hktoffee
Birds of a feather flock together
Our away form made that up. I blame the home form on the players.
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Dario Terracotta
Player Valuation: £70m
I think he is doing just fine,in an ideal world we would be even higher,but we have lost key players at big moments all season,yes everyone gets them,but we do appear to be cursed in that department,I don't really see what else team/formation/subs wise he could have tried yesterday other than putting his trust in the players out there, ultimately the majority let the manager down.
Walcott. lol
sheedys left foot
Player Valuation: £10m
Yeah he’s doing alright but a manager of his caliber should be able to put out a team from our squad that is capable of at least matching Fulham, Burnley & newcastle in terms of effort, ability and attitude.
Sharpattack
Player Valuation: £35m
I’d say Palace and Brighton have pencilled in those fixtures as bankers.
Jim Hopper
Player Valuation: £40m
He can set them up accordingly to match those teams. He can’t make the players go out there and put in a ground breaking hard working performance.
You’d think being 5 points off 4th place would be all the motivation they needed to put in a solid performance last night but again they bottled it and churned out another gutless display.
Can criticse his motivational skills all you want but we are seeing the same level performances from the same old guard of seasons gone by. Problem doesn’t lie at the managers feet here.
BlueStevie35
Player Valuation: £70m
Palace might, being at Goodison and all but we’re a different beast away
For all the points about how crap the defeats have been, it’s worth pointing out that every defeat we’ve had this season has been by a 1-2 goal margin, it’s also worth pointing out that we haven’t had a big goal glut win since the 4-0 over West Ham in September
Leicester are a fair bit better than us.
Not by far, but they weren't starting from an amazing position either, they just had one stand out attacker.
Since 2018 their recruitment has been spot on and well suited for the Premier League, with quick, energetic players. Since Rodgers came in, they've managed to push themselves on further.
There's a reason they've been outside of the top four for one week in the past two seasons.
Form wise, yes.
But in terms of how we attack, we aren't.
And this is my issue with it at the minute and has been for weeks.
We attack in the same way, every game, and it's bordering on clueless. It relies on one individual piece of skill (ironically from a player we don't have fit atm usually), or a set piece or just a moment like we saw v S'ton. Home or away.
Our away form has been great, but this is where not playing well in any sense other than grinding out results catches up with you.
We have no discernible attacking structure that isn't easily stopped - either home or away. And that's awful.
We've been outshot by the opposition for the last 18 league games.
I don't care about being pragmatic, or defensive. That's fine. But we allow too many efforts on our goal and don't have enough ourselves.
sheedys left foot
Player Valuation: £10m
Therein lies the problem! We shouldn’t be setting up to match teams like them we should be setting up to beat them.
That's a horrifying stat
Jim Hopper
Player Valuation: £40m
I’m sure he did set us up to beat them.
The starting XI suggests he did.
Having a two man attack at home with DCL and Richarlison upfront is as attacking as you’re likely to get.
Having to chose between Iwobi, Gomes, Sigurdsson, Davies & King over who gets in that system with them is the first problem he faced, second is expecting them players to go out and put in the level of performance expected to beat the likes of Burnley at home, something we know they don’t posses.
Given we're sixth with 10 games to go, and Carlo and Brands have both stressed that the target is Europe, it would be a failure.
That list is fine, but Walcott isn't here, and isn't going to be. Sigurdsson - the club love him. Kean isn't here. We know Bernard and Iwobi aren't good enough, we know this version of Gomes isn't offering enough. We've known for two years that we need another right-back. We know Davies' flaws but he's definitely come on this season and Pickford is Pickford and we know we probably need a new goalkeeper.
None of those things are new. The simple fact is that it's too easy to blame the players all the time now and just the players. The state of the squad is down to poor recruitment, imbalanced recruitment. Then, frankly, you have to look at why the manager has overseen a run where we've taken four points from 21 on offer at home.
You can point to no fans, but then that means you can't credit the away form, because realistically we probably don't get as many away wins as we have done if there were fans in those grounds either.
Losses at home to West Ham, Newcastle, Burnley and Fulham - if we'd taken six points from those, we'd be top four. If we'd taken 4 points, we'd be top four, actually. And that is ultimately a failing of the manager as well as the players.
Good post, especially the pointing out of our one dimensional attack. As is repeatedly pointed out on here, our squad is such that we are forced to rely on players with no pace and a lack of football intelligence. Future recruitment needs to pick players who have demonstrated that they can play in the system favoured by our manager(Whatever that is?) That is not to say that a degree of flexibility is not needed. as there will always be occasions when things are not happening in a game and a change of approach is needed
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