn't happen. As for Yun, Jenas and Townsend, all unknown quantities (not to mention qualities atm) and none of them earth-shattering prospects for the dogfight ahead. Yun looks good in his YouTube big-up highlights - playing in the Korean league. Jenas is quality but injury prone; and Townsend's a young winger who's only played 5 prem games and rarely scores. Appreciate your optimism but the signs simply anything like as good as we'd hoped for. Not surprising that we failed to attract the kind of reinforcements we needed. Best thing I've heard is Uber's comment re. Wigan having been on the same points for same number of games last year: but they had a goal threat - and survived on winning games playing a well rehearsed experimental 343 system that worked brilliantly for them at the time. Not into the blame game but it certainly isn't 'Arry or even TF's fault. Hughes had the ideal opportunity to balance the squad last summer but ended up with players he couldn't enliven and left us in the deepest hole imaginable. On the bright side, we have some real quality in some departments: Cesar, Onuoha, Samba, Hill, Granero, Taarabt and Remi; and some proven dogfighters in Fabio, Derry, M'bia, Mackie and even SWP. Then there are those prospects who with a bit of luck could become key contributors: Bosingwa (yes EVEN him), Traore, Ben-Haim, Diakite, Park, Jenas, Hoilett, Zamora, Bothroyd and DJ. If we can learn (quickly now) to retain possession with a greatly improved sustained pass and move strategy, and continue to battle energetically all game long, we'll be very hard to beat. If we can start getting players into the box and become more of a threat with our attacking dead ball opportunities (and Samba should be a force to reckon with in this aspect) we must JUST start developing a winning habit. That, my friends, is the best we can hope for here and now. A massive ask but let's hope fortune breaks in our favour. Far too tense to get into frivolous betting about. Too many digits to cross - not to mention bridges!!
Well, we've certainly seen what young Townsend's capable of then! What a player. Hope he can keep that up. Best attacking performance we've seen all season in the second half today. Zamora looked and played a bit more like his old self thank God.
