SWLondon Saint

Pretty sure Alonso usually uses 1 FB / CB in his 3CBs at Leverkusen. You could see at times in the 1st half yesterday we were doing exactly what most modern 3CB teams do which is effectively go to 4 at the back when in possession.

As was said, could literally be anything but if he has kids my money would be on the norovirus. Been through school and pretty much all families like 🔥💩.

Yep, injured, was mentioned in the presser before match I think

You'll see the goals so will summarise the rest. 1st half - mostly pretty even. We look like a sane football team again which is good. The tracking back is much better this week from all players. THB is having a mare, can't seem to pass it properly and not looking great at the back either. A couple of times our press traps them in their defensive third which is nice too. 2nd half - they come out fired up after the break and we're a bit under the cosh, but they don't manage to create any great chances. Delap is just bossing Bednarek. Later in the half Bree seems to end up on him (dunno if the players or manager made the change) and does an excellent job. Scrappy game in the most part not helped by subs. However the last 20 minutes or so they created absolutely sweet FA which is nice for a change. - Wellington was impressive, solid technically, not afraid to take a man on or cross and worked hard getting up and down the left. He didn't look tired until he cramped up suddenly after a great defensive header but not surprising given the awkward overlap with the Brazilian season and his lack of games. -Gronbaek had some nice touches but nothing quite decisive. Clearly a good technical player and also forward thinking / will have a go. Also had a good moment tracking back at some point. - No idea what's up with THB but he wasn't at the races today and then injured himself somehow.

If Rohl had come in when Juric did, there's an extremely high chance he'd have just lost exactly the same 6 games and everyone would now be calling for his head and a new manager next season. The players were just broken by the end of the Spurs game, it was obvious to anyone watching. I said around then I thought it'd be better to have a caretaker till the end of the season as there was a high chance it would be a total shitshow given the low morale and quality of the squad.

The squad can be bad and it can still be VAR's fault, two things aren't mutually exclusive. The pen was a disgrace.

How the hell can var not even look at that Joelinton foul, it's so one sided it's not even a joke.

Complete bollocks var decision, they clearly had no clue the number of times they watched it from 15 angles.

Well, I work in an industry which hires a lot on commission / the agency type model and I'd agree with this 100%. The agencies don't want people to stay in one job / one place and are always 'encouraging' job changes as that's when they get paid. However I do get it in the context of that first big contract for players - as at that level it basically gives you 'f*** off' amounts of money which means if you manage it well you won't have to work again.

Shouldn't really matter that much tbh as Juric's style is man-marking based so at least 1 or 2 or the CBs will often push into 'midfield' to pursue their man. On the ball you can see the CB on the side with possession also often goes forward to support the attack.

Sugawara's confidence is shot and that'll have affected his first touch. He's made several goal-conceding errors this season so he's probably second guessing himself all the time which is a sure way to guarantee even more mistakes. I also think he needs more time to settle as the Dutch league is much less physical. We better hope he improves anyway as no-one's buying him after this season so we're stuck with him! Archer I feel similar about re: confidence, he's clearly an intuitive / playing on the shoulder run and hit it kind of striker, so I think he's just gotten lost this season under RM and needs to get it out of his system. He's also still young and could improve a lot. I expect us to keep him next season and he'll score a ton in the Champ as he has before. Come on, his goal against Arsenal was superb and showed what he can do.

Agree completely, though he 100% won't be with us in the Champ. Even at a Lavia type price he'd be an absolute bargain for a top club as he's been battle tested in the worst possible environment and he's never given up, never shirked the hard yards, they know exactly what they'll get from him and he's still young and could improve more. And he seems to be really tough and not injury prone too.

The thing about Smallbone I really don't get is he just seems to always be ambling around, even when someone's gone past him and he should be busting a gut to get back. When he and Ramsdale managed to give the ball away, I just have no idea what he was thinking - he was marking space the whole time and so Joe Allen gets a free hit on goal from inside the box. I get you have to split the difference to stop the pass being too easy too early, but when he's about to shoot from that close , you have to just throw yourself surely?

The play by Swansea leading to that free kick for us just looked too familiar.... 😅

If that was the routine, it's hard to believe everyone at the club was on board with it? Sounds like absolute amateur hour. Did no-one call him out on this bullshit? Or were those the players who never got to play or even make the bench? 🤯

Found the article @JustinR mentioned above, interesting reading. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/jan/17/ivan-juric-death-metal-approach-torino-devilish-team-serie-a

That's been my main complaint about him all season, but the exact same has been going on down the left when Manning / Fraser play there so I dunno if it's RM instructions or he just left it entirely up to the individual as Bree and KWP play much tighter. Either way it doesn't reflect well on the manager improving or even communicating with players.

I actually thought both KWP and Suga did OK today considering they were clearly asked to be more aggressive, play much further up the pitch and have a CB cover for them. There was definitely some confusion running back to defend with switching Vs staying with their man but it's not that surprising since they had no training time. Suga for my money still stands off too far from their wide players compared to Bree who tries to be in their back the whole time.

I think Downes got too used to having time on the ball in the Championship while in the Prem you are gonna be under heavy pressure as soon as you move towards the ball and need to be that much clearer about your options in advance. Compare him to Lallana or Fernandes when they receive it. Because he's under pressure and not comfortable with that, he makes bad passing decisions. Also, the athleticism is that much better in the Prem and he can't dominate other midfielders like he did in the champ.

Everytime they cut away to him he looked somewhere between thoughtful and pissed off I thought. Quite a few exasperated hand waves which looked like they were accompanying a 'FFS' followed by talking to his assistant. 👍🏼

Watched from about 20 mins in and thought we did fine - we were competitive, it was ugly at times but that's absolutely fine for a promoted team and you'd take the away point any time. Look how Ipswich celebrated getting a draw at ours. - Definitely think Juric has already been giving instructions, we have never pressed that far up with wing backs before and clearly our CBs had more license to go after the ball into the opposition half on the press. - Why was AA even on the pitch? He won it once that I saw and offers so, so little on the ball it's shocking. He doesn't even try to use his strength against CBs, he doesn't shape to take it on the turn and run the defender, and nearly always plays backwards, often into pressing traps. Just... - For a supposed 6, Downes plays some real hospital passes at times. Twice at least he played a pass to the most under pressure player when if he'd held it even a second he'd have seen it wasn't on. If Juric as a former CM can put some tactical sense into him that would make a huge difference. - Think Dibling needs a break, too much has been asked of him - he's a marked man these days and that's made the game a lot harder for him. His end product also needs work, but that's understandable. - Big Les overplayed a few times, but he looks much better suited to the double pivot when he can just go for it rather than play possession. - We still really lack attacking structure. I saw a couple of good cross field balls in the first half but we need to overload quickly and then cross if we're doing that, and it looks like our players are still waking up out of Russball as they go back after the switch which I am pretty sure Juric will want to cut out.

Come on, 5 points at Christmas is the joint 2nd lowest total in Premier League history. And those Sunderland teams were in chaos on and off the pitch. Our squad, while weak, is not one of the 3 worst squads in Premier League history. You could certainly argue it's better than Ipswich's this season at the very least. Not being surprised at 5 points is definitely letting RM off easy. He's now statistically the worst ever non-caretaker manager in history I think, and you can't just blame that on recruitment. Look at Luton's squad last season for example, they were true no-hopers and even they had more points than us.

'...what is important in football is to play the games for win, that's my idea of football.' Our squad: 🤯 It'll never catch on mate.

Found a couple of articles about his style of play: https://breakingthelines.com/tactical-analysis/ivan-jurics-torino-the-fun-side-of-serie-a/ https://totalfootballanalysis.com/article/head-coach-analysis-ivan-juric-201920-tactical-analysis-tactics He's a Gasperini 'disciple' which judging by how Atalanta play could be great. Looking at when he was at Verona and Torino he's never really gotten decent backing in terms of getting players in, so I guess the hope is we put up a good fight, and he feels happy enough with the club setup that he doesn't mind a season in the Championship building stuff his way, as he's definitely a 'top 5 European leagues' manager going off his Serie A record.

We also look a ton better when crosses are actually getting thrown into the box. Sugawara can really cross it, it beggars belief we weren't trying to get him to fire some in before. Though on defence he still stands off far too far, thought Bree did a reasonable job on Gakpo till he went off. Someone needs to coach Suga to copy Bree's defensive positioning which is mostly solid.