A month ago we saw the best City performance for years, Meyler & Evans were in central mid and both scored excellent goals. Our defence has been superb all season whichever 3 from 5 have played has done well. Quinn and Elmo were a revelation and Koren was playing his bets football since he arrived. We were calling for Meyler & Brady to be signed permanently. Suddenly Meyler is the worst signing we've made, Mcshane @ Bruce are crap, we can't score to save our lives and Bruce is suddenly not such a good manager. Reality check, we are in joint 2nd, have the same squad ( minus Elmo for the time being) that got us there. Admittedly we've lost Aluko but we won 5 games without him before Christmas, players read these forums and they need to know that we are keeping faith so come on get behind the team and stop being so negative !
People need to get a grip, it's like its the end of the ****ing world because we haven't won for a bit. If people thought we were going to go the rest of the season without having a blip then you need to realise what the championship is about. I hate 95% of football fans, they're all so ****ing fickle.
strikers scoring has been a problem all season , its even more noticeable when you consider the chances we get .
It really gets on my tits. We've had an amazing first half of the season, far exceeding expectations, and if we'd been offered play offs at the start of the season we'd have wet ourselves with excitement. If we dont go up so what? We're not a big player at this level, we have no divine right to do well. You would expect Lester, Cardiff, Wolves, Blackburn, Bolton, Boro and about 4 other teams to finish above us so we're doing much better than 'fine'. Lets not forget this is still a hotpotch of 4 manager's teams and Bruce has only been here 8 months or whatever it is. It'll take another good 3 windows to get anywhere near the team he wants.
That's the thing, we were playing well, but still only taking around 15% of our chances every game... Now it's come to January, we still haven't signed a striker and there's only 3 days left of the Window. We're showing this month, that we don't have the firepower necessary to mount a successful assault on the top 2 positions.
I'd rather we had a 'wobble' at this point in the season, and recover from it, than be in/around the playoffs, in the closing stages and then wobble and fade....
Agree with most above. People really do get caught up with themselves. We still have a chance of going up and if we don't, the important thing as I said on a thread last week, is to hold on to Bruce and build a solid foundation that will last not for just 1 EPL season, but a long term solution similar to Stoke
Another point to take into consideration is we have clearly seen from cup games that our back-up is nowhere near the quality required. Would we be better having a bit of consolidation and time to build a squad? If we got promoted it would be no exageration to say we'd need to sign 20 players in 3 months to even stand a chance of staying up. Cue comments about getting promoted and then worrying about it or just accepting fate, getting relegated again and banking the money - both of which arguments have some merit.
Agree with what Fish Out has said, particularly the undeserved flack Meyler has come in for. That being said, I think the loss of Aluko and Elmo has had a very apparent effect on our creativity and our threat. We may well get Elmo back but to maintain what we did before Xmas we need to replace Aluko. He is our top goalscorer and we will not repeat our point scoring post Xmas if we don't sign a replacement. Personally, I think we would be better cutting Campbell adrift now, I'd rather have a hungry, point to prove, Premiership loan striker up front than an expensive, old journeyman; we've been down that road before!
You mean when Aluko was injured and we won all 4 games scoring twice in each of them? It's clear to see, when you look at our results and performances when he has and hasn't played, that this lack of scoring is not down to Aluko being out of the team. I can understand the argument for Elmohamady though. I don't want to keep making this point but it seems to be something very simple that's ignored by most people.
Spot on StrovolosTiger. A point-to-prove premiership loan with option to buy player would be win-win. If he did the business & helped City to promotion, he'd end up likely signing permanently & having guaranteed starts next season or proving to his parent club that more playing time with them is merited. Forget about twilight, last paycheck types (Campbell) who could easily go into comfortable coast mode.
Spot on StrovolosTiger. A point-to-prove premiership loan with option to buy player would be win-win. If he did the business & helped City to promotion, he'd end up likely signing permanently & having guaranteed starts next season or proving to his parent club that more playing time with them is merited. Forget about twilight, last paycheck types (Campbell) who could easily go into comfortable coast mode.
Agreed, Elmo has been by far out most influential player and he is being missed sorely, as recent results prove.
You wonder how he became top scorer then?!?!?!!?? You are misrepresenting the facts with you 4 match winning run stat. 3 of those games were away from home which suits our style of play (counter attacking) far more than at home, and a home game against a Huddersfield side in free-fall and possibly one of the worst sides seen at the KC up to that point. If we are to go up automatically this season WE MUST improve our performances at home where teams come to stop us from playing. To do that we need players with the flare to unlock compact defences, and that is Aluko or his like.
I agree that we need a bit of creativity, but I really don't think Aluko has been on his game since the first couple of months of the season. He was crap just before his first injury when we failed to score in two home games against Palace and Burnley. He then got injured for 4 games which we scored 2 games in every one of, he comes back and we only win (or even score more than once in a match) in one of the next three games. It's not like he got injured and then our form dropped. Our form actually dropped significantly when he came back the first time and hasn't picked up since.
LOOK. Simply ignore the few muppets and idiots who are having a go. So what we lost to Barnsley.? It does not matter. Look at the draw for round 5 ? FFS, MKD away,, No thanks. Waste of time. Glad we shall be playing a home game against Charlton for 3 league points instead.
Elmo makes the real goal scoring chances in a successful 5-3-2 formation. Without him the glaring deficiencies of our strikers are exposed. If we don't get him back or someone as good (unlikely), SB will be forced to abandon the 5-3-2 for another formation which suits our lack of cutting edge. The ideal scenario will be to get Elmo back and at least one proper striker. The fans need to recognise that the engine and most of its parts have worked well this season and they shouldn't be too surprised that it's spluttering now the fuel injector has been removed. However everything City have achieved so far is worthless unless we gain promotion. So the proud back slapping about how far we've come is irrelevant, all that matters is winning the next game and after that the next one.
