I do agree in principle Tintin, but again, regarding the part in bold, you can't say that - there's every chance he could have been bloody terrible in training, or tried to shag Koeman's wife for all we know. In which case there's every excuse. That side comes down to whether you trust the manager or not.
Agreed. As we said before, perhaps he *will* now bring back the likes of Reed and Ramirez to the fold, as much to shake things up as anything.
I wonder how much he means in team selection, and how much he means in terms of how we're running the show financially.... Suspect it's the former, but....
I just simply can't understand why Ramirez would play 10 minutes off the bench, make a big impact (got us a point with the assist) and never play again. Same for Reed not playing after how good he was last season.
I'm with you. I don't either. But that's the point. We don't know. I don't think we can say it's because anyone is being treated 'unfairly'. But let's see what happens.
Pelle needs to be rested, but we have no back up. So the guy plays with a injured knee and plays crap.
I'm at a loss, I guess. I think most of the suggestions (some more accusations than suggestions) for changes are bad ideas. Romeu was really not that good against Palace. Targett didn't look any better than Cedric does now at the start of the season. At least Cedric offers something going forward. JWP has been tried time and again, and while he's not a bad player he hardly looks like a guy who can change a side's fortune. If Pelle is hurt, play Long for a couple of games. Not that I think Long is that great, but he's at least competent and it gives a chance for Pelle to get healthy. But that's really not going to change much either. I feel like there's just a lot of knee-jerk/panic going on. But I don't really have an answer myself, so can't criticize. This is just one of those situations where you have to trust that Koeman knows what is going on and can fix it. Give the players some confidence and make 1 or 2 critical changes in terms of tactics or players. We have more than enough talent not to be in a relegation struggle. And we should be playing better than we are. Whatever's going on, it's not because the wrong players are on the pitch, it's because the players are not playing up to their ability. Whichever players are on the pitch. As supporters, we are not privvy to what might be going on behind the scenes, and most of us get all our tactical knowledge from FIFA or Football Manager. So the suggestions we make are just random shuffles.
Bear with me on this diversion: P G Wodehouse wrote in The Mating Season: "I am told by those who know that there are six varieties of hangover — the Broken Compass, the Sewing Machine, the Comet, the Atomic, the Cement Mixer and the Gremlin Boogie, and his manner suggested that he had got them all." I passed a merry ten hours yesterday drinking cocktails at a rather foolish rate and today those words could have applied to me. My last visit to shout at Ralph down the big white telephone was at 1:55, impressive given that we have to leave the house at 2pm to get to the game. I fell over walking up the stairs on the bus and later as I shambled up the steps of St Marys. I spent a fair proportion of the game trying not to fall over or vomit down the back of my friends in the row in front of me. I paid someone to get me a drink at half time. I hope you are getting a full clear impression of the portrait of misery that I was. I genuinely thought the game was worse than the hangover. Awful, simply awful. I'm going to bed. Vin
So absolutely no different to almost every game we have played since the international break. Leicester, Bournemouth, Liverpool, Villa, today. I simply cannot explain it, but it is becoming a massive, massive issue (particularly because since the Bournemouth game, we've not been getting goals in the bank before losing our way). I'd be very pleased to see a new centre back for Fonte, because for me he's generally been poor for a quite a while now. Different story with VVD though, today was just a rare bad game for him (but of course it had to come in the game when Toby made his return to St Marys. Oh, how I miss Toby).
I just wrote a gert big post on my take on the situation. Then I took a big deep breath and deleted it. It's a load of crap which I can't change and whinging about it isn't gonna make any difference. It is now time for the players, coaching-staff and club management to show their 'stuff'. Then next month will show what we as a club are made of - and the fans can do zero about it except watch and cheer or moan or whatever it is that gets them through the games. I think as a club we are currently made of blancmange, as I have said many times before when is the last time we were actually trailing by a goal at half-time and won a game? It is probably the MK game where were 1-0 down at half-time and 2-0 down early in the second half - and that was in League One. We don't seem the have the bottle as an organisation let alone team.
I totally agree with Ron calling us "too nice". I have been saying, on various forums, that we need to take players out, on the halfway line, when being caught on the break. Not nice, but it happens to us, so I have no qualms about us doing it. Never seen him so angry.
