Do we bottle the big games ?

[deipnosophist]

18 years ago??? We last beat Arsenal away 18 effing years ago?! That's outrageous. Given that stat, why was there so much optimism that we would win yesterday? I know I was optimistic but I was ignorant of that statistic. If I had known I would have been more pessimistic....or rather, realistic lol

 

[Allezfan]

wasn't a big game though. not every time the better team loses in football is it considered bottling

Yeah, fair enough. I think that if you take the position that our losses to reading and wigan were big games cos they were cup games and a trophy was on the line then the same goes for fulham.

But you know I agree with you on this. Big games are finals. The kind of pressure that makes you bottle cos you can't cope just doesn't happen in 4th round league cup games. It was just a bad game for us, not helped by a manager who didn't take it seriously.

 

[toffeejack]

Yeah, fair enough. I think that if you take the position that our losses to reading and wigan were big games cos they were cup games then the same goes for fulham.

But you know I agree with you on this. Big games are finals. The kind of pressure that makes you bottle cos you can't cope just doesn't happened in 4th round league cup games. It was just a bad game for us, not helped by a manager who didn't take it seriously.

we definitely bottled the wigan game - it just wan't a big big game. we also bottled the semi vs the RS - that was fairly big being a derby semi final at wembley and we were the form team.

but yeah, losing away at arsenal is not bottling it.

 

[Allezfan]

we definitely bottled the wigan game - it just wan't a big big game. we also bottled the semi vs the RS - that was fairly big being a derby semi final at wembley and we were the form team.

but yeah, losing away at arsenal is not bottling it.

Oh in no ways was arsenal even on the table. We're not as good as Arsenal, bottling only happens to the favorites.

I go back and forth on wigan, I mean we were utterly appalling. It's probably the worst game I've ever been too and I still regret that we didn't just sack Moyes there and then.

But I don't think we were actually under that much pressure. It wasn't that we played that badly because it was a quarter final and we couldn't cope. Those players had won 3 quarter finals before hand.

That's just how we played in cups under Moyes. We were just as likely to lose a 3rd round game as qf, tbh.

I think it goes alongside Fulham as just a bad performance vs a crap side rather than us cracking in the pressure.

 

[deipnosophist]

We always seem to be battling the bottling lol

 

[Allezfan]

And I know I'm being a pedantic git about the terms 'big games' and bottling.

But essentially the question being discussed is given that we win some games and lose others, are the ones we lose the especially important ones? Is our problem not that we're not good enough to win 50 games a season but specifically that we can't cope with the pressure of the important games?

And I think the answer is no. We just tend to lose a certain ammount of games a season. In the fa cup since 1995, when we last won it, we've lost 1 final, 1 semi, 5 quarters, 2 5th rounds, 6 4th rounds and 4 3rd rounds.

If we were a team of bottlers, we'd be excellent in the early rounds but crack under the pressure of the big games so there'd be lots of losses in the finals and semis and few before that. Instead out of 19 seasons, 10 we didn't get past the first two rounds and 9 we did. That, to me, just looks like a not very good team rather than a team that breaks under the pressure.

Incidentally Smith had a much better fa cup record under us than I remember. In 4 seasons here he got us to 3 qfs, which isn't bad.

Under just Moyes, incidentally, it's one final, one semi, one quarter, 2 5th round, 3 4th round and 3 3rd rounds.

Which is why I think he just wasn't very good in the cup rather than actively a bottler. We were likely to lose every game, we didn't get noticeable worse in semis or quarters.

 

[deipnosophist]

I have recently ( a few minutes ago) been informed that we have not won away at Arsenal in 18 years. Today wasn't a bottle, it was following a tradition.

 

[Allezfan]

And given the way cups work, you should be meeting better opponents in the later stages. So even without bottling, you should be worse in quarters than in 3rd round games and under Moyes we were about equally bad in both rounds.

I think it's pretty conclusive that we're just not a very good football team rather than bottlers.

 

[Goat]

And given the way cups work, you should be meeting better opponents in the later stages. So even without bottling, you should be worse in quarters than in 3rd round games and under Moyes we were about equally bad in both rounds.

I think it's pretty conclusive that we're just not a very good football team rather than bottlers.

That seems a fair assessment.

 

[deipnosophist]

And given the way cups work, you should be meeting better opponents in the later stages. So even without bottling, you should be worse in quarters than in 3rd round games and under Moyes we were about equally bad in both rounds.

I think it's pretty conclusive that we're just not a very good football team rather than bottlers.

...we're not as good a football team as 4 or 5 others out there. That is axiomatic

 

[N.S.N.O.]

although we could have played better, i don't think we bottled it today.....we bottled it against Liverpool at wembley a few years ago....and i guess against Wigan last year (although the decision to play Neville in midfield gifted Wigan that game)....

today, for me, was martinez' fault....in the biggest game of the season, he dropped Howard for an inexperienced keeper (mindboggling decision), and had to play an inexperienced centre half because he didn't (1) replace heitinga in January & (2) bought alcaraz in the summer, who was an injury crock at Wigan & has been completely useless to us (why did Martinez expect him to be any different here?).....

we were a top 4 team in January, and instead of strengthening, we let jelavic & heitinga go without replacing them (traore was a replacement for kone, and that was a gamble too as he was already out injured)......

stones might be a good player someday, but he's not ready yet, and shouldn't be playing big games for us...we've ended up being humiliated at anfield, and hammered again today....

 

[deipnosophist]

dropping Howard when Jags was out was mystifying

 

[degsy]

We bottle big games and I reckon it's down to most of the players we have still have Moyes' mentality drilled into them, at the end of the day Martinez might need to just get rid of some players because they're too set in their ways and get new players in to replace them.

i) this.
ii) easier said than done with minimum sponds

 

[MartSlinger]

If this has come about because of the Arsenal game them im afraid you're wrong. We didnt bottle it yesterday, we simply lacked the quality to do anything when we had the ball in good areas. Bottling and Losing are two completely different things. You can lose whilst still playing well, like i said, we were decent yesterday, until the final third. Bottling however is basically admitting defeat before a ball has even been kicked, and i really dont think that happened yesterday, we were in that game until the penalty, so whilst we have bottled it occasionally through the years, we never bottled it yesterday in my opinion.

 

[deipnosophist]

@MartSlinger : and I concur with your opinion, as do a fair few other GOTs