My problem with Martin a CB is that he has obviously convinced NA that's his position , is he going to be brave enough to tell him to get back to RB get Cuellar or someone else in CB til Benno back? Hopefully just a bad night, we need to get back on front foot again
On reflection, this could be a blessing in disguise. We've been **** six out of the last seven games now, with the exception of Bolton, where we were okay, and up until now we'd been pretty much getting away with it. This is a warning. If Neyul ignores it, he's going to be in trouble. The defence needs a serious reshuffle and we need to start playing coherently as a team. We've got great players but, as much as I hate to say it, there are currently several better teams in this division. Bournemouth are definitely one of those, as are Middlesbrough, and, horribly, so are Ipswich.
Really well said HfM and I hope that this will be the 'wake up call' badly needed by NA and the team. There is NO way we should be losing 4-0 to any team in this division and I can see some fans calling for a change in manager sooner rather than later.
Be careful JR, that´s the sort of arrogance that led many Leeds supporters and their Club into years and years of oblivion - of course we can lose 4- 0 to anyone. When we´re like we were last night it will be the norm rather than the exception.
i am unbelievably frustrated at the moment. i still don't understand why we appointed a novice manager in the summer. surely when you are at your strongest (and we are at our strongest - in terms of the division we are in - both on and off the pitch) you show the rest that you mean business and stamp your authority all over it? instead, we went 'meh'. i'm so, so, so disappointed with how this season is panning out. its possibly more disappointing because the standard of the league is so low and promotion is absolutely begging to be won. we aren't even particularly good to watch - which was adams 'sell' to the board. we are so easy to play against, so predictable; merely keeping the ball for ages in our own half isn't my idea of 'good football'. pick wingers on both flanks! pick our best right back in his correct position! play strikers up front! we are beginning to look like we will do exactly what i was fearful of in the summer and totally blow our best chance of an immediate return to the top flight. last season may have been tedious, and its not fun to watch your team struggle, but at least it was tempered by the fact we got to pit our wits against top class footballers. the same cannot be said of this division. i said after 10 games i didn't think we'd played anything close to our best, even though results were good - and so that was viewed as a positive - but now we are still playing poorly and failing to win. it's not a good combination and shows that the manager isn't getting things right. more worryingly, he is still making the same mistakes as he was at the start of the season - only now, he isn't getting away with them. of course, there is still a long way to go and seasons aren't decided in 16 games, but adams HAS to begin to improve quicker than he is and the players HAVE to start performing to their potential very soon indeed. as a side note, fair play to ipswich. they were total dross when we faced them earlier this season (arguably the worst side we've faced?) but it appears that was an off day. they look far more likely to trouble the top two than we do this season and in all honesty, we should be embarrassed if we finish below them considering the prospective squads at each managers disposal.
I normally hate to make scapegoats of any players but the longer that we persist with both Martin and Whittaker, the more often the 4-0's may happen. They are not alone though, Olsson is well below par and Ruddy? An England shirt? I'm starting to think that even the Norwich one should be taken away. Rudd is a very decent replacement and perhaps Ruddy like others could use a kick up the harris. Against Forest I can see two ways, give the players the rocket they deserve, tell them that their places in the team are far from secure and send out the same team to make ammends or and I know it'll not happen: Rudd Martin Cuellar Turner Garrido Johnson Tettey Redmond Howson Lafferty Jerome We lack options at the moment, honestly when I started the team I thought I'd make more changes but inspite of last night Jerome has done plenty to suggest he should not be dropped, Redmond has been improving, Howson has been decent but needs games. Johnson/Tettey is more hope than expectation, as our early season form had them at the heart of it. Cuellar/Turner lacks pace, but I don't see how we can continue to pick whittaker anywhere and Martin at CB. Adams now has some really searching questions he needs to ask the squad and himself to arrest this slide. 1 win in 7 and a side looking increasingly devoid of ideas and cohesion is starting to look rather worrying. We are close to the top of the table and the season is only just getting started but where others are gaining momentum and improving we are now floundering. Still worried about Adams as a manager, will he have the nouse to turn this round, and soon? Bah!
I've been saying this for weeks - originally being called out for singling out Whittaker as this season's scapegoat, or weakest link (which he clearly is, ffs!) but to quote a certain D McNally, it is 'delinquent' to persevere with a good/decent RB as an average/poor CB, especially when it means there is no alternative to Whittaker at RB. Christ, never mind doing Brighton any favours, but why couldn't we have used Elliot Bennett as a makeshift RB - rather than leaking the horrendous numbers of goals we are doing under the current system? If Adams is indeed true management potential, he'll overrule any agreement he has verbally made with Russell Martin and tell him to play as a right back - or sit and watch from the sidelines. Excellent comments above from Superman and the General
It can be easy to be swayed by one bad performance against a team that was excelling itself, as Boro was last night. Nobody felt like this after the Bolton game, and we started with the same team last night. It was the players playing badly, not the manager. Adams changed to a 4-4-2 before half-time by moving Howson out wide so Lafferty could move into the centre. It didn't work, but it was worth trying. He then brought on Hooper for the second half to play with three strikers and that didn't work, so he brought on Josh to play the 4-4-2 with two wingers. When that didn't work he brought on Grabban for Jerome. What else could he have done FFS! Last season everybody was crying out for attacking play. Now they want more defence. I agree with what Adams did, but the players let him down with a dismal performance. Forest will be the teast of just what this team is made of.
There just has to be a balance Rick, Hughton was over-defensive and over-cautious, but Adams to my mind is far too attack-minded for his own good, especially away, against a team like Boro last night, who´re on a 10 match unbeaten run. Go there, stay tight defensively, frustrate them, hit them once on the break and come away with a 1 - 0 win, would have been a perfect scenario, not to go there and think we could take the game to them.
Actually I said the Bolton performance was pretty piss poor, but great result. The team didn't play well and has seldom played anywhere near its capability this season. There has been an attacking mindset but playing players out of position and without a good shape to allow the creation of "lots of clear cut chances". In turn, this has led to defensive frailties. This is best chance Norwich have to get promoted and I'm concerned that it is being wasted. There is much more that Adams could be doing in creating a team, a playing style, a cohesion etc etc etc
If the defence is to be changed, it should be a left-footed CB to come in, so either Hooiveld or Miquel as they are both left footed to play with the right-footed Turner. I'd also agree with Garrido replacing Olsson, though he must lack match fitness.
Perhaps this isn't the best place to raise this question, but would anybody object trying to get Kyle Naughton back on loan/permanently in January? I think a loan with a view to buy would work for us. He's played with some of our players before from his previous spell (and he possibly knows Bassong too). He is hardly an important player for Spurs and they might even pay a significant part of his wages if they're keen to get rid of him. He could add a lot to our team.
agree with longsight. the bolton game was by no means good. it was a bit better, albeit against a very poor bolton on the night, who actually made many of the mistakes that we ourselves have made. lots of possession in areas of little danger? sounds familiar! and even though we were on cruise control we still nearly gifted the game at the end!! i don't personally see us playing an attacking game. the full backs rarely get in good positions going forwards, which is a shame because both are better going forward than defending. attacks are pedestrian and lack guile. with the personnel at our disposal, we will inevitably create more chances than our opponents more often than not and have the lions share of the ball, far more so than last season, but with all due respect, its almost impossible not to be because the standard of team we are up against is mediocre to say the least. its that extra something that we don't have and that needs to come from the manager by the way he uses his squad and gets them playing. lambert had a style. hughton did too, though many disliked it, but i don't think adams knows what he wants from his team. he's misusing tettey. he's misusing lafferty. he's misusing martin. he's misusing hoolahan. he's using whittaker . he's tactically naive and though he deserves credit in the bank for a number of comebacks earlier in the seasons, the fact we were always chasing games set alarm bells ringing in my head a long time ago. we are wasting this season and that's why people are getting frustrated. this squad should be top two this season and i'm sorry, but i don't see us being in the top two. i'm not seeing top six either. negative? yeah, i feel pretty down because this is such a golden chance to use relegation as a spring board, just as we did with our excursion to league one. i don't see what adams is trying to achieve. there is no plan - simply throw decent players together and see what happens. that's poor management.
Someone questioned Ruddy on Canary Call the other week and Rob Butler jumped down his throat saying Ruddy was "...the best Goalkeeper in the country." Absolute rubbish. We look weaker than a wet paper towel at the back and grimly predictable going forward. I hope we can turn it around but I have severe reservations. We just look far too one dimensional.
I agree about balance RBF (and did last year as well), but how would you achieve it. I don't think both Tettey and Johnson at CM is balanced, but could be used in tough games away from home. I'm just curious why nobody on CPL chose to include Johnson in their line-up. It's just too easy to always blame the manager.
Good point re possession Supers. I don't understand where this obsession with possession for the sake of possession has come from. I think it's weakened the English game all round. There's been so many occasions where the opportunity to get the ball forward has been shunned in favour of a sideways or backwards pass. It drives me absolutely mad. I understand the need to keep the ball, but it has to be to a purpose. Not just for the sake of it.
when lambert was in charge, swansea, kings of pointless possession under rodgers, normally came unstuck against us simply because lambert would press them on the edge of their penalty area. and because they refused to go long, we'd pin them so deep that their passing ended up being between their back four, keeper, and nobody else got involved! we'd inevitably win the ball back high up the pitch and cause havoc. if swansea had just lumped one or two balls over the top we'd have been there for the taking but lambert knew they wouldn't do that because 'possession is king'. now we don't play that way but we do have so much pointless possession against teams who just stick 11 men behind the ball. any team could amass great passing stats when there's no pressure on the ball in their own half, but we still lose the ball a lot when we approach the business end, where our passing, invention and tactical nous isn't good enough.
I´m not so sure it´s only to do with the personnel Rick, Hughton was often criticised for his emphasis being over- defensive, but now we seem to have gone to the other extreme with Adams, where his emphasis is too much on attacking. We´ve got good attacking, and counter attacking players, in Redmond and Josh, and we ought to, amongst our flock, have enough good defenders to keep it tight at the back Last night´s game ought to have been ideal to have done to them what Charlton and Rotherham did to us at home but instead of that we tried to act like the home side, and just played straight into their hands imo. A regards Johnson and the CPL, I know why I didn´t, I felt sure Adams would stick with a winning side, irrespective of there being one or two hairy moments in that game as well.
one other thing, neil adams has now overseen 12 away games in charge of city. four wins, two draws and six defeats isn't a bad return (given three games were in the top flight) but i notice we have only scored in those four victories. that's eight away games where we've failed to register on the vidiprinter. our goal scoring problem remains and is as poor as the goals we've conceded. we've got problems all over the pitch and it suggests that our decent run of results earlier in the season was 'the blip' rather than this current poor run. worrying.
For anyone who enjoys torment, here are the goals from last night's drubbing. [video=youtube;wQSSx1eJmng]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQSSx1eJmng[/video]
