I think Peterborough can be congratulated on succeeding Preston as being the supreme performers in the art of 5hithousing. Possibly the least sporting performance I’ve ever witnessed at home. This is not a whinge as we lost, we deserved to get nothing from that game after our second half performance.
Look at the players he improved in the young England set up ! It's amazing what you can do if your tactically astute and a good motivator of players
Been busy today and just seen another awful result, can't be bothered to read the thread. You can off a team!!
This doesn't seem to be such a problem in the Premier League, presumably because the referees deal with it better. They need to issue yellow cards sooner and be prepared to issue a red if it continues. Having said that, I remember a game against West Ham under fat Sam when they took it in turns to get booked - about 8 of them. The real solution is a 60 minute game clock, stopped every time play is stopped or the ball goes out of play.
So angry by today’s performance I think half the team should be offloaded at the end of the season. Keep a few choice players and start again. I predict 12th this season.
My nose is twitching that there is something not right behind the scenes. We've gone from a band of brothers who were sweating blood to grind out wins (and sometimes even play attractive football) to a pub team with no form, no passion and little skill. Why? Relationships? Lost respect for MW? Bad news in one of the families? Owners preparing to sell? Wage cuts? I can't believe it's just the injuries. MW has two weeks to put it right. I don't suppose they'd sack him now but then I don't own a football club!
He said at the start of the season that the aim was to improve on last year's league position, as a bare minimum. Having been in the position we have for most of the season and to see it all fall apart is both shocking and demoralising. With the games we have left to play I honestly don't think we're gonna finish as high as we did last season, the fall off from the end of Afcon to now is incredible and something has gone clearly wrong. I know Warburton wasn't happy with our business in the January transfer window but the ones we did bring in were just downright pathetic in my eyes. There just seems to be a real lack of harmony and inspiration in the team at the moment and barring a miracle upturn in performances we're likely to finish between 10th and 14th. Something has to change in the Summer and I know what I'd be looking to do if I were the owners !
Perhaps we're underestimating the impact of the injuries? Seny alone could well have been worth 4 to maybe even 6 points.
True possibly, but let's not forget Dieng made a few howlers earlier in the season himself like at Brom, although he's by miles our best keeper. I've wondered fir a long time about our training and just exactly what it entails. We've known for ages that Warburton doesn't even do defensive training which has been highlighted by our diabolical defending across his tenure , but to get so many injuries cannot be pure bad luck. To have all 4 wing backs injured earlier in the season and now 4 keepers all out at the same time just seems very puzzling. Yes you can say we've been unlucky but is it more down to whi we've brought in ? Wallace has been a sick note for years, McCallum looks like he's his trainee, how many games had Moses played over the previous 3 seasons and why was no one interested in him ? , Albert will be drawing his pension next season, now is that bad luck, poor recruitment or something wrong with our training methods ? Possibly a mixture of all 3, but now you have keepers out. 1 or maybe 2 at the same time but 4 ! Keepers thst haven't played in a long time, some sporadically and the youngsters who have never played at this level, all very strange or is there something In training that is leading to all of the injuries. The Dykes situation is almost comical, a foot injury that has gone on and on for months , yet even after it first occurred we realised him to play for Scotland and he's been absolutely **** ever since and still has the ongoing injury. Poor management or just bad luck ? We all know the answer. Johansen, without doubt has been carrying some sort of knock for months but has continually been picked until very recently, now Willock has a hamstring injury and looks like he'll be out for a while. Now every club has its injuries, and some are luckier than others with how many added to the still odd case of covid, but there just seems to have been too many with us and one's that just drag on and on. I would love to be able to watch one of our training sessions, I believe it would be truly enlightening to our managers so called tactics and to our lengthy injury list !
I'm not optimistic either. But the fact is looking at the table with 8 games to play, If we could get back to our best we can make top 6. Small things can make big differences. If Gray's header had gone in rather than hitting the inside of the post we'd have been 2 up. If Willock at least is fit to return for the remaining games we could still do it. Also good runs/bad runs tend to go in cycles and aren't we do a good run? But if we go on playing like we did 2nd half yesterday we'll be lucky to finish in the top half.
We brought in some experienced players, and some with previous injury records because it was a way of getting in better quality on a low Budget. We dont have a large one. Obviously it's not always worked, though it has I'd say with Moses and to an extent Field. Some of our injuries are to players who I dont think have suffered many injuries before - Dykes, strong as teak Warburton said, Marshall said his injury last week was his first ever muscle injury. Warburton seems very wary of overloading players too. Training ground pitches poor and causing muscle injuries? I don't know, maybe we have just been just unlucky. If Willock's injury is worse than thought and we won't be seeing him for a while, that just about cuts off what little optimism I had left.
Training pitchs maybe but the awful conditions at Forest resulted in 3 known bad hamstring injuries... Marshall, Willock and a Forest player...and Wallace and Johansen are not fit to play the next game.
Three of the four keepers injured during games, two of them from bad challenges and one saving a penalty. Willock injured from a bad tackle during a game. Sometimes it's just **** luck. Can't see what that's got to do with training methods. Our recruitment policy for a couple of seasons has been bringing in crocks than no-one wants and nursing them back to strength. It works sometimes, and it's within our budget, but it can backfire. I'm not saying everything is rosy, cos it ain't but for a good chunk of this season we've played some great football. I don't know why the wheels have come off but we're not the same team since AFCON and the end of the transfer window.
