Dan Johnson

it’s clearly player quality over managerial mistakes why we’re losing. I think we’re improving, slowly, but we are. Jones has made us more aggressive, we desperately needed that. We weren’t even competitive in the last few games under Ralph, we are now, we looked dangerous at times last night but we just are so blunt up top, we all know we need 1 or 2 clinical players to put the ball in the net. Che should have scored, Armstrong forced a great save out of Pope, Alcaraz forced a great save, finer margins last night than when we got played off the park in Ralph’s last game 1-4. Jones is also utilising the squad more, changes at 60 mins regularly is the correct move for a young squad when we’ve games twice a week. Managers can’t legislate for Diallo misplacing 10 passes a game, poor defence clearances consistently by our CBs, Bazunu making poor choices. Djenepo being tactically unaware. Most importantly strikers missing 1 on 1 opportunities, He can only use what he’s got. We created enough to get something from the game, the effort was there, we competed. It’s become a sound bite of Jones “we need a little bit more quality” but he’s right. We’ve a busy run so we have to utilise all the squad at the moment, but when we hit the run in and play once a week, Jones can have a settled 11 and I think we’ll start picking up results.

Same old story. created enough chances to take something from the game, didn’t have a player to take the opportunities. positives from the performance

I love seeing scenes like this, fucking love it. it’s clear from today that manager and players are completely together, prowsey pushing Jones in front of the fans to get praise shows the players want us to acknowledge Jones and get behind him. Bottom of the league but the feel good factor around the club is back, we’ve turned a corner.

time to close this thread and get behind the manager. 3 fantastic wins off the back of dire results shows he has what it takes to motivate these players lets get behind the manager COYR

COYR!!! What an appointment!

Happy with todays performance Technically there’s loads to do, however I saw effort, aggression, commitment, enthusiasm and that’ll help us build character and momentum… Palace have more quality in their side than us and we out battled them, disappointed we didn’t see the same against Forest but we’ve a free hit at home against Man City next, compete in that and the tide May begin to change for Jones.

Better than against forest… onwards and upwards

Completely agree. Think he’s arguably our 3rd best Center back. Great defender, poor footballer

Would take him 100% Similar to the Dan Burn transfer to Newcastle last January, everyone turning their noses up “Brighton Reserve” but he’s been an inspiration signing for them. Proven premiership players are exactly what we need right now.

Turgid performance today, looks miles off the pace. Don’t see any leadership qualities that would warrant him being captain at the moment either. He needs to step up physically and mentally to pull the team and his performances in the right direction

Worst performance in a very long time. Didn’t even compete today which is unforgivable. The summer window has completely back fired. We should have been signing players to make our first 11 stronger, 2 summer signings started today, 1 completely devoid of confidence. Our best 11 significantly weaker after letting some of the solid (if unspectacular) players leave. Wrong team selection too, started with the 3rd and 4th choice CBs in my eyes. Bezunu should have been dropped after the Lincoln howler, not recognising that Stu Armstrong should be well ahead of Elyounoussi too 😱🤷‍♂️ Team for next game Willy Perraud ABK DCC KWP JWP S Armstrong Lavia Edzoie Walcott Adams

Poor performances don’t make a bad player but he needs dropping at the moment. He’s a young player and needs protecting. First goal today was a howler, also some fault for the second. Allot of rash decisions which could have also led to a goal, feel like he’s overthinking/over trying now. id go with Willy

I can almost hear the PE teacher shouting at those 3 defenders “stop bunching”

On Balance it’s a decent point but we look disjointed. Been really disappointed with JWP form this season, he’s looked off the pace and hasn’t imposed himself on any game so far, we couldn’t move the ball through the middle of the park fast enough and that transition from defence to attack seems cumbersome and predictable and often breaks down because we have players taking 3/5 touches when 1/2 will do. Elyounoussi, JWP, Aribo all cumbersome at times, our wingbacks seem like the only ones willingly releasing the ball quick enough to form dangerous attacks leaving us vulnerable to counter attacks. That’s what Lavia did so well in the first couple of games, released the ball quick and kept the attacks looking dangerous. The minute you play a sideways ball allow opposition defenders to reset is the minute you make it 10 times harder to break opposition down. Che had a few good opportunities, fashioning them himself through his strength but otherwise he seems isolated. We should be playing off him more, drawing in defenders with his strength, back to goal with runners off him. Salisu is a good defender but a very raw Footballer, he can make some cracking tackles/blocks but often that hard work is undone by a sloppy 5 yard pass straight to the opposition! I’ve not been happy with Ralph’s performances as manager but the players naivety (brought on by their young age) is allot to do with those poor performances.

All the best to him. Think he’s been a good signing for us, I know some fans will point to his inconsistency but if he played at the top of his game consistently, he’d have never played for us in the first place, on his day he’s a game changer. Obvious he’s a confidence player and like some have said, he struggled when the fans were on his back but also he could thrive when the fans were on his side and get bums off seats. All the best to him and his family, feels like the right time to part company with him and I m glad the club are giving him that opportunity out of respect for his service, that feels right to me. All the best redders, it’s been a blast

Completely agree with this, I’m a big Che fan by the way and think he’s good for 10 goals a season, however that miss was inexcusable and it’s indicative of his composure and why we need another striker alongside him/to take the pressure off him, I worry the more pressure he’s under the more we may see instances like that. He’s better when he can throw his body at something, rather than having time to think, again the chance almost directly after where he attacked the ball was a fine example

Very happy with this. It’s a quality addition to the squad 👍🏻

Looked every bit a £60m+ defender in the last 3 games. An absolute steal at £8M Reminds me of John Terry. Some of the tackles he put in tonight and against Utd were outrageously good Hats off to the scouting department

Ings, Watkins, Bailey, Buendia, Coutinho yet they’ve now signed Sarr. be surprised if they didn’t move on one of the existing 5.

I’d class Che as a forward, because he offers so much more than just goals, although he’s good for 10-12 goals a season in the prem too! Legitimately I think he might be one of the best hold up forwards in the league. Outside of Haaland, who else can hold the ball up that well? That’s such a massive quality for a club of our level where we will need the ball to stick up top against the better teams/draw fouls to relive the pressure on the defence. I’d personally class him alongside KWP and JWP as one of our most important players. I’d be gobsmacked if he left

Don’t subscribe to the idea of those saying we were terrible for 60 minutes, thought we defended very well for that 60 mins, just lacked creativity going forward, Very much the same for Leicester. Both sides almost equalled each other out until the Maddison goal and it was quiet pedestrian until that point, although we also didn’t look like we’d concede and thought we looked comfortable, build Momentum from being strong at the back, which is exactly what we did today. Maddison’s goal was quality, the only bit of quality all afternoon from Leicester, we then went up a gear and Leicester couldn’t get near us for the last 30 mins. Could have been 3 or 4 in the end. im very happy with that performance, 3pts at Leicester is a great return, it’s a result that makes me think we’ll be alright this season. Rodgers has come out and said Leicester aren’t expecting new signings before the window closes, with teams looking at Maddison, Telemens, Fofana they could be in trouble, they were flat today, whether that’s because of their situation or because they struggled to break us down, I don’t know, but I worry for them.

He done his knee around Christmas and was ruled out for the season. struggled with injuries before that too, Got allot of stick for his early performances

In the 27 seasons the premier league has been a 20 team league, a team has been relegated on 40+ pts on only 3 occasions, 2 of those seasons 41 pts would have been enough to stay up, the other 43 pts. We’ve finished in 15th which is exactly where I’d expect us to be. 8 teams lost more games than we have this season, despite our awful run. Our downfall has been that we only won 9, only 3 teams failed to win more, the 3 that went down. If we carried more of a goal threat and turned even half our draws into wins, we’d have been challenging for a Europa league spot. Its been an odd season, because wins and loses have come in bunches, had they been spread out more evenly we’d probably be fairly satisfied with what we achieved, a solid cup run and survival.

I think Ralphs done a good job to be honest and I'd like him to stay, he's been limited by our lack of spend while trying to get rid of transfer flops over the last few summers, which makes the job even more impressive to be honest, it will be interesting to see how this summer goes. We've lost 11 games this season, which is the same as West Ham who are having a great season. It's 1 more than Arsenal and Tottenham, 2 Less than Wolves and 6 Less than Villa, all of whom are above us. We've competed in every game we've played this season, except perhaps Villa Away and Chelsea at home. We've drawn 13, if we'd have scored just 7 more goals we'd be up challenging for top 4, Seven goals off challenging for top four... I'd take that any season. The problem we have, some of our best performers can have a dip in form and we don't have the competition for places to pull them out. If Salisu, Broja, KWP, Romeu, JWP form dip our quality\strength is significantly weakened. For a club of our size that's something we have to live with, if they all performed at their best week in week out we wouldn't be able to hold on to them anyway, they'd be playing for bigger clubs.

Exceptional result given the circumstances. id be seething if I was a Hammers Fan, they offered very little and with 9 changes they were clear favourites. special mentions to - Valery, looks a great player at CB, completely different to RB. Found his position. - Perraud, everything that Bertrand wasn’t in his last 18 months. Storming performance, passion, commitment, work rate. incredible goal. He’s been a great signing, sets the tempo for everyone on the pitch. stephens - very capable CB these days and a real club steward, never seemed troubled. On the flip side, thought Diallo didn’t have his best game tonight, made silly decisions and gave the ball away.