On why we were so **** yesterday. We all know this squad just isn’t good enough at Championship level, we all know the reasons why but the long and short of it is the squad just isn’t good enough. Therefore, to win games at this level the players really have to be at their best individually and collectively. To be at their best, they need to be tactically perfect and put more effort and focus in than their opponents. Imagine it as if they’re constantly in the red zone when they play well enough to win games. Therefore, after a run of 3 unbeaten and not conceding in those games, the players have had to be near perfect as has Struber. Playing at that level just isn’t sustainable when the fundamentals of the squad isn’t there, and being in the red zone for too long will result in an implosion soon enough. I think that’s what we saw yesterday, they’d been so perfect (relative to their ability) that they were at breaking point and once that first goal went in the whole thing collapsed. Stoke, on the other hand, are the complete opposite of us. They’ve got brilliant players playing well below their capacity, but when they come across a team that’s imploding they’ve got.p the quality to punish you. We can only win games in the red zone, they can win games in any zone as they showed yesterday. There’s no way we’d have beaten ourselves 4-0 yesterday. This squad won’t consistently win games at this level because they’ve got to perform well above themselves to win games. The more they do that, the more it takes out of them and the more likely a shambles like yesterday is to happen.
I see where you're coming from re: the overall quality. We need a team from the twilight zone to keep us up now
Fully agree. As sad as it is cos I’m clutching at straws a bit, I looked back to the Flicker escape season and the Charlton 6-0 home loss. Similar thing, mental exhaustion and collectively being off it. We followed that 6-0 defeat up with a 1-1 versus Derby and they equalised in the 90th minute. After that Charlton game we were 1 point from safety with 4 games left and only won once more with 3 draws. What I’m trying to tell myself is that this is still possible but unlikely and it’s gonna be hard. I think I sort of expected to lose yesterday for the reasons you point out. We haven’t been able to build a good, long run of being competitive. Some of the play yesterday was so far off what the players are capable of and for me it looked more of a mental issue. Same old story about lack of experience, tight marking and decision making. I watched on iFollow but with the Stoke commentary. They thought Stoke were amazing, have turned a corner and were waxing lyrical about being safe etc. Etc. In fact they spent from the 30th minute looking back through the archives at the last hat-trick that a Stoke player scored that confident were they that their player (can’t be arsed remembering his name) would complete his hat-trick yesterday. Let’s hope Leeds bump em back down to earth later this week after we’ve picked up 3 points on Tuesday
I think you make very good point about the mental capacity of the players, they looked mentally shot yesterday. Let’s hope they can pull it back against Luton, I think we need a few changes to freshen things up again.
Agree about changes. New starters for me are Callum Styles and Clarke Odour, and possibly Elliot Simoes. Also would like to see Woodrow playing up front; he's not suited to that deeper role.
It’s the thought you thought they’d learned something then collapse into everything they did wrong in the 17 game winless run that hurts tbh .
It was disheartening but I think you make a good point. Let’s hope we got all our stupid mistakes out of the way and we do re-set on Tuesday. We had the Burton game away last season where we were poor and bounced back. If we go down it wasn’t just because of yesterday. If we stay up, it wouldn’t be unlike us to do it by taking points off Leeds and Forest.
We weren't good enough up until Xmas. Since then, we've turned a corner, and we've been doing well for a club with our budget and players from lower league teams. Here's the league table over the last 20 games. https://www.twtd.co.uk/league-tables/competition:championship/form/matches:20/type:home-and-away/ We are 16th. I think that is the maximum we can achieve with the quality of players we've got. So for us to achieve that, shows something about how well the new manager has done, and how hard the players have tried. Every so often we are going to get a good tonking, just because we'll be found out and most other teams have more quality in general and that can be exacerbated when the other team is big and physical - even in League 1 the men vs boys analogy comes out every so often. We look like a different team when we are playing a Fulham rather than a Stoke. But 20 games is a long time and shows how well we've done since the early days of the season when the team was demolished and thrown together. Obviously, the performance over the whole season is what is going to send us down. But we've been on an upward trajectory for a while now and you can't help but think that we are just going to run out of games - or that's my feeling anyway.
