gecko

The Utd game this Saturday? or the away fixture in Jan? ;-)

Surely this is the perfect opportunity to make use Goztepe. It solves three problems in my mind: 1. It strengthen them massively. He's already proven he's more than capable in the Turkish league 2. It gets him off our wage bill 3. And obviously most importantly, it sticks both fingers up at Trabzonspor for being such smug twats, by not only not giving them the player for cheap, but by actively loaning to a club they'll play against this season.

Not to sound too pedantic, but surely an "understudy" would be someone that is: young, inexperienced etc. Tell me why a 19y/o Shea Charles, who has come from one of the best academies in the world and was already capped internationally, isn't a good fit for a Downes understudy on paper? My issue with him, was him being shoe-horned into CD at the start of the season, making numerous match-losing cock-ups. Once he was actually playing midfield I'd say he was far less concerning - ignoring our horrible results w/o Downes - for a youngster who is likely to get much better with a guy like Downes now in the team.

I'm sure it's already been noted by others, but one of the many things that really grinds my gears about Martin is his (apparent) inability to adapt his game plan for the team we're playing. Every team has a weak point, and ours seems to be exploited with regularity. But it never seems like we know anyone else's - we just continue to knock the ball around a bit, then recycle it. We were terrible last night, and I'd suggest that like many other games, we looked piss-poor because Leicester made us look that way. Their press, and the way they counter, is what did all the damage - it's been clear to everyone that we are a bunch of fluffers when put under some actual pressure near the back. The Liecester coaches, as well as many other teams much worse than them (bristol etc) have taken points from us as a result.

It was peak Saints to claw our way back from a massive deficit only a month ago, to within touching distance of the autos, only to piss it all down the toilet on the easiest game of our final four. My bet on how this plays out: 1. we'll beat Leicester, just to get everyone's last scrap of hope up again 2. morale boosting demolition of Stoke 3. we'll hammer Leeds in the first half, missing a host of chances, and then cock it all up at the death I'd love to be confident, but this team is so hot/cold this year.

That Mitchell and Webb look? Snooker sketches

Most people on this forum have/had the opinion that Che is crap anyway (and tbf some of his shooting is woeful). But i don't know why people suddenly think he's skilful enough to just play well instead of crap because the window is open. Agreed; total nonsense.

It's nice to see at least a few level heads on here after last night. Yeah it's frustrating not to pick up all three points, against a team we should have beat; doubly frustrating seeing us not make the most of a rare Leeds loss, but it is what it is. We made more than enough good chances to have won that game comfortably. Arma's shooting boots were obviously left on the bus - he had three big opportunities and blazed two over, and delayed too much on a clean through ball from Che. I know people hate the xG stat, but its at least more contextual than simple "Shots/Shots on Target" ones. What I find really frustrating is that we seem to be creating as many good opportunities per game as the two at the top, but they just aren't translating into the same results. There's some massive outliers in that table; like Leicester letting in just over half what would be expected, and we're underscoring significantly vs what we should be. It certainly explains why we are where we are, and so are Leicester. It also gives me confidence that although I also find the posession stuff a little dull, like many of you lot do, we are at least creating a reasonable amount of chances, even if the 5 minute build up to every single one of them makes it feel like we dont. We've known for ages that AA and Che are somewhat unreliable as finishers, so I suppose it's not much of a surprise that we don't score more. I also saw someone had linked a table earlier on showing our scorers. Pretty sure it was Charlie + Stu both having ~24ish shots for 1 goal each... there's our real problem; an extra few goals from them would do us the world of good and tip the 1-1's into 2-1's instead.

I'm hoping that the Manning thing is just because of rotation in a busy week. I really wanted him to do well here (still do), but he's a defender who seems not to think about defending. There were two absolute cock-ups from him that I remember: - First half, there was a cross rifled across the box (baz made an excellent save from a back-post header). But the guy who put it in had acres of space, you could see Manning crap his pants when he realised he wasn't actually marking anyone and it was supposed to be his man. - The pathetic pass that was given away near the end of the second half. Downes saves the day with a perfect tackle as part of an excellent performance all-round. Here's hoping Bree is back in on Saturday - he's earned it IMO.

I think I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that interview. It's exhausting watching us only have a 1 goal lead all the time. Very odd reaction, but he clearly knows, as well as we do, that our squad should be winning much more comfortably (in terms of goals) than we are. We should have had them dead and buried in the last 10 minutes as they were clearly knackered and giving away easy possession high up the pitch. Was the midfield that made the difference between the two halves for me. We seemed to always get overrun in the middle in the first half, but Flynn and Alcaraz were constantly breaking the lines in the second. Final ball just a little lacking. On the plus side, 10 games unbeaten, no longer letting in goals for fun, and long may it continue.

Wednesday just equalized against Liecester; could end up being a good night after all

I was just thinking the same thing. Not exactly playing for a transfer is he; heard his name once so far when he fouled one of theirs.

I'm looking forward to a repeat of the Leeds game... everyone a bit nervous beforehand over their apparent threat. Quickly calmed by an absolute domination in the first half. It's about time we had a nice comfortable win, where we actually score some of our half-chances like everyone else has done against us so far this season. Holgate gives me the jitters though - here's hoping that he and THB have been working/training together all week given we already knew Bedders would be out.

Sorry to resurrect a post on this clown, but spotted his Masterclass on that freak City result we had - can't say I'm going to waste 25minutes of my time on it, but if anyone else wants to hear how he got us playing with so much front-footedness, then here you go.

I think everyone enjoys winning more than they lose. So yeah, this season's been more enjoyable (so far) than the last few in the prem. Getting our arse handed to us every week sucked. It was great being there when we actually competed well (Poch, Koeman, Puel, the beginning of Hassenhuttl) and the club as a whole seemed to have generally good plan for the future; and before we sold all our best players, and replaced them with garbage. VAR I don't miss even slightly - it's been a breath of fresh air to simply complain about a referee's decision and that be the end of it. I absolutely don't miss arguing millimetres on an offside, or whether something is "clear and obvious", or whether 4 professionals watching on 8 different screens have still somehow ballsed up an offside decision after waiting for 5 minutes make it. I'll be glad if we go back up, as that would implicitly mean that RM has these lads playing well and we may have a chance to push on with some extra finances. (jury's out for now)

It is comparable though. The audio released suggests that this was also a mistake made in good faith. At no point is there any hint that it was biased towards one team over another - nothing about the outcome is any different to a human error on the pitch; except perhaps that 4 people all made the same ballsup. Even if they weren't comparable. What's the solution? Pander to Klopp and replay it, which sets an irreversible precedent? or, do we allow VAR some grace period in-game to bring a restarted game back to rectify a mistake? Or, like all other mistakes that happen in the game, can Klopp just suck it up and put his big boy pants on like everyone else has to?

This has to be a wind-up. I could possibly see an argument for it being a "coming together" - stoke lad runs across Bedders' path, both seemingly with an eye for the ball. But the arms around his waist seem to me like it's Bedders trying to make it look that way whilst also taking the man out. If that happened to one of our strikers we'd definitely be calling that a penalty. Anyway, these bad calls tend to even themselves out over the season, so I'm sure we'll pay for it in a later match.

Yup. This is my biggest gripe with VAR + Offside. The slightest body part being offside isn't offside in my eyes, and not what the rule was originally brought in to stop. I get why the VAR system has to be so black/white about it though, but I'm getting to the point where I now think it's more enjoyable to not have it, and suffer the mistakes instead of seeing a good goal chalked off for a toe being over a line. I think the majority of people would prefer to hear the reasoning behind the decision than not hear it. At least with the audio fans might actually know why a goal was disallowed, which will lessen the anger for some, or will at least provide reasons to their arguments. Rather than no-one knowing why a seemingly good goal was chalked off and just hurling abuse at the officials. People understand that hearing it wont undo a mistake/decision against their team, but it's much easier to accept it and move on if you know the reasons why it was disallowed.

I don't know what you're all moaning about; we're top of the table, baby! https://footystats.org/england/championship/xg Basically our strikers can't finish, and keeper couldn't catch a cold. We've just been really unlucky with the results. (and this post is coming from someone who doesn't think that xG is absolute hogwash)

If only it had worked like that last season. I expected us to lose every game under NJ...

I'm absolutely confident that there is no way this RM team would have only let in 8 goals.

It was blatantly obvious from Friday night that Charles is not a CB (not a good one at any rate). If I ever see him starting there again with a fit CB sat on the bench, then Martin's completely lost my support. I reckon the majority of fans could get on board with all the keep-ball and slow build up, even if it led to regular mistakes.... as long as, it actually led to some end product for us. I'm more than happy to ship a few stupid goals if it meant we were much more capable of scoring more than the opposition. That simply isn't the case the last few games.

If you watch the way that Brighton et al manage this, it's not necessarily about the player with the ball being able to "evade" an oncoming press. But more about another team member always being available to receive the out-ball, which more often than not is a reasonably short pass. In the clip of Brighton someone shared earlier, it's pretty rare that any player actually has to skip past an opponent whilst carrying the ball. We did this really poorly against Leicester; the whole back line and the midfield were equally guilty imo. I think it's a little unfair to suggest our back line are so devoid of technical quality. We've just bought THB, someone whose just been groomed in the Pep school of passing so obviously shouldn't be complete toilet at what we're asking him to do. Similarly, Janny B/Jack Stephens who, despite everyone's historical slagging off, aren't the worst players on the ball ever. Yes, they're not the best, but are more than capable of making the short passes required as was evidenced by the passing stats that came out earlier on in the season. KWP is more than capable of receiving a ball and skipping past his man when required. Manning is the biggest question mark for me as I've not seen enough of him yet. My biggest concerns from the weekend are the first two chances in the youtube highlights. 1. For the first goal, Baz passes it to Charles, who already has no-one to distribute it to. Charles is too wide to be able to go back across the box to THB, KWP is in-field for no reason, and Smallbone is marked out of the game already slightly further up the wing. For me, the setup there is totally wrong from the start; we were already screwed after the first pass 2. For the next big chance/cock-up at the back. Charles is way off in the RB position (why?!), and eventually running back to provide an out-ball; was he out of position? if so, why did we start playing already?! Eventually though, it's the wrong pass that's chosen. Baz was free to receive, and a safer ball to Charles was still available. The distance to KWP in the centre, with two Leicester players was just stupid and caused by putting ourselves in that situation unnecessarily. 3. Loads have already mentioned it, but the over-commitment at our corners is just mad. For a team that's not exactly blessed with pace, this is going to bite us in the ass a lot if we carry on. In any event, it's up to RM to figure out what's not working and he needs to do it quickly. Another 4/5 goal drubbing and he'll have completely lost the fanbase I reckon.

I'd wager even we'd be able to break a press that glacial. Ten Haag must've been absolutely fuming at the apathy shown in that clip. The theory of drawing the press is fine by me, it should leave bigger spaces in the rest of the field to exploit. However, something really hasn't clicked yet, as I've not seen us actually exploit space like that in any of the games so far. And the whole inverted-fullback stuff seems to be doing nothing but leaving gaping holes in the defence that every other team seems more than capable of exploiting at pace. RM really does need to earn his dollar-bucks right now

There's always been a pretty good one here - albeit for the Prem: https://understat.com/league/EPL/2022 Sort it by xPTS and we would have been expected to survive. Statistically, last year we let in 10 more goals than we'd have been expected to (against the chances created, on average) - either everyone got consistently lucky (possible) or our defence + keeper are trash (probable) I personally think that everyone's overreacting for now, mostly because 5-0 sounds so bad. In reality, two of their strikes came from outside the box (one heavily deflected). Don't get me wrong the performance was still shocking, and Martin has some defending to work on for sure, as at the moment we're not really doing any. This is still a new team with massive wholesale changes and completely new playing style to boot. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt for a while longer