Reminiscing about the team we had this year and reckoned that this was the first season since then that we had a couple of exciting wingers in the team (obviously not including Andy Welsh, John Oster and Thomas Butler etc). So why are we playing so negative. Quality, tactics, style of play? O'Neil had Downing, Young and Milner at Villa and I am certain they were more attack minded than this? If we had Summerbee in the team would anyone be actually in the box to meet a cross? Now teams are no longer playing 4-4-2 are they just nullifying each other making it a less than exciting premiership or is it just us? I do not go to the home games due to location but have friends and family who do and watch the games where I can. I know people who are refusing to renew season ticket due to the negative style of play. Do we deserve to be where we are (6th bottom)? At this stage of the season it is certainly points over style but just hope we can pick up wins over the next 3 games.
Because we are playing a similar style to the 2005/6 season, and have not moved on... Big Mick mk2, Now we hope that we can turn it around, so nowt's changed....
I think its because we are insistent on playing wingers on the 'wrong' side. The whole thing of cutting in and attacking the box, rather than getting to the byline and whipping a ball into the box. With the wingers we have we cant really do it. If we were to do it, we would have to play Sess on the right thereby nullifying his main talent of getting at defenders. Seb isnt quick enough to play RW. Then we have AJ and Jimmy Mac. Both of whom can play as orthodox wingers but are both left footed. If we had a summerbee type of player we would be much more balanced on the wings. As it stands we just cannot fit the right players into that kind of formation. I think we need to play a diamond in midfield an play quite narrow. Catts should sit just in front of the back 4. Alf and Sess in the midfield with AJ roaming about behind the front two. With a relatively fluid front three of Feltch, AJ and DG we coud be onto something imo. AJ can drift to either wing with support coming from deep with sess and Alf when needed. Catts and Alf would also provie cover for the back four. Thats what I would do anyways.
Fine marra, only one problem at the moment, pissheed Johnson seems to have the pace of a drunken slug....
I have to concede that point. But I suppose sess could do that job with one of Vaughan, Seb, Gards Colback filling in midfield. The great irony is, for once we have too many left footers in the team
Speaking of which...Richardson back for Fulham on Saturday. Its not like ex players always score againt us!
Good job we aren't in Europe. If we played Lyons, Steed would score hat trick. More than he scored for us!
Everybody screamed for MoN to be manager then get angry when he plays a defensive counter game. Why did people want him to be manager? Surely they knew his style of football before he came. after all he was the fans choice. Makes you wonder how little most know about football. What with this and the pro 442 crew I'm just bloody grateful the fans aren't in charge. lots of people moaning about things they know nothing about. anyone can pick fault but some of the solutions are laughable.
that's not a reason to to demand a certain manager. surely you nominate your manager of choice by subscribing to their footballing philosophy? I want him as manager. I love counter attacking football and I have 100% confidence MoN will get it right as time goes by and he moulds his squad so it's truly his own.
By the time i am a pensioner in about 12 years hopefully we might be in europe and i get in at a discount!.
I've been going to watch the lads since the 1974/5 season and in all that time we have been largely absolute ****e. We had brief restbite moments under Knighton slightly and more so Alan Durban, when we almost had started to put together a decent team but then Cowie decided to pull the plug far too early and it fell apart again. We then stumbled along for the next15 years or so, up and down the leagues like a whores knickers until Reid came along. There were 3 seasons during his reign that were without doubt the 3 best I've ever seen for both league position and football played. However, that ended and the years following Reids departure were amongst the worst I've witnessed. 15 point and 19 point seasons and even more relegations to humiliate and embarrass us. Then along came Quinny and his Drumaville lads and a different kind of rollercoaster ride. Keane, Sbragia and Bruce all have come and gone with varying degrees of success and failure but none have played free flowing wonderful football. Pragmatic football is the nature of the beast at this level now and We have had the longest continuous run in the top flight in my lifetime with 6 seasons. I see nothing under Martin to suggest that won't be 7 next season. When I watch EPL football today, outside the likes of spurs, arsenal and at times man Utd and city, I rarely see this exciting, free flowing game some Sunderland fans are saying we are not playing? The biggest myth in football today is that we are somehow getting left behind with a dinosaur manager who plays yesterday football. Mon is totally in touch with what is required to do a job. He is doing it now, rebuilding our club piece by piece, player by player and month by month. It will take 2 or 3 years for his efforts to reap its reward and in that time, pragmatic football will be the order of the day. Grinding out results is the stock trade of EPL quality managers and Mon is definitely that. We have for 40 odd years never been a free flowing, wonderful football team but we have been a yo yo club, relegated and promoted far too many times for any patient fan and yet I don't feel any worry right now as I know in Mon we won't be relegated at all. Top 10 is still our target imo. My point is we now have the right man, at the right time at the right club and imo he is doing all the right things to build a solid platform for our future. I find it staggeringly frustrating to hear some fans moaning and twisting and calling for him to be replaced after only 15 months? Did those fans really think he could reverse 40 miserable years of utter failure inside 15 months? Really? Nothing I have seen or heard in the last 15 months have a changed my opinion of this fantastic manager and given the proper time and real support he will transform this failure of a club into a far, far better one. Have some faith lads and lasses and this man will deliver. I have not one single doubt in my mind.
Spot on mate...As you rightly say, we are currently in our longest stint of top flight football since the 1950's, yet many of our fans do nothing but try and bring the club down..
So a couple of wins difference? Big deal. We are under the guidance of one of the games top managers and we will, if some fickle fans don't **** things up by constantly whinging on, build a strong squad in the next 2 or 3 years under him. These are still early days for us and Martin and we have decade upon decade of failure to overcome. another 2 years wait or so is a mere pebble in the ocean for a club like ours to wait.
