Two questions I never thought I would need to ask.

Will DF see out his contract? Should he be given the opportunity?

In the summer he warned us all that the season ahead was fraught with difficulty and dangers. The implicit question was how well the players and the fans would respond to the challenge and whether they could emerge unscarred and unscathed, relegated or not. It never occurred to me that DF himself might prove inadequate to the task, but that is the reality I find myself having to contemplate. Plenty of comments have been made about how the stuffing seems to be being knocked out of the team; but the stuffing seems to have been knocked out of DF too. Not good.

 

Shouldn't you start a new sentence on a different line after a full stop ?

 

Managers rarely quit the club unless they are offered a better opportunity.

Farke has proved he can get a side promoted in his first proper job and is destined for a good career as a top manager.

The board won't sack him as he has had his hands tied financially and brought in tons and tons of TV money that If used wisely will keep us afloat indefinitely.

He is also great at blooding young talent and seems a very nice guy.

So in answer to the question, Yes Farke will see out his contract even if we go down Imho.

 

Yes he should be given the opportunity to continue.

Coaches that get sides promoted from the Championship with hardly any money spent are more rare than rocking horse ****.

If we sacked him we would end up with Rusty Martin .

 

Permission to rename this thread "HOW LONG DO WE GIVE HIM??", please?

I think it's hard to judge Farke on the first half of the season, because how do you separate his input from the injury issues, and the performance of individual players?

In terms of team selection, more often than not the team has picked itself through injuries. And when it hasn't, I've not seen too much criticism of his selections. I've read from someone I trust that the plan this season was 3 CBs away from home, or when we led. Godfrey or Amadou were to be the players who could transition from CB to DM to change the formation on the fly. But we've never had 3 fit CBs to be able to play that way. A lot of other summer recruitment went wrong too. I think the plan this season was to play 3-4-2-1:

Krul
Zimmerman Godfrey Klose
Aarons Trybull Vrancic/Leitner Lewis
Buendia New CAM
Pukki

The new CAM never arrived, but thankfully Cantwell stepped up, whilst the CBs have never been fit and no settled midfield pairing has had a chance to establish itself.


In terms of individuals, other than Cantwell, Pukki and Krul, nobody has looked like they belong at this level from week 1, and even now you'd only say Buendia, Aarons and perhaps Godfrey look good enough. Farke has also had to deal with maddening variation in form, and players who look nowhere near Prem quality. Vrancic, Trybull, Zimmerman and Amadou in that first category, Stiepermann and Onel the second. Plus Leitner having a strop. How much of that is Farke responsible for, and how much is him picking a player who did well last week, to suddenly find then inexplicably off the pace?

As DD says, this is a squad built in the image of Farke, and we know Farke can get this squad out of the championship, and both players and manager will have learned from doing it the first time. Plus there'll be more money available. It's hard to tell whether Farke is still motivating the players in the same way, but the closest parallel I can draw is David Wagner at Huddersfield. They were around the relegation zone with similar criticisms, he left, and they sunk like a stone. And haven't rebuilt since.

For me, Farke is on a B/C grade for this season so far. The late subs are still annoying, and the inability to defend set pieces is infuriating. It's been an achilles heel for two years, bring in a defence coach if we have to! It's clearer a systematic error, which won't be fixed by bringing in another CB. But I don't believe there's another manager the players will respond to in the same way as they do to Farke, and with a 90% chance of relegation regardless of manager, it feels churlish to throw out the best manager to get us back up.

 

I concur

On every point raised.

 

I think Robbie you may be slightly too quick to forget how bad Farke’s first season with us was.

Plenty of us were questioning him then. What I find is that his attitude, comments to the media etc have barely altered at all that first season compared to last and again compared to this - he seems pretty unflappable. I think he’s going nowhere and I don’t think he’s given up faith. The board is looking long term and so it would be silly to give up faith knowing that relegation and re-promotion were strong possibilities anyway.

 

He should and will stay.

In essence this season was never going to be a defining one - we invested in the longer plan last summer and will probably invest in strengthening for the Championship in the current window.

Providing we can keep the nucleus of the class of 18/19 together and build on the success of last season in the next term then DF be allowed to build develop the good work he has fostered thus far.

 

Slovak coming into town. Duda Duda.

Let's hope he is not a clown. Duda, Duda yay

 

Dave's on the morphine again

 

Watford since Pearson arrived, anybody?

 

Wouldn't that be an infringement of KIO's copyright?

 

This from DH above is really interesting:

"I've read from someone I trust that the plan this season was 3 CBs away from home, or when we led. Godfrey or Amadou were to be the players who could transition from CB to DM to change the formation on the fly. But we've never had 3 fit CBs to be able to play that way. A lot of other summer recruitment went wrong too. I think the plan this season was to play 3-4-2-1:

Krul
Zimmerman Godfrey Klose
Aarons Trybull Vrancic/Leitner Lewis
Buendia New CAM
Pukki"

I can remember arguing for a 3 at the back formation early in the season and it could have been different if we had been able to do that. The injuries intervened and we'll never know.

As for DF, I think he'll be with us through the long term plan unless he or SW gets a better offer.

 

If the plan really was to play "3 CBs away from home, or when we led", why have we not seen this on the occasions when suitable players have been available? We may not have had 3 fit CBs at any point, but we have been able to field 2 specialist CBs in the majority of the 22 league matches played (14 on a quick count) while, at the same time, Amadou has been available to make up the three. Furthermore, we know Lewis can slot in at CB in a situation of last resort (we've even seen Tettey there in a couple of matches), so an in-game injury forcing one of the back three off could have been covered. It doesn't seem plausible to me that we haven't at any stage seen a supposedly first-choice plan put into practice, even when the personnel have been available.

 

DF experimented with 3 at the back during the pre-season and talked about it as an option for the PL. He could have used it at Anfield but didn't and we paid the price. I find it strange that we haven't tried it in away matches, given that all of our FBs are well suited to playing as WBs. Instead they played like WBs with 2 at the back and were caught out of position as we conceded time after time. A 3-4-3 formation would be well suited to our abilities on the counter.

 

Given our results, it does seem extraordinary that it hasn't at least been tried; but even more extraordinary if it was the planned away-game strategy from the very start.

 

DF seems to have recently gone instead for 2 at the back with a DM (usually Tettey) dropping back beside the CBs when a FB surges forward. This has helped, but not really solved the problem. It could be that Rupp is seen as a better option holding midfielder when Tettey or Amadou drops back. The tactical analysis shows how ManUtd created overloads to create half spaces and gaps in our beleaguered defence.

https://footballbh.net/2020/01/14/p...ed-vs-norwich-city-tactical-analysis-tactics/

Had we used 3 at the back we could have coped with this better. DF's over optimism becomes a liability at times.

 

The trouble, Rick, is that most often it's not a case of "when a FB surges forward" but "when both FBs surge forward". It's a constant refrain in commentaries, whatever broadcaster you listen to: "Norwich are dangerous when both FBs join the attack, but they're then wide open to the counter". This appears unique to us, since whenever I watch other teams I very rarely see both FBs pushed right forward, not even the best in the league i.e. Liverpool and Man City.

 

IMO you have to remember most of the players & Farke have never competed in the Premier League before, and we also have had an horrific injury list with several key players being out long term. (Zimbo was a massive loss to us before he came back & we have missed Klose nearly all season) We may have won the odd battle, such as Man City, but we've often ended up losing the VAR. Unfortunately we failed to recruit properly in the summer to cover for any injuries, but I believe if we do go down, we will come back up again and thanks to their season's experience in the Premier league this season, if we keep the core of the squad and strengthen properly we will be able to stay up the next time round. Sometimes our performances have also not got the results they have deserved and we have either ended up losing or drawing games we should have won, such as Wolves, Spurs, Palace, Arsenal.