Match Day Thread Blades vs Town

Agreed SD

 

I thought Nsiala did ok though. He's good at headers and will do well for us in League One.

 

Ipswich Town...the only club that makes players worse!!

 

H

How do we do that?Judge today wasn’t half the player he was six weeks ago.

 

The other thing we seem to do really well is get players injured. I know I & others have brought this up before but it must be something to do with the training / medical facilities at the club. Cant keep complaining about how unlucky we are with injuries, someone at the club needs to look in depth at how & why it’s happening and then do something to fix it

 

For a long time we have all been staying the obvious and it hasn’t changed so are we foolish to ask for it to or expect it to now?

That said it might just be a case of the players not being willing to play through their injuries.

 

1 shot at goal in the closing minutes, disgraceful.

 

We really offered so little and to trot out the guff about playing for pride is just insulting our intelligence (yet again).

 

We’ve been awful for most the season, but the complete lack of fight and continuous defeats since our relegation has been confirmed really concerns me. No fight, no character, no quality, no tactical initiative, barely any shots now, and pitiful attack.

Lambert should be taking more responsibility for this complete collapse. We were awful under Hurst, and he signed a lot of the players who have contributed to this relegation. He left us bottom of the table, but since Lambert has come in, I don’t think we’ve even left the relegation zone. Three wins in 31 games is embarrassing. And some supporters still lap up his press conferences and comments to the media. It’s a joke.

 

If you discount the Leeds and QPR matches when he was a dead man walking then Hurst 'left us' second from bottom and level on points with 21st but we then nosedived. Statistically our chances of survival shrunk rapidly during the opening weeks of Lambert's tenure and although we competed for a while in February and March it's no surprise we fell so far short. But it's not an easy job for anyone to motivate these players when they are relegated, our best defender has left and we literally have one forward. Yesterday was embarrassing and it hurt but I really wouldn't read too much into these last few games and make a judgement based on the rest of it.

 

Bring on August and lets see what magic Evans & Lambert weave at Portman Road in the Summer.
3 months, that's all there is!

 

Cannot wait for that final whistle against Leeds. We have known this has been coming for the best part of six months and now finally we will be able to move on.

 

I know we differ on evaluating Hurst’s time at the club, Hampy, and as one of the early supporters of Hurst, I really hoped that he’d get it right. But hindsight is a wonderful thing, and it is demonstrably evident that Hurst’s signings in the summer are nowhere near good enough for the Championship this season. Not to mention, his constant changes and tactical inconsistencies further damaged the club’s season. Furthermore, reports of widespread dissatisfaction behind the scenes and the plummeting morale in the team was enough to make Evans, usually so reluctant and unwilling to make quick decisions, bite the bullet and sack the manager after several months.

Ultimately, it wasn’t all Hurst’s fault and pinning it all on him would be naive. There has been a lack of investment in this squad for several years now. There is no strategy from above or any attempt to build a footballing philosophy. Evans has a record of poor managerial appointments and, bar sacking Hurst, has typically been too slow to pull the trigger (Keane, Jewell, and Mick should have been sacked before they did). Our short-term, year-to-year survival, whereby we patch the squad up with loans and make do with quick fix freebies preached under Mick, has also contributed to where we are now. Contrast that with what Farke has done at Norwich, or even Wilder with Sheffield United, and we look a joke. We don’t have much in the way of resources, granted, but we squander what we do have and fail to maximise much out of our academy.

It’s all be stated before, in various different ways, but it’s worth repeating just out of sheer disgust and shame. Marcus Evans might look good to the neutral based off a spreadsheet, but his actual running of the club and strategy he has implemented is nothing short of incompetent. He gets a far too easy ride by a staggeringly large percentage of our fanbase.

 

I would urge you to watch the highlights from the opening day - when we were critical of some things - and compare that to our performances now, chalk and cheese. Our early games were littered with goalkeeping errors when not too much else was wrong. Perhaps we had a bad start and panicked. When you look at what Hull and Norwich have gone on to achieve there is definitely a case to answer there.

 

I would avoid applying revisionist history this season, Hampy. I was at that game and thought we looked good for a draw, but we were ultimately lucky to come away with a point having got the last minute equaliser and having to withstand some Blackburn pressure throughout. We played okay against Rotherham, but left there without any points. I agree there were glimpses of potential in that first month, and perhaps if Hurst had stuck to his guns and original philosophy, we might be celebrating another season in the Championship. But there was a reason why he abandoned that philosophy, it wasn’t working for him. Ultimately, he changed ideas so often that nothing worked, but that may actually be an indictment on the lack of quality and versatility in the squad from the outset.

 

Aside from the fact that we don't need an equaliser if it's not for Bart's absolutely howler, you've entirely missed the point there Nuggets - one or either of those games and particularly the Rotherham game could easily have been Town wins and we would not have had so much negativity surrounding the club and Hurst's position if we had got those points on the board early on and I'm sure Hurst would have made different decisions too. Fans panicked, Evans panicked and the end result is where we are now.

 

Ifs and buts, Hampy. By that logic, Edun last minute shot could’ve been a few inches out and hit the post and the game would have finished 1-1. Could have, should have, would have.

 

Right, so then it's not 'demonstrably evident' that Hurst's signings in the summer were nowhere near good enough when we were fine margins away from the other clubs - including Norwich - in the early part of the season is it?

 

Well based on actual, demonstrable results this season, across 45 games, I think it is. Have any of the permanent Hurst signings impressed you this season? They have not adapted in this team, this season. Maybe one of them in a different team would have done better, but seven all in one go?

When you start arguing their possible form in a possible universe, where we get the breaks, I can’t really argue against that, can I?

 

Not one player Hurst signed was good enough for this division, shocking!