polegategavin

Even when Bednarek was culpable for both Newcastle’s goals last night, his usual half hearted attempt at blocking a cross and then a shot for each goal. And the keeper gets the blame for not stopping point blank shots instead 🤪

I’m staggered by the negativity towards our own team on this forum. we have a new manager who will be here until at least the end of the season, why don’t we just support (him and) the team and give them as much energy to go out and do what we all want them to do, win as many games as possible and not be relegated.

Or playing Football Manager! Regardless of being bottom of the league or not we are a fair way down the pecking order when players consider a move to us, and they want to ensure that other options aren’t possible first, leaving us to wait until the end of the transfer window. Moffi was an example, we clearly wanted him but he has received a better option (in his opinion).

And this was solely (if at all) the fault of Nathan Jones?

Except the “pre-season” was 1 match and 5 weeks of training, not the same as a full pre-season. The criticism of Jones is harsh, especially given the time he has actually managed the team. You can’t count the Liverpool game he simply sat and watched it as he had arrived hours before. I feel everyone is frustrated by the lack of new manager bounce, especially given our position in the league, but these things are never guaranteed. I see some positives, and feel we need to allow Jones another month or so to see if the performances improve, as the team selection becomes settled and the players learn the new style. Seems ironic that people are complaining about the style and then saying they’d rather we had appointed Dyche.

Goalkeepers always get the credit for clean sheets, but it is actually teams that earn clean sheets.

I do think Mara has earned the chance to play a few games to show what he can do, and I feel a front 3 of Armstrong (A), Mara and Edozie would be our best, and have been responsible for some of our better attacking performances in the last few weeks. Orsic can come on a sub for whichever has run themselves into the ground during the second half.

I completely agree Chez, in fact in the first half Jones was getting exasperated after about 20 minutes, he called Djenepo over gave him some harsh words, and then had another word with him about 10 minutes later. Other players got frustrated at Djenepo, as he was offering no defensive cover and then not available for a pass. He seems like someone with brain fog and although he can be exciting sometimes, he far too often struggles to do the basics or read the game. With Orsic struggling on the other wing tonight, it was a lot of the reason why we were out fought and played in the first half. His injury was a blessing, and I stated so at the time he was substituted.

Having been a season ticket holder now for more than 15 years, and attending a good percentage of games before that for over 25 years, I’ve seen all standards of keeper. I also played football to National League level, albeit as an outfield player, and IMHO Bazunu is a far better keeper than Gunn was, and I also feel he makes far fewer mistakes than McCarthy did/ would. If we could have afforded a keeper , and attracted them, we would have clearly signed Bazunu as understudy. But some of the vitriol against him, especially when you look back at the abject performances from both McCarthy and Foster in recent history, and now they are being held up as a better option, is unfair in my opinion. Sometimes just because a keeper concedes a higher number of goals they become a bad keeper. I’d like to know the mistakes he has made that have made some fans feel he is so bad?

No we didn’t, it was a clean tackle, he pushed the ball away from the penalty area, if it had been a foul the ball would have continue off the end of the pitch for a goal kick. Fans simply want a scape goat, and Bazunu is it at the moment.

You could flip this around completely. Perhaps Bazunu’s confidence is affected by the abject defending at times. I have been a fan of DCC since he came into the team, but he was completely at fault for the goal on Saturday, as he was marking Watkins and decided to not track back at all and ended up 2 yards behind him. Probably expecting the defence to have held their line, but we seem too inclined to rely on playing the opposition offside and it is being timed well by the opposition. We must have conceded about 8 to 10 goals in the same way, from either a cross, free kick or through ball this season. Why the coaches haven’t changed this approach and simply defend the box as other compact teams do I just don’t know. Everyone seems to be scapegoating Bazunu simply because he is young, and most mistakes he makes results in conceding a goal, but if an outfield player concedes the ball or leaves their runner it still becomes the keepers fault. Lazy supporter attitude I’m afraid. My overall opinion is that the margins between us being successful or not are very small, and given the right support I still feel we can turn things around, butturning on the players won’t help.

I just can’t see how xG determined we had a probability of scoring at less than 1 and Man City had a probability oF more than 1 when the chances in the game were at best similar, and the fact that a lobbed shot and a stroked home shot for our 2 goals did not require anything unusual or exceptional to provide our 2 goals. When the xG for us isn’t somewhere between 1 and 2 in this particular game, I am sceptical about the logic of the analysis.

Exactly! Better explanation than mine. And probably will help Bazunu’s confidence too

I feel DCC is key, as he seems to Marshall the defence and provides more confidence and keeps things calm at the back.

These stats seem contradictory. How can a team that has made so many long passes have 59% of possession and 80% passing accuracy? I wonder what constitutes a long pass for these stats. It is interesting though that West Ham get a reputation of being a long ball team. My perception was that they were a long ball team, however these stats are for the current season, and they have not had Carlton Cole or Andy Carroll playing, and IMHO this means they would have to play a different style. It certainly seemed to me that when Saints played them last season they were using the long ball tactic against us. Maybe this was because Allardyce felt we were weak in this area of defence. I will watch with interest on Sunday, but I wouldn't expect us to be playing the "long ball" very often, I feel we mix it up, and have used the possession game, short passing and move style, and that this has been part of our problem with a lack of goals as we are sometimes trying to be over intricate.

We do seem to be giving Gazza an enormous amount of slack. His performances in the last 2 games alone would have caused us to be spitting blood about Davis or Boruc and could have cost us 6 points but do to the performance of the bulk of our outfield players it did not matter. when the outfield players haven't performed well and Davis or Boruc have been in goal they have taken the brunt of criticism for results. These 2 performances are not isolated for Gazza either. His judgement on crosses is suspect, and his positioning for one on ones has not been great (Taarabt shot last week aside). He does however look like he has the potential to be a good keeper with continual coaching. It does appear that many fans on here are using the superstitious approach that because he has been in goal when we have won, therefore he should stay in goal. It is performances that win games not personnel per say. I for one would have Boruc in goal and give him a run of say 3 games before reviewing, unless he makes some horrendous decisions in a match. We cannot afford to leave anyhing to chance/ superstition. COYS

If you can syncronise your phone to outlook you can use "Fixturebox" and it will provide a full fixture list entry in your calendar, and once you have set it up it will automatically update the fixtures as they change. It will then provide the fixtures for the new season as soon as they are released. Mine was updated on tuesday morning for the Premier League fixtures. Google it if it is of interest.

We saw Morgan walking away from the ground last night (we couldn't believe it either!!) and my nephew called out to him, and he turned around. My nephew then asked him how his injury was and when he'd be back playing, he answered "should be nect week" and gave us a thumbs up.

On the Saints website this morning it quotes him saying "we DIDN'T win the league last year" and then he goes on to say "we want to go one better this year and win the league" It's amazing how different media outlets get different versions of the same interview.

A very tiring and brutal game, with 2 players sent off from either team, and a draw of some kind. We can dream can't we? COYS

This was Ben Watson for Wigan against Stoke, 87th minute penalty. He was brought on as a sub after the penalty was awarded and took and scored the penalty. I do not think it would be worth risking MLT for this, would be very worried if we got a penalty after 5 minutes and had to bring him on for he remainder of the game, in place of ...................

When was the last time we won 12 home games in a row?.................... Records get changed, I don't think the match day and time will have any impact. I also believe that Brum having played in Europe, the travelling etc will mean they are not quite at our pace an we win by the odd goal.

I agree that IMHO Forest were a better quality of opposition, or at least their manager (I know this probably flies in the face of many of our fans!) was tactically astute enough to realise what would cause us problems and set his team up accordingly. Thankfully our class offensively prevailed this time!

Amazing how this game is all about opinions and how they can differ. This was my first game of the season and I took my nephew with me. We both picked Fox out as a good performer. His passing was very assured, and both he and Cork provided an outlet in the first half to collect the short pass from Kelvin. Or moved to drag the Forest players away for Jose or Jos to receive the ball. However, our formation was not right, it was exposed to their wingbacks and we were constantly leaving space between the wide midfield area and the full backs causing both our fullbacks either being dragged too narrow or more commonly too far forward exposing them to the long ball over the top into the corners, where we were continually exposed. A good team stops this at source rather than cutting out all the crosses, as even the bast teams will struggle to prevent the cross every time. NA needs to review our tactic, as it works going forward but exposes us defensively. Whoever had played at full back on saturday would have been criticised as they would have been exposed as described above. It needs sorting as we will not win by scoring more than the opposition every week. It was also Fox's first full game and he will improve as he gels with the team more.

It may be that one of the CB was going to be loaned out and this is now not going to happen.