Match Day Thread WBA v Saints. Saturday 3rd Feb 3pm.

If we leave our creative players on the bench, the rest of the season will be painful.
Must win games against our rivals are hard enough but the little pace and talent he's prepared to leave on our bench is frightening. We pay MP top dollar to pick a team out of a hat.

Lemina , boufal, Jwp and Carrillol must start imo

 

Y?

 

The team against Spurs for me, only with Boufal in for Tadic and Carrillo or Gabbi, don't mind which. Then pick it again, if possible for consecutive matches.

 

Yeah I think that's our best team at the moment.
I don't think Davis should be a starter on current form.
Long is most effective when played alongside other attackers so I'd replace him for Carrillo, or play both if Pellegrino loses his timidness and actually goes for an attacking line up.

 

You have to question the judgement of a man that has selected a Forward that has scored only one goal in nearly a year as the lone Striker ten times in the league this season.... I mean, where did he think the goals were going to come from?...

 

I liked the energy, control and commitment of Lemina, Pierre, JWP and Romeu that day, I thought it worked well.

We moved the ball a lot quicker as a team too.

 

I think it was the best midfield performance of the season from us.
Lemina and Pierre were both looking for forward balls which is the opposite to Davis.
JWP has also been playing really well but needs more players in the box to get onto the end of his crosses.
Hopefully Carrillo can be the answer there. Oh and get Austin back fit and playing asap.

 

If you keep moving the ball around in front of your opponents defence, eventually you will pull defenders out of position and create space; so there's nothing at all wrong with keeping possession in your opponents half. The problem for us is that our passing and movement isn't that great, but giving the ball away isn't the answer either.

 

That only works if you move it quickly, have players making forward runs and play first time passes.
Sometimes we do that, just not as often as we should.

 

Well exactly.

I'm just arguing that as a philosophy, I'm not convinced we should abandon possession football, and the patient build up, when we're at St Marys trying to break down stubborn teams. It's possible we do not have the personnel to make it work. Maybe, with Carillo acting as target man and wrecking ball, we do now.

As for Boufal, yes there's a place for him taking defenders on with the ball at his feet, for sure; I wouldn't be building the team around him though.
.

 

when is charlie austoin due back?

 

Has he gone yet?

 

i heard he was back in training

 

We need at least 3 wins to survive, and probably 4. This is unquestionably one of the three matches remaining where we have the highest probability of a win.

Don't play to control. Don't hope to keep things tight for 60 minutes and then nick a winner. Play to win from the opening whistle.

 

In pretty much any other season, I wouldn't mind a cautious approach to this one. Throw another five points onto our tally, and a 0-0 away to WBA is a solid point on the way to survival.

But yes, needs must now. Two points (or worse) from this particular week just won't do. To watch that first 45 minutes yesterday, with the team set up defensively (at home to Brighton!) and with no obvious game plan or philosophy, I actually found slightly heartbreaking. Hitting balls up to Murray on the halfway line might not be attractive or tactic genius, but at least you could see what Brighton were about.

I do think there will be one side who will come out of the traps, somewhat against the norm, on Saturday. Alas, I don't think that side will be us.

 

Draw I recon.

 

Certainly the draw column of the PL table would suggest that.

Another round of matches where nothing happens. Only we move one week closer to the end, with one less winnable game to play...

 

I'm getting to the point now where MP2 still having a job is seriously annoying me. Purely for the fact other managers in the past have been sacked for a lot less and sometimes for no good reason e.g Rowett at Brum. MP2 is a fraud and making a mockery of the high level it takes to manage in the premier league .

 

The starting 11 is almost irrelevant because it will be rendered useless by the ultra cautious nonsense served up from the touchline.

 

Wierdly, the boookies have still got 6 teams they reckon will go down before us. They can`t be wrong, right ????
While I`m still straw clutching, if we`d turned just 3 of our 11 draws into wins, we`d be top half of the table.
And if my uncle had.......