My hope is that fans and fellow contributors take note of Supers post on the topic of what to expect from the early games of the new season. I've no doubt that by the middle of Sep (at THE latest), we'll have the usual chants of 'Hughton out' etc by the 'glass half empty brigade', but I will defend him whatever the results of the early games. One area of concern I do have is that he really needs to focus on getting good balls into the striker(s), so they can get 'shots on target' and I hope I NEVER have to sit through another game where our tally of 'shots on target' equals ZERO!!!!
Thing is lads we have a difficult series of games at the end of the season, we need to start well and keep going, we've had the whole summer to experiment.
Have I missed something? Which game was that JR? (It's OK, it's just that I'm a masochist. I want the added pleasure of knowing I missed out on it!)
Yes we've been searching, but should Toivonen not sign (or someone else tall and creative), what's plan B? We've known Ricky will likely be our main man since February, and if plan A is "Toivonen", then it currently seems like plan B is to play both Fer and Howson out of position to put someone tall in an advanced position. That's the best plan we've come up with in 6 months to make the most of Ricky? Whilst the window is open I'm happy to see us as a work in progress, but if we line up in October like we did in the first half last night, and play a similar style, then I'm going to be worried. There's no point buying rubbish, and looking for signings like Toivonen, Quagliarella, etc is exciting and an impressive show of ambition. However, should they not come off, then I'd accept a less impressive signing, if they allowed us to make the most of van Wolfswinkel and Fer, who are undoubtedly impressive signings. If we picked up a tall attacking midfielder, even if they aren't as good as Toivonen, then it allows Fer to drop deeper into his more natural role, and stops Ricky being used like a target man. The incoming player may be no better than Howson or Hoolahan, but if their attributes suit the rest of the starting eleven, it still improves the side. Last night first 45: ---------Bunn------------- Whittaker-Martin-Turner-Olsson -------Johnson-Howson------ Snodgrass----Fer-----Redmond -------Van Wolfswinkel-------- Yes no Ruddy or Bassong, but I'd still expect potentially 8 of those players to be first choice next season. I can accept Turner and Johnson are shy of match-practice, but if Ruddy was the only change for the first match of the season, that's fairly near the best we can put out. For sure Ruddy brings a lot, even though (despite a couple of errors) I thought Bunn was ok last night and was much better at playing the ball out short than last season, but our failure to hold possession and create things in the middle of the park cannot be blamed on a goalkeeper. Briefly, I think we saw it for 10 minutes last night, I can't speak for other games. And actually for that ten minutes it looked promising. But if we can't play out from the back (and during that ten minutes Bunn did kick a couple of goal kicks towards Wes and Snodgrass), then I can't see it working with the defence on show last night. And pre-season is all about fitness and trying things, I'm happy to see it, particularly things like the wingers swapping flanks last night was good to see. And no, we've got a month to go, fine, but I'm still disappointed we'd rather play Fer as a pseudo-Toivonen than come up with a proper plan B should we not make any more signings.
Yeah, I agree with this. I'm still behind Hughton, and prepared to give him time, but we need to hit the ground running, not waiting until November to figure out how to use our players properly.
I don't see this being an issue. Pre-season is just a good time to experiment with players and given Fer's physical presence it makes sense that Hughton would try him in a more advanced role a la Fellaini. I'm sure Fer will predominately be used in a deep lying midfield role which will help with our ball retention. I'd imagine Fer would only ever be pushed on into a more advanced role if we are chasing a game late on.
all managers will still be experimenting for the opening month of the season and generally throughout the season too, whether you want them to or not. if we don't win one of our first three games for example, it doesn't mean we are doomed, neither does winning our first three mean we are european contenders.
There were a few games where we didn't register a single shot on goal, from memory Wigan and ManUre away, Fulham and Newcastle at home. Southampton at home was another dire game as well with hardly any goal mouth action. We did at least pick up three points from those games though, looking on the bright side and everything.
dh, you seem to be forgetting that bassong is our key man at the back - he is the man who strings the passes into midfield. likewise, ruddy uses the full backs more than bunn, another way of linking the game and making the play less stretched. as you say, both johnson and turner are short of match fitness, there's going to be teething problems throughout the side, that's just one of those things. until we play competitively on a regular basis nobody, not even hughton, knows if we are where we need to be. i bet this time last season he thought we were in better shape than we would prove to be on opening day... frankly, anybody even contemplating not being behind the manager is barking mad. do you really want a negative air around the football club if we don't get off to a flyer? if that happens then jamie redknapp might be closer to getting his prediction right! we have few worries as it stands - just a few things that need ironing out. if we can't get in the quality we want then there is no point splashing the cash for someone who we don't really need. howson, hoolahan and fer it seems are all able to fulfil that role.
We should at least have a good idea about what works, getting draws against teams we should be getting three points from is not good enough and I don't want to be drawn into a dog fight this time round, I don't want to go into that last run of games needing results to keep up.
the two worst games i've seen in the last two years have been stoke v norwich and blackburn v norwich, both under lambert in 2012. we had shots in both those games but played far worse than we did in the games you mention above. why does it matter if we had a couple of shots in those games but not in others? they were all poor performances but those two were spectacularly bad in terms of quality. by the way, we had plenty of shots in the two home games you mention, we just didn't put enough sustained pressure on, create enough good chances or score. it's almost like a myth is being born that we never have any shots! its the same as people who kept claiming that we were dire and negative in the early games last season. they seem to have forgotten that we absolutely battered qpr, spurs and west ham but on all three occasions the opposing keepers played blinders!!
nobody does, but we are far from being an established premier league side who can be relatively assured of a safe passage through the season. it will still be a battle, we'll still in all likelihood have poor performances, a poor run of games without a win that we'll need to recover from (quicker than last season i hope!)... that's the nature of the premier league unless you're a top, top team. i just hope people expectations haven't been raised too high. the aim will be 40 points and then take it from there
One of my biggest disappointments of the whole of last season was the lack of any kind of warm, welcoming reception for Hootun before the Fulham game on the opening day. I was really expecting, and definitely hoping, that the travelling faithful would break into a rendition of "Chrissy Hootun's green n yella army" or something similar as he led the troops out onto the field for his first game in charge. I was ready for it, but there was nothing even remotely like it. I really hope that after the sterling job he did last year in leading us to a superb 11th place finish that the Barclay End will be ready to sing his name from the off against Everton, that would be fantastic that would
Are you absolutely certain of that, because I'm pretty sure that we didn't - though of course am prepared to be corrected Edit: just did some research and it turns out I was mistaken after all Further edit: my source (BBC) may not actually be correct as it states we had 9 shots in the game against Wigan and I am almsot 100% certain that that's not true
No I'm not one of those basket cases thinking we'll get into Europe, I just want to see us get a foot hold on this league and steadily progress a season a time. We need to be ruthless we were two results and a favour from Swansea from being shown the door, two good performances at the end seemed to have covered up how poor that run was. The new guys are a mass improvement but we need to hit the ground running in my opinion.
this is the key point really. we need to be more ruthless against the sides who are a bit weaker. i think we now have the personnel to be able to do that - i think we probably did last season but the manager didn't have much faith in some of them and we were in a poor run with confidence low. it's difficult to suddenly switch your form back on, no matter who your opponents (luton for example!). our form at the end of the season was actually quite good. we were playing well and won 3 of the final 5 games. even the game we lost to villa was very even and we were ridiculously unlucky to lose. we should try and build on that little run in if possible. i don't think it's essential to hit the ground running - its incredibly rare for a club to do so anyway - but we will need an early win or two on the board, certainly from the opening three games, all of which offer a good chance of three points.
Wigan and Man United both were games we had not a solitary shot on target. Was at Southampton (h) too and we had a freekick and a penalty on target, that was all.
The worst performances in recent memory for me are: (1) away to Sunderland under Lambert when we lost 3-0 (2) *that* match against Luton I do not rate performances based on the number of shots or otherwise, though.
