The most disappointing thing for me is the indiscipline. Mowatt going to ground for the penalty and inviting the player to fall over him. Halme's stupid booking when the player was going nowhere. Diaby chasing the ball about like it's a balloon, abandoning his position time and time again. The total lack of any sort of formation in the second half. Yes, it afforded us more opportunity to score, but by far the more likely outcome was the opposition getting a sack full. Fortunately Stoke were crap. I would have fancied a good League 1 team to get double figures against our style of play. We scored in the 47th minute, we were back in the game after an abysmal first half, but we committed suicide. I've genuinely seen under 8 teams better drilled. As much as there are problems stemming from the policies of the owners, that today just isn't good enough. And yes they worked hard, but they must know if everyone is pushed forward and we've left just one back to cover three opponents, the chances are we're going to concede not score.
And it's all caused by our owners removing all experience from the club and spending (so they say) 95% of our money on toddlers who collectively are not ready to wipe their own arses nevermind play championship football. Only people to blame are our board.
You are spot on with that, tactically it was ***** they dominated before collins gave them a goal, and then mowatt gave the pen away. Worst 1st half I've seen for a long long time.
Root cause of how bad we are yes - but that display showed an all time high level of tactical ineptitude as well. We know the squad is woeful - there is no excusing that ‘performance’ though. It will hopefully force the board into not giving Murray the job. The players might enjoy his training but if he is the answer I shudder to think what the question is.
Isn't it time that we had a go at trying to grind out a result with a defensive formation. Trying to play attacking football is not working in terms of results. I know what experience we have is with going forward but what have we got to lose if we try a differnct approach for a while.
Dont forget being put behind the 8 ball on 8 mins, lets make a hard game a bit more difficult. By the way is Doogs still out there trying to complete a pass.
How can you be that bad at passing and still be a professional footballer, I don't understand. My only worthwhile contribution of the afternoon after Dougall launched another easy pass into the stand.
Not sure about the ‘attacking’ bit to be honest. I left at half-time, but I certainly don’t remember us attacking much in the first half. Or perhaps you mean we try to but just aren’t good enough?
This is what pisses me off. You can shore up even the leakiest, technically poor defenses with some good coaching and a bit of organization. It just hasn't happened this season though for some reason, and I am including DS in with the criticism. Murray's failure to get the defensive unit more organized has probably dictated(or at least influenced) the type of manager we now need to keep us up. We are now looking at a firefighter type that can **** off any hope of playing attractive football in the hope of simply making us hard to beat and grind out results.
We did attack in the second half, but it was suicide football. Think of the space we gave to Preston and Brentford and multiply it by the defending against Luton and you're still not close. Stoke just not good enough to take full advantage.
Haven’t seen today’s results but I heard a stat after last weekends games, sheff Utd and Leicester had conceded the least goals in the premier league, that’s what’s got Utd as high as they are, solid foundations. our entire defence is a liability from open play when we have the ball due to individual errors, open play when we haven’t got the ball due to a complete lack of organisation or awareness and we’re also likely to concede at set pieces.
Dunt get me started on Jacob Brown. When they were attacking in the final third down our right, he’s still on the left wing thinking he’s a forward. No positional sense whatsoever I’ve got no idea why he’s playing left wing back. Feel sorry for the lad cos it’s not his fault he’s moved up a level and being played in completely the wrong position. This defence is a recipe for disaster as soon as we lose the ball.
No he passed one into net and I know he meant to miss but he miss hit it. Doogs was far worse than Mcgeehan today IMO but then we are talking small margins.
I agree, you can usually rely on Mowatt but today wasn`t one of em. A day when we needed most of them on top of their game and none were.